law, may obtain the assent of the understanding, but will not come home to the heart, seize on the affections, or impose an absolute moral necessity of acting in a certain prescribed manner. The purity of religious principle has a most powerful effect in confirming the precepts of morality, in placing them in their proper light, and in connecting them with the necessary consequences of obedience, or of the contrary conduct. The finest moral system, separated from religion, will be at best a beautiful theory, which may please in speculation, but will have little effect in practice. It is true that we bring with us into the world the first principles or conceptions of a right and a wrong, established by the feelings of conscience; and every human being who is free from the bias of passion or self-interest, immediately acknowledges that certain things are obligatory and becoming, and the contrary iniquitous and shameful. Further reflection shows us that the former are highly conducive to the interests of mankind, and the latter subversive of them. But even these principles themselves are accompanied by a secret sense of responsibility to a superior, by the hope of reward for the observance, and by the fear of punishment for the violation of them. In a word, we find the notions of law prevailing in every age of the world, and in every state of society, and that these notions are independent of the arbitrary decisions of men; nay, that all human laws both acknowledge these original notions of right and wrong, and must be resolved into them, in order to acquire the force of real obligation. But a law presupposes a lawgiver who has a right to prescribe, and authority to enforce his injunctions. The universal lawgiver is God; and as soon as we rightly apprehend his nature to be infinitely perfect and infallible, we are sure that whatever proceeds from him must be right, even in cases where we cannot discern its salutary tendency. Pure religion, therefore, gives to morality a cogency and force which it can derive from no other quarter, and in fact renders it completely binding. It saves all abstruse and difficult speculation concerning the rules and the reasons of duty, by this short and simple answer; "Infinite wisdom and goodness can never err or deceive, and infinite wisdom and goodness have declared this to be our duty. It is therefore strictly obligatory on moral and intelligent beings; and since infinite wisdom and goodness are united with infinite power, it is as much our interest as our duty to obey." It is besides undoubted, that, with the generality of mankind, theoretical arguments on the beauty and excellence of virtue will not suffice. They require an express and authoritative code of duty, enacted by a superior whom they acknowledge, and sanctioned by such penalties as are calculated to strike them with terror, and by such rewards as excite their hopes and rouse their activity. So that, without the great spring of religion, morality loses all its energy, and becomes a matter of mere speculation. That it was thus considered by the ancient moralists, and little regarded as a constant rule of life, will be evident to every one who carefully peruses their writings. From these observations, we may easily discover how feeble and inadequate to the grand object of regulating the conduct of mankind were the justest reflections and finest moral aphorisms of these sages, interwoven as they certainly were with so many gross errors and uncertain speculations concerning the Divinity. This glaring defect is justly represented by Lactantius in the following words: "Plato and Aristotle had the best intentions with regard to the maintenance of justice and virtue, and might have been able to do something effectual, if their upright endeavours, their eloquence and genius, had been assisted by the knowledge of divine truth. For want of this their efforts were fruitless, and their work vain; nor could they persuade any of mankind to live according to their rules, which had no foundation laid by heaven. Our work must necessarily have more certain success, because we are instructed by God." a Plato et Aristoteles honesta quidem voluntate justitiam defendere cupierunt, effecissentque aliquid, si conatus eorum bonos, si 3dly, It was impossible that the people in general could be benefited by the instruction of the philosophers, because their schools admitted only a few chosen disciples, and their method of teaching was too refined and abstruse for common apprehension. They proposed curious cases for discussion. They entered into subtile inquiries concerning the origin of virtue, and the peculiar nature of moral obligation. They disputed concerning the summum bonum, or chief good of man. Some placed it in pleasure, some in virtue alone, others in virtue united with easy external circumstances; and others, namely, the Stoics, pretended that wisdom and virtue were entirely independent of every thing that could happen in the course of human affairs. Though all the different sects of philosophers acknowledged the corruption of human nature, they vainly imagined that their philosophy could remedy it; and never seem to have reflected on that divine law of rectitude, admitted by impartial reason, which the wisest and best of men, in the present state of degeneracy, were unable completely to fulfil. In all their moral specula eloquentiam, si virtutem ingenii, divinarum quoque rerum doctrina juvisset. Itaque opus illorum inane atque inutile jacuit; nec cuiquam hominum persuadere potuerunt, ut eorum præscripto viveret, quia fundamentum a cœlo disciplina illa non habuit. Nostrum opus certius sit necesse est, quos Deus docuit.-Lactant. Div. Institut. lib. v. c. xvii. tions, a fluctuating indecision, a want of solid principles, and an incapacity of arriving at just and salutary conclusions, are glaringly manifest. As far as relates to the grand motives to the practice of virtue, it is evident that, considering the uncertainty of all the ancient philosophers in regard to a future state, it was hardly possible for them to offer to mankind, in every probable case, a sufficient counterpoise to the attractions of pleasure or interest on the one hand, and, on the other, to the severe trials to which virtue is so often exposed. The saying of Brutus, on the loss of the battle of Philippi, is well known. "O wretched virtue! I have hitherto cultivated and served thee as a reality; but I find that thou art but a name. Thou art also the slave of fortune."a Such a speech could a According to Dion Cassius, he repeated two verses, which that author calls the saying of Hercules, and are as follow. Ω τλῆμον ἀρετὴ, λόγος ἄρ ̓ ἦσθ'· ἐγὼ δέ σε Ως ἔργον ἤσκουν· σὺ δ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ἐδούλευες τύχῃ. It is uncertain from what poet these verses are taken. Xylander, a commentator of Dion Cassius, says, in a note on this passage, that he recollects not to have seen them anywhere else as they stand in this historian. Plutarch, in his book on Superstition, has quoted part of them. Alciatus, in his Emblemata, has thus rendered them in Latin: Infelix virtus, et solis provida verbis, Fortunam in rebus cur sequeris dominam ? They may thus be expressed in English: O wretched virtue! I believed thee true, |