And as liberty stands and can only be grounded on the absurd principle of Epicurean Atheism; so the Epicurean Atheists, who were the most popular and most numerous sect of the Atheists of antiquity, were the great[1] asserters of Liberty; as on the other side, the[2] Stoicks, who were the most popular and most numerous sect among the religionaries of antiquity, were the great asserters of fate and necessity. The case was also the same among the Jews, as among the heathen: the Jews, I say, who besides the light of nature, had many books of Revelation (some whereof are now lost); and who had intimate and personal conversation with God himself. They were principally divided into three sects, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes.[3] The Sadducees, who were esteem’d an irreligious and atheistical sect, maintain’d the liberty of man. But the Pharisees, who were a religious sect, ascrib’d all things to fate, or to God’s appointment, and it was the first article of their creed,[4] that fate and God do all; and consequently they do not assert a true liberty, when they asserted a liberty together withthis
