ces, and the worship of the gods: the first was inftituted by Romulus; the fecond by his fucceffor, Numa; who drew up a ritual, or order of ceremonies, to be observed in the different facrifices of their several deities: to these a third part was afterwards added, relating to divine admonitions from portents; monstrous births; the entrails of beasts in facrifice; and the prophecies of the Jybils. The College of Augurs prefided over the auspices, as the fupreme interpreters of the will of Jove; and determined what figns were propitious, and what not: the other priests were the judges of all the other cafes relating to religion, as well of what concerned the public worship, as that of private families.

Now the priests of all denominations were of the first nobility of Rome, and the augurs especially were commonly fenators of consular rank, who had passed through all the dignities of the republic, and by their power over the aufpices, could put an immediate ftop to all proceedings, and diffolve at once all the affemblies of the people convened for public business. The interpretation of the Sybils prophecies was vested in the decemviri, or guardians of the fybilline books, ten persons of diftinguished rank, chosen usually from the priests. And the province of interpreting prodigies, and inspecting the entrails, be longed to the baruspices; who were the fervants of the public, hired to attend the magidrates in all their facrifices; and who never failed to accommodate their answers to the views of those who employed them, and to whose protection they owed their credit and their livelihood.

This conftitution of a religion among a people naturally fuperftitious, neceffarily threw the chief influence of affairs into the hands of the fenate, and the better fort; who by this advantage frequently checked the violences of the populace, and the factious attempts of the tribunes: so that it is perpetually applauded by Cicero as the main bulwark of the republic; though confidered all the while by men of sense, as merely political, and of human invention. The only part that admitted any dispute concerning its origin, was augury, or their method of divining by auSpices. The Stoics held that God, out of his goodness to men, had imprinted on the nature of things certain marks or notices of future events; as on the entrails of beasts, the flight of birds, thunder, and other celeftial figns, which, by long observation, and

the experience of ages, were reduced into an art, by which the meaning of each fign might be determined, and applied to the event that was signified by it. This they called artificial divination, in diftinction from the natural, which they supposed to flow from an inftinct, or native power, implanted in the foul, which it exerted always with the greatest efficacy, when it was the most free and disengaged from the body, as in dreams and madness. But this notion was generally ridiculed by the other philofophers; and of all the College of Augurs, there was but one who at this time maintained it, Appius Claudius, who was laughed at for his pains by the rest, and called the Pifidian: it occafioned however a smart controversy between him and his colleague Marcellus, who severally published books on each fide of the question; wherein Marcellus afferted the whole affair to be the contrivance of staren: Appius, on the contrary, that there was a real art and power of divining fubfifting in the augural discipline, and taught by the augural books. Appius dedicated this treatife to Cicero, who, though he preferred Marcellus's notion, yet did not wholly agree with either, but believed that augury might probably be infituted at first upon a persuasion of its divinity; and when, by the improvements of arts and learning, that opinion was exploded in fuccceding ages, yet the thing itself was wifely retained for the sake of its use to the republic.

But whatever was the origin of the religion of Rome, Cicero's religion was undoubtedly of heavenly extraction, built, as we have feen, on the foundation of a God; a providence; an immortality. He confidered this short period of our life on earth as a flate of trial, or a kind of school, in which we were to improve and prepare ourselves for that eternity of existence which was provided for us hereafter; that we were placed therefore here by our Creator, not fo much to inhabit the earth, as to contemplate the heavens; on which were imprinted, in legible characters, all the duties of that nature which was given to us. He obferved, that this spectacle belonged to no other animal but man: to whom God, for that reason had given an erect and upright form, with eyes not prone fixed upon the ground, like those of other animals, but placed on high and fublime, in a fituation the most proper for this celestial contemplation, to remind him

or

him perpetually of his task, and to acquaint him with the place on which he sprung, and for which he was finally defigned. He took the system of the world, or the vifible works of God, to be the promulgation of God's law, or the declaration of his will to mankind; whence, as we might collect his being, nature, and attributes, fo we could trace the reasons alfo and motives of his acting; till, by cbferving what he had done, we might learn rwhat we ought to do, and, by the operations of the divine reason, be instructed how to perfect our own; since the perfection of man confifted in the imitation of God.

