NECESSARY

NESS AND MISERY WERE THE NATURAL AND CONSEQUENCES OF VIRTUE AND VICE; NOT POSITIVELY SO, OR BY THE FREE DESIGNATION OF WILL: Or,

II. A STATE OF REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS, PROPERLY SO CALLED; WHERE THE

HAPPINESS AND MISERY CONSEQUENT ON VIRTUE AND VICE, WERE THE POSITIVE AND FREE DESIGNATION OF WILL, AND NOT THE NECESSARY CONSEQUENCES OF THINGS.

The LAST is that notion of a future state, so useful to Society, which all the Lawgivers, Priests, and Philosophers publicly taught and propagated; and which the People throughout the whole earth universally believed. Of this, the METEMPSYCHOSIS was, generally, a part; and, what is more, continues to be so to this very day, amongst the civilized Gentiles of the East.

It is A FUTURE STATE, then, OF REWARDS and PUNISHMENTS IN GENERAL, and particularly the second and proper notion of it (for as to the first, it was peculiar to the Platonists) which I pretend to prove the ancient Philosophers did not believe.

But before I proceed to explain the principles of each sect, it will not be improper to premise those GENERAL REASONS, which induced me to think that the Philosophers did not always believe what they taught: And that they taught this doctrine without believing it. And as the reader's chief 'prejudice, on this point, ariseth from the Philo

sophers*

sophers' having talked and written so much in behalf of a future state of rewards and punishments; the three first of the following general reasons will shew, 1. That they all thought it lawful to say one thing, and think another. 2. That they perpétually practised what they thus professed to be lawful. And 3. That they practised it on the very point in question.

I. My first general reason was, that the ancient Sages held it lawful, for the public good, to say one thing when they thought another.

We have described the times of Antiquity very ill, if it doth not appear, from what is here said, that each People had the most religious regard to the laws and constitutions of their country. What raised this veneration (natural to all men, accustomed to a form of Policy) to such a height, was the popular prejudice in favour of their original. For, we have seen, the Founders pretended to receive their respective institutions from some PATRON GOD. At the time, they received the civil policy, they established the national religion; whose principal rites were objective to the patron God; which gave occasion to the PUBLIC PART OF RELIGION, explained above: whereby, the State, aş such, became the subject of religious worship.

This making the national Religion one of the most necessary and essential parts of civil government, it would become a general maxim, not only

of

of mere politicians, but of all the best and wisest of those times, THAT EVERY ONE SHOULD CONWe

FORM TO THE RELIGION OF HIS COUNTRY.

see, by the behaviour of SOCRATES himself, how much men were possessed with the fitness and importance of this rule. That excellent man, who made it the business of his life to search out, and expose the errors of human conduct, was most likely to detect the folly of this general prejudice. Yet when he comes to his defence before his judges; a defence, in which he was so scrupulous that he rejected what his friends would have added of confessed utility to his service, because not strictly conformable to that truth, by which he squared the rectitude of his life; when he comes, I say, to answer that part of the charge which accuses him of attempting to overturn the popular Divinities, he declares it, in the most solemn manner, as his opinion, that every one should adhere to the Religion of his country *. If it should still be suspected, that this was only said, as it made best for his defence, let us follow him in his last moments, retired amidst his philosophic friends and followers; and there we shall find him still true to this great principle, in a circumstance which hath much distressed, and still distresses, modern critics to account for; I mean the requesting his friends to sacrifice a cock to Esculapius; a piece of devotion,

* See note [C] at the end of this Book.

VOL. III.

C

on

on some account or other, no matter what, due from him, according to the customs of his country, which he had neglected to perform

*

But for all this, no one the least conversant in antiquity, will, I suppose, take it into his head that these Sages, because they held every one should adhere to the religion of his country, did not therefore see the gross errors of the national religions. Why then (it may be asked) was this strange violation of truth amongst men who employed all their studies to evince the importance of it, in general, to happiness?

The explanation of the riddle is easy: the GENIUS of their national religions, consisting rather in the performance of Rites of Worship than in the profession of Opinions, taught them to conclude,

THAT UTILITY AND NOT TRUTH WAS THE END

OF RELIGION. And if we attentively consider those religions (formed in subserviency to the State) as is occasionally explained in the several parts of this work, we shall not much wonder at their conclusion. And then not rightly distinguishing between particular and general UTILITY; between that which ariseth from the illegitimate, and legitimate, administration of civil policy, they universally embraced this other false conclusion, THAT UTILITY AND TRUTH DO NOT COINCIDET. From this

* See note [D] at the end of this Book.

+ See the contrary proposition proved, towards the beginning of the sixth section of the third book.

latter

latter principle, a third necessarily arose, THAT IT

WAS LAWFUL AND EXPEDIENT TO DECEIVE FOR

THE PUBLIC GOOD. This all the ancient Philosophers embraced and Tully, on the authority of Plato, thinks it so clear, that he calls the doing otherwise NEFAS, a horrid wickedness. The famous Scævola, the Roman Pontiff, frankly declares his opinion (as St. Austin tells us) "that Societies "should be deceived in religion*." The last mentioned author goes on: "Varro, speaking of

religions, says plainly, that there are many TRUTHS which it is not EXPEDIENT the vulgar "should know; and many FALSEHOODS which yet "it is useful for the people to receive as truths t." Upon which the Father remarks, "Here you have "the whole arcana of state." Nothing shews more strongly, that, not truth, but utility, ruled all, in Paganism, than the case Livy mentions, of what happened in the 573 year of Rome. Some concealed books of Numa were discovered; which, on examination by the proper officers, being found to

* Expedire existimat falli in religione civitates. De Civ. Dei, 1. iv. c. 10.

+ Varro de religionibus loquens, evidenter dicit, multa esse VERA, quæ vulgo scire non sit UTILE; multaque, quæ tametsi falsa sint, aliter existimare populum expediat.

Hic certe totum consilium prodidit SAPIENTIUM, per quos civitates & populi regerentur.