fluential schools. No doubt it was often connected with absurd notions, in jest or earnest. But when or where has its fate been different? Bishop Warburton thinks it no part of Natural Religion; Dodwell thinks immortality is only coëxtensive with Christian baptism, and is super-induced upon the mortal soul by that dispensation of water.[1] Could a heathen be more absurd? If the popular doctrine of the Christian Church, which dooms the mass of men to endless misery, be true, then were immortality a misfortune to the race. The wisest of the Heathen taught such a dogma as little as did Jesus of Nazareth. We must always separate the doctrine from its proof and its form; the latter is often imperfect while the doctrine is true.
Since the time of Bishop Warburton, it has been common to deny that the Heathen were acquainted with this doctrine.[2] “It was one guess among many,” has often been said. But a man even slightly acquainted with ancient thought and life, knows it is not so. God has not made truth so hard to come at, that the world of men continued so many thousand years in ignorance of a future life. Before the time above named, it was taught by scholars, even scholars of the clerical order, that the doctrine was well known to the Heathen. Cudworth and
- ↑ Epistolary Discourse, &e., London, 1706. He thinks that Regular Bishops have the power of making men immortal through the “divine baptismal spirit.” See for the history of opinions among the Christians, Flügge, Vol. III. pt. 1 and 2.
- ↑ Warburton has the merit of framing an hypothesis so completely original that no one, perhaps, (except Bishop Hurd,) has ever shared it in full with him. Part of his singular theory is this: A belief in a future state was found necessary in heathen countries to keep the subjects in order; the philosophers and priests got up a doctrine for that purpose, teaching that the soul was immortal, but not believing a word of it. Moses, who believed the doctrine, yet never taught it, controlled the people by means of his inspiration, and the perfect Law.
Fortunate Islands, with which comp. Diod. Sic. Hist. II. Vol. I. p. 137, et seq. It seems the Priests of Serapis distinctly taught the Immortality of the Soul. Augustine says, “Many of the Philosophers of the Gentiles have written much concerning the immortality of the Soul, and in numerous books have they left it on record that the Soul is immortal. But when you come to the resurrection of the Flesh, they do not hesitate but openly deny that, contradicting it to such a degree that they declare it impossible for this terrene flesh to rise to Heaven.” Expos. Psalms, lxxxviii. Justin M. says the doctrine of immortality was no new thing in Christ's time—but was taught by Plato and Pythagoras. The new element Christ added to the doctrine he thinks was the resurrection of the Flesh. Opp. ed. Otto. ii. p. 540. See the Literature collected on this subject by Kortholt in his Annotations on Athenagoras, Legat., &c. &c., ed. Oxon. 1704, p. 94, et seq.
