XIV. This court is no less concerned than others to preserve the balance of power.

But to what purpose is it to look for instances? We need only consider Sixtus himself with respect to Henry the Great. It is certain, that having observed how much the league augmented the strength of the Spaniards, he shifted sides, and favoured in France the Protestant party, and if he had not died, he would have done his utmost to have deprived the king of Spain of the kingdom of Naples. He traversed the league so visibly, that the Spaniards threatened to protest against him, and to provide otherwise for the preservation of the church, which he abandoned. His death filled the leaguers with joy; one of their preachers, giving the Parisians notice of it made use of these words. "God has delivered us from a wicked and politic pope: if he had lived longer people would have been astonished to have heard the pope preached against in Paris, but it must have been done." It was not because he was sensible of the great merit of Henry IV, and the knaveries of the league, that this pope took measures contrary to the Catholic religion; but because the heretics' success was injurious to the king of Spain, whom he hated.-Art. ELIZABETH.

EPICURUS.

(His opinion of the Gods.)

It would be too great a neglect of the sacred laws of equity, to charge Epicurus with believing that the Gods do not deserve our worship, respects, and adorations: for he openly professed the contrary, and published excellent books touching the duties that men owe to the gods. "De sanctitate, de pietate adversus Deos libros scripsit Epicurus. At quo modo in his loquitur? Ut Coruncanum aut Scævolam

Pontifices maximos te audire dicas.*—Epicurus wrote of sanctity, and of the duty which we owe to the Gods. But how does he treat them? In such manner, that you would say you heard Coruncanus or Scævola, the high priests." I own that it was objected to him, that if he acted according to his principles, he must have no religion; but this consequence did not destroy the matter of fact; for his outward religion was never questioned. We cannot produce a more creditable witness than Seneca, who speaks thus about it. "Tu denique, Epicure, Deum inermem facis: omnia illi tela, omnem detraxisti potentiam.... hunc non habes quare verearis, nulla illi nec tribuendi nec nocendi materia est.... Atqui hunc vis videri colere, non aliter quam parentem: grato, ut opinor, animo: aut si non vis videri gratus, quia nullum habes illius beneficium, sed te atomi et istæ micæ tuæ forte ac temere conglobaverunt, cur colis? Propter majestatem, inquis, ejus eximiam, singularemque naturam. Ut concedam tibi: nempe hoc facis nulla spe, nullo precio inductus. Est ergo aliquid per se expetendum, cujus te ipsa dignitas ducit: id est honestum.†-In short, Epicurus, you disarm God, you divest him of his thunder and his power. You have no reason to fear him, since he is incapable of doing either good or hurt; and yet you would revere him as a parent, from a principle of gratitude. If you do it not from this principle, as being formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, and consequently lying under no obligation to him, why do you worship him? You answer, for the majesty and the excellence of his nature. Be it granted that neither interest nor expectations are your motives. There is, therefore, something in itself desirable, by the dignity of which you are influenced: It is generous." We see here, in few words, what religion Epicurus professed: he reverenced the Gods,

Cicero de Natura Deorum, lib. 1, cap. 19. + Seneca de Beneficius, lib. iv. cap. 19.

because of the excellence of their nature, though he neither expected any good, nor feared any ill from them. He paid them a free, unmercenary worship, wherein he in no manner regarded his own interest, but purely the notions of reason, which require that we should respect and honour all that is great and perfect. Probably those were not mistaken, who accused him of doing this out of policy only, and to avoid the punishment he would infallibly have incurred, had he overthrown the worship of the Gods: but this accusation would have been rash, though perhaps not without ground; for we ought in equity to judge of our neighbour by his words and actions, and not by the secret intentions we fancy he may possess.

We

must leave to God, the only searcher of hearts, to judge of what passes in every man's conscience. After all, why should we rob Epicurus of the notion of a worship which our most orthodox divines recommend as most lawful, rational, and perfect? They tell us daily, that though we should neither hope a paradise nor fear a hell, yet we ought to reverence God, and to do all things that we think will please him. I might also cite the testimony which Diogenes Laertius has given of Epicurus's piety.

Therefore, the only proof of the text of this remark is, that Epicurus confined the divine nature to a state of inactivity; that he took from it the government of the world, and did not acknowledge it as the cause of this universe. Authors disagree about the question whether he taught that the gods were composed of atoms? If he had taught such a thing, he had robbed the divine nature of its eternity and indestructibility, a monstrous and most blasphemous doctrine, but which, I think, cannot be charged upon him; for one of his first principles was, that God being happy and immortal, hurts nobody nor concerns himself in any thing. The first thing he proposed as a subject of meditation to his disciples was, the immortality and felicity of God.-"Look upon

God in the first place, as a being happy and incorruptible, such as the general idea represents him; ascribe nothing to him repugnant to bliss, or incompatible with immortality." He did not believe, therefore, that the gods were made like the world, by the fortuitous concourse of atoms. He was sensible enough that he would have thereby manifestly subjected them to death.

His notion of happiness.

Most of the ancient philosophers who have treated of the happiness of man, have confined themselves to an external notion, and this has occasioned great variety of opinions amongst them. Some placed the happiness of man in riches, others in sciences, others in honours, others in fame, others in virtue, &c. It is plain that they fixed the idea of happiness, not to its formal but to its efficient cause; that is, they called that our happiness which they thought capable to produce in us a state of blessedness, and that they did not define what is the state of our soul when she is happy. It is as to this state which I call the formal cause of happiness. Epicurus was not mistaken; he considered happiness in itself and in its formal state, and not according to the relation it has with beings or objects altogether external, such as are efficient causes. This way of considering happiness, is undoubtedly the most exact, and the most worthy a philosopher: Epicurus has therefore done well to choose it, and he has made so good use of it, that it has brought him precisely whither he ought to go. The only assertion that could reasonably be establised by that method was, that the happiness of man consists in being at his ease and in having a sense of pleasure, or in general, satisfaction of the mind. This does not prove that the Epicureans place happiness in good cheer, and in the impure intercourse which different * Diog. Laert. lib. x. n. 123.

sexes may have with one another; for at most these can be no more than efficient causes which are not here in question. When there is occasion to speak of the efficient causes of content and pleasure, they will mark out the best-on the one side they will direct you to those objects which are most capable to preserve the health of your bodies; and on the other they will tell you what occupations are the most proper to prevent the uneasiness of your mind. Therefore they will prescribe you sobriety, temperance, and the checking of tumultuous and disorderly passions, which deprive the soul of its state of felicity that is, of the soft and quiet acquiescence in its condition; for these were the pleasures or delights wherein Epicurus placed man's happiness. People exclaimed against the word pleasure; those who were already loose and debauched, made an ill use of it; the enemies of the sect took advantage from it, and so the name of Epicurean became odious. All this is accidental to the fundamental opinion of Epicurus, which is grounded only on solid philosophy; though it must be owned he committed a great fault, in not acknowledging that God alone can produce in our soul that state which makes it happy.

Self-existence of Matter.

Some of Epicurus's apologists should have endeavoured to shew that his impiety was a natural consequence of his doctrine of the eternal existence of matter. There was among the natural philosophers of the heathens, a great variety of opinions about the origin of the world, and the nature of the element, or elements, of which they pretended particular bodies to have been formed. Some maintained that water was the principle of all things, others gave that quality to the air, others to the fire, others to homogenial parts, &c. but they all agreed in this point, that the matter of the world was unproduced. They never