From this fource he deduced the origin of all duty, or moral obligation; from the will of God manifested in his works; or from that eternal reason, fitness and relation of things, which is displayed in every part of the creation. This he calls the original, immutable law; the criterion of good and ill, of just and unjust; imprinted on the nature of things, as the rule by which all human laws are formed; which, whenever they deviate from this pattern, ought, he says, to be called any thing rather than laws, and are in effect nothing but acts of force, violence, and tyranny. That to imagine the distinction of good and ill not to be founded in nature, but in custom, opinion, or human institution, is mere folly and madness; which would overthrow all fociety, and confound all right and justice amongst men: that this was the constant opinion of the wisest of all ages; who held, that the mind of God, governing all things by eternal reason, was the principle and fovereign law; whose substitute on earth was the reafon or mind of the wife: to which purpose there are many strong and beautiful passages scattered occafionally through every part of his works.

"The true law," says he, " is right rea"fon, conformable to the nature of things; " conftant, eternal, diffused through all; "which calls us to duty by commanding; deters us from fin by forbidding; " which never loses its influence with the good, nor ever preserves it with the "wicked. This cannot possibly be over"ruled by any other law, nor abrogated " in the whole, or in part: nor can we be " absolved from it either by the fenate or "the people; nor are we to seek any " other comment or interpreter of it but "itlelf: nor can there be one law at Rome, another at Athens; one now, "another hereafter; but the fame eter

obey it, muft first renounce himself, and "throw off the nature of man; by doing " which, he will fuffer the greatest pu"nishment, though he should escape all "the other torments which are com

monly believed to be prepared for the " wicked."

In another place he tells us, that the study of this law was the only thing which could teach us that molt important of all lessons, faid to be prescribed by the Pythian oracle, TO KNOW OURSELVES; that is, to know our true nature and rank in the universal system, the relation that we bear to all other things, and the purposes for which we were fent into the world. "When a man," says he, " has atten

tentively surveyed the heavens, the earth, "the fea, and all things in them, ob" ferved whence they sprung, and whither they all tend; when and how they are

to end; what part is mortal and perish"able, what divine and eternal: when he " has almost reached and touched, as it were, the Governor and Ruler of them "all, and discovered himself not to be "confined to the walls of any certain place, but a citizen of the world, as of one common city, in this magnificent "view of things, in this enlarged prospect and knowledge of nature, good

gods! how will he learn to know him"jelf? How will he contemn, despise, and " fet at nought all those things which "the vulgar esteem the most splendid and glorious?"

"

These were the principles on which Cicero built his religion and morality, which shine indeed through all his writings, but were largely and explicitly illustrated by him in his Treatises on Government and on Laws; to which he added afterwards his book of Offices, to make the scheme complete: volumes which, as the elder Pliny says to the emperor Titus, ought not only to be read, but to be got by heart. The first and greatest of these works is loft, except a few fragments, in which he had delivered his real thoughts so professedly, that in a letter to Atticus, he calls thoje fix books on the republic, so many pledges given to his country for the integrity of his life; from which, if ever he swerved, he could never have the face to look into them 3A4 again.

again. In his book of Laws, he pursued the fame argument, and deduced the origin of law from the will of the supreme God. These two pieces therefore contain his belief, and the book of Offices, his practice: where he has traced out all the duties of man, or a rule of life conformable to the divine principles, which he had established in the other two; to which he often refers, as to the foundation of his whole system. This work was one of the laft that he finished, for the use of his son, to whom he addressed it; being defirous, in the decline of a glorious life, to explain to him the maxims by which he had governed it, and teach him the way of paffing through the world with innocence, virtue, and true glory, to an immortality of happiness: where the ftrictness of his morals, adapted to all the various cafes and circumstances of human life, will serve, if not to instruct, yet to reproach the practice of moft Chriftians. This was that law, which is mentioned by St. Paul, to be taught by nature, and written on the hearts of the Gentiles, to guide them through that itate of ignorance and darkness, of which they themselves complained, till they should be bleffed with a more perfect revelation of the divine will; and this scheme of it profeffed by Cicero, was certainly the most complete that the Gentile world had ever been acquainted with; the utmost effort that human nature could make towards attaining its proper end, or that fupreme good for which the Creator had designed it: upon the contemplation of which fublime truths, as delivered by a heathen, Erasmus could not help perfuading himself, that the breast from which they flowed, must needs have been inspired by the Deity.

