of God. When we call to mind the profound ignorance in which, with the exception of the Jews, the philosophers of antiquity were plunged; when we recollect that men, eminent for dazzling talents and fallacious virtues, Epicurus, Democritus, Pliny, Lucretius,[1] Euripides, and innumerable others, dared publicly to avow their faith in Atheism with impunity, and that the Theists, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras and Plato, vainly endeavoured by that human reason, which is truly incommensurate to so vast a purpose, to establish among philosophers the belief in one Almighty God, the creator and preserver of the world; when we recollect that the multitude were grossly and ridiculously idolatrous, and that the magistrates, if not Atheists, regarded the being of a God in the light of an abstruse and uninteresting speculation;[2] when we add to these considerations a remembrance of the wars and the oppressions, which about the time of the advent of the Messiah, desolated the human race, is it not more credible that the Deity actually interposed to check the rapid progress of human deterioration, than that he permitted a specious and pestilent imposture to seduce mankind into the labyrinth of a deadlier superstition? Surely the Deity has not created man immortal, and left him for ever in ignorance of his glorious destination. If the Christian Religion is false, I see not upon what foundation our belief in a moral governor of the universe, or our hopes of immortality can rest.
Thus then the plain reason of the case, and the suffrage of the civilized world, conspire with the more indisputable. </poem> ]
- ↑ Plin. Nat. His. Cap. de Deo., Euripides, Bellerophon, Frag. xxv. <poem> Hunc igitur terrorem animi, tenebrasque necesse est Non radii solis, neque lucida tela diei Discutient, sed naturæ species ratioque: Principium hinc cujus nobis exordia sumet, Nullam rem nihilo gigni divinitus unquam. Luc. de Rer. Nat. Lib. 1 [v. 147-151
- ↑ See Cicero de Natura Deorum.