But after all these glorious sentiments that we have been afcribing to Cicero, and collecting from his writings, fome have been apt to confider them as the flourishes rather of his eloquence, than the corclufions of his reason, fince in other parts of his works he seems to intimate not only a diffidence, but a disbelief of the immortality of the foul, and a future ftate of rema ds and punishments; and especially in his letters, where he is supposed to declare his mind with the greatest frankness. But in all the passages brought to fupport this objection, where he is imagined to fpeak of death as the end of all things to man, as they are addressed to friends in distress by way of confolation; so some

commentators take them to mean nothing more, and that death is the end of all things bere below, and without any farther sense of what is done upon earth; yet should they be understood to relate, as perhaps they may, to an utter extinction of our being; it must be observed, that he was writing in all probability to Epicureans, and accommodating his arguments to the men; by offering such topics of comfort to them from their own philofophy, as they themselves held to be the most effectual. But if this also should feem precarious, we must remember always, that Cicero was an academic; and though he believed a future ftate, was fond of the opinion, and declares himself refolved never to part with it; yet he believed it as probable only, not as certain; and as probability implies some mixture of doubt, and admits the degrees of more and less, so it admits also some variety in the stability of our perfuafion: thus, in a melancholy hour, when his spirits were depressed, the fame argument will not appear to him with the fame force; but doubts and difficulties get the afcendant, and what humoured his present chagrin, find the readieft admission.

The passages alledged were all of this kind, and written in the season of his dejection, when all things were going with him, in the height of Cæfar's power; and though we allow them to have all the force that they can possibly bear, and to express what Cicero really meant at that time; yet they prove at last nothing more, than that, agreeably to the characters and principles of the Academy, he sometimes doubted of what he generally believed. But, after all, whatever be the sense of them, it cannot surely be thought reafonable to oppose a few scattered hints, accidentally thrown out, when he was not confidering the subject, to the volumes that he had deliberately written on the other side of the question.

As to his political conduct, no man was ever a more determined patriot, or a warmer lover of his country than he: his whole character, natural temper, choice of life and principles, made its true interest inseparable from his own. His general view, therefore, was always one and the fame; to fupport the peace and liberty of the republic in that form and conftitution of it, which their ancestors had delivered down to them. He looked upon that as the only foundation on which it could be supported, and used to quote a verse of old Ennius, as the dictate of an oracle, which derived all the glory of Rome from an adherence to its ancient manners and discipline.

Moribus antiquis ftat res Romana virisque.

Fragm. de Repub. 1. 5.

It is one of his maxims, which he incul. cates in his writings, that as the end of a pilst is a prosperous voyage; of a physician, the bealth of his patient; of a general, victury; so that of a statesman is, to make his citizens bappy; to make them firm in power, rich in wealth, Splendid in glory, eminent in virtue, which he declares to be the greatift and best of all works among men: and as this cannot be effected but by the concord and barmony of the constituent members of a city; fo it was his conftant aim to unite the different orders of the state into one common intere1, and to inspire them with a mutual confidence in each other; to as to balance the fupremacy of the people by the authority of the fenate; that the one should enat, but the other advise; the one have the last resort, the other the chief influence. This was the old conftitution of Rome, by which it had been raised twall its grandeur; whilst all its misfortunes Were owing to the contrary principle of diftrust and dissension between these two rival powers: it was the great object, therefore, of his policy, to throw the afcendant in all affairs into the hands of the fimate and the magistrates, as far as it was confiftent with the rights and liberties of the people; which will always be the general view of the wife and honest in all popular governments.

This was the principle which he espoufed from the beginning, and pursued to the end of his life: and though in some paflages of his hiftory, he may be thought perhaps to have deviated from it, yet upon an impartial view of the cafe, we shall ind that his end was always the same, though he had changed his measures of pursuing it, when compelled to it by the violence of the times, and an over-ruling force, and a necessary regard to his own fafety: so that he might say with great truth, what an Athenian orator once faid in excuse of his inconstancy; that he had alled indeed on some occafions contrary to himSelf, but never to the republic: and here also his academic philosophy seems to have thewed its fuperior use in practical as well as in speculative life, by indulging that liberty of acting which nature and reafon require; and when the times and things

themselves are changed, allowing a change of conduct, and a recourse to new means for the attainment of the fame end.

The three fects, which at this time chiefly engrolled the philofophical part of Rome, were the Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Aca demics and the chief ornaments of each were, Cato, Atticus, and Cicero, who lived together in strict friendship, and a mutual esteem of each other's virtue; but the different behaviour of these three, will shew by fact and example, the different merit of their several principles, and which of them was the best adapted to promote the good of fociety. The Stoics were the bigots or enthusiasts in philofophy, who held none to be truly wife but themselves; placed perfect happiness in virtue, though tripped of every other good; affirmed all fins to be equal; all deviations from right equally wicked; to kill a dunghill cock without reason, the same crime as to kill a parents a wife man could never forgive, never be moved by anger, favour or pity; never be deceived; never repent; never change his mind. With these principles Cato en tered into public life, and acted in it, as Cicero says, as if he had lived in the polity of Plato, not in the dregs of Romulus. He made no distinction of times or things; no allowance for the weakness of the republic, and the power of those who oppressed it: it was his maxim to combat all power, not built upon the laws, or to defy it at least if he could not controul it: he knew no way to this end but the direct, and whatever obstructions he met with, refolved ftill to push on, and either furmount them or perish in the attempt; taking it for baseness and confeffion of being conquered, to decline a tittle from the true road. In an age, therefore, of the utmost libertinism, when the public discipline was loft, and the government itself tottering, he struggled with the fame zeal against all corruption, and waged a perpetual war with a superior force; whilst the rigour of his principles tended rather to alienate friends, than reconcile enemies; and by provoking the power that he could not subdue, helped to haften that ruin which he was striving to avert; so that after a perpetual course of disappointments and repulfes, finding himself unable to pursue his own way any farther, inftead of taking a new one, he was driven by his philosophy to put an end to his life.

But as the Stoics exalted human nature

too high, so the Epicureans deprefssed it

too

too low; as those raised to the heroic, these debased it to the brutal state; they held pleasure to be the chief good of a man; death the extinction of his being; and placed their happiness confequently in the fecure enjoyment of a pleasurable life, efteeming virtue on no other account, than as it was a hand-maid to pleafure; and helped to infure the poffeffion of it, by preserving health and conciliating friends. Their wile man had therefore no other duty, but to provide for his own ease; to decline all ftruggles; to retire from public affairs, and to imitate the life of their gods; by pafling his days in a calm, contemplative, undisturbed repose; in the midst of rural hades and pleasant gardens. This was the scheme that Atticus followed: he had all the talents that could qualify a man to be useful to fociety; great parts, learning, judgment, candour, benevolence, generosity; the fame love of his country, and the fame fentiments in politics with Cicero; whom he was always advising and urging to act, yet determined never to act himdelf; or never at least fo far as to disturb his eafe, or endanger his fafety. For though he was so strictly united with Cicero, and valued him above all men, yet he managed an interest all the while with the opposite party faction, and a friendaip even with his mortal enemies, Clodius and Antony; that he might secure against all events the grand point which he had in view, the peace and tranquillity of his life.

Thus two excellent men by their mistaken notion of virtue, drawn from the principles of their philofophy, were made ufeless in a manner to their country, each in a different extreme of life; the one al ways acting and expofing himself to dangers, without the profpect of doing good; the other without attempting to do any, refolving never to act at all. Cicero chose the middle way between the obstinacy of Cato, and the indolence of Atticus: he preferred always the readieft road to what was right, if it lay open to him: if not, took the next; and in politics as in morality, when he could not arrive at the true, contented himself with the probable. He often compares the statesman to the pilot, whose art confists in managing every turn of the winds, and applying even the most perverfe to the progress of his voyage; to that by changing his course, and enJarging his circuit of failing, to arrive with fafety at his derlined port. He mentions

to ex

likewise an observation, which long expe rience had confirmed to him, that none of the popular and ambitious, who afpired to traordinary commands, and to be leaders in the republic, ever chose to obtain their ends from the people, till they had first been repulfed by the fenate. This was verified by all their civil dissensions, from the Gracchi down to Cæfar: so that when he law men of this spirit at the head of the government, who by the splendour of their lives and actions had acquired an afcendant over the populace; it was his constant advice to the fenate, to gain them by gentle compliances, and to gratify their thirst for power by a voluntary grant of it, as the best way to moderate their ambition, and reclaim them from desperate counsels. He declared contention to be no longer prudent, than while it either did service, or at least not hurt; but when faction was grown too ftrong to be withstood, that it was time to give over fighting, and nothing left but to extract fome good out of the ill, by mitigating that power by patience, which they could not reduce by force, and conciliating it, if posible, to the intereft of the state. This was what he advised, and what he practifed; and it will account, in a great measure, for those parts of his conduct which are the most liable to exception, on the account of that complacence, which he is supposed to have paid, at different times, to the several ufurpers of illegal power.

Fie made a just distinction between bearing what we cannot help, and approving what we ought to condemn; and fubmitted therefore, yet never consented to those ufurpations; and when he was forced to comply with them, did it always with a reluctance, that he expressed very keenly in his letters to his friends. But whenever that force was removed, and he was at liberty to pursue his principles and act without cortroul, as in his confulship, in his province, and after Cæfar's death, the only periods of his life in which he was truly mafter of himself; there we see him shining out in his genuine character, of an excellent citizen; a great magistrate; a glorious patriot: there we see the man who could declare of himself with truth, in an appeal to Atticus, as to the best witness of his confcience, that he had always done the greatest fervice to bis country, when it was in his power; or when it was not, had never burbcured a thought of it, but what was divine. If we must needs compare him therefore