son on the subject ever must be ",) shall we assent at once to the opinion of bishop Warburton, that neither Plato nor any one of the philosophers (Socrates alone excepted) who inculcated the notion of a future state themselves believed in it? By what process are we to separate his real belief from his constant and positive assertions? Those declarations of his on which so much stress has been laid, that it was lawful to deceive for the public good, were evidently intended to be n Warburton's Divine Legation, book iii. sect. 2. vol. ii. edit. 1788. p. 11. 26. The observations of Warburton respecting the doctrines of the ancient philosophers, varying with the subject matter which they embraced, whether legislation or philosophy, are refined and ingenious; but they are neither universally true, nor are the conclusions he would deduce from them to be trusted. "I have ob"served," says he, "that those sects which joined legis"lation to philosophy, as the Pythagoreans, Platonists, "Peripatetics, and Stoics, always professed the belief of 66 a future state of rewards and punishments; while those "who simply philosophized, as the Cyrenaic, the Cynic, "&c. publicly professed the contrary." Aristotle was full as much a legislative philosopher as Plato, and far more practical; and yet there is no one passage in the whole of his works in which he directly proposes the recompense of a future state as the motive of morality; on the contrary, among the voluminous writings of Plato, there is scarcely a single treatise in which it is omitted. understood in a limited sense only, and not as the basis of a philosophy, which above all others professed to have truth for its one and only object. It is not merely in his more plain and practical works that we find his recorded opinions respecting the existence of a future state; they are to be found in all his writings, whether moral, political, or physical P: they intermingle with the most subtle discussions in works which never could have been intended for popular instruction: and it is difficult to understand by what application of the wellknown division of ancient philosophy into exoteric and esoteric, or by what theory of • Appendix, note C. P Vide Plato, edit. Bekker. Phædo, pars ii. vol. iii. p. 106. De Legibus, pars iii. vol. iii. p. 219. r a double sense, devised after Plato's own time, the same treatise, and the same portion of a treatise, could be adapted at once to instruct the philosopher and to delude the vulgar. If there were certain unwritten doctrines, which were a key to his real sentiments, they have not come down to us, and we have no means of estimating their value; and it is evident that we cannot decide against the actual import of what we know, on the supposed testimony of what is altogether unknown. But it will be said, the notion of a future state is S r Vid Brucker, vol. i. p. 660. Tennemann's Geschichte der Philosophie von Wendt. art. Plato, p. 98. Warburton; acute as he is acknowledged to be, seems to write at times as if he confounded the three distinct ideas of esoteric treatises, unwritten doctrines, and a double sense to what is written. s Warburton, book iii. sect. 3. Whately's Essays on the Peculiarities of Christianity, p. 30. Lancaster's Harmony of the Law and Gospel, p. 126. 141. The doctrine of the absorption of the human soul is frequently imputed to Plato; but it does not appear from his own writings that he entertained the notion, nor indeed that of the Anima Mundi in the sense generally understood. He never confounds the soul of the universe with the one first Cause, Creator, and Father of all things, Plato's names for the supreme Deity are, ó Anμsoupyès, inconsistent with his philosophical theory of the reunion of the soul after death, to the one divine and universal Mind, from whence it originally emanated. Now allowing, for the sake of argument, this to be Plato's opinion, which is found in the systems of other philosophers rather than in his own, is it so very easy for the understanding to realize to itself this notion of absorption into the universal spirit, in which all idea of personal consciousness is to be excluded, that we are at once to discard Θεὸς, ὁ Ποιητὴς, καὶ Πατὴρ τοῦ ὁλοῦ, ὁ ἀεὶ Θεός. Δημιουργούσα Αἰτία, γενέσεως καὶ οὐσίας αἰτία, χρόνου μὴ μετέχουσα, οὐδ ̓ ἐν χρόνῳ τὸ παράπαν οὖσα, Θεὸς αἰτιώτατος, ὁ πρῶτος θεὸς, ὁ MEYIOTOS DEбs. The soul of the world, and other second causes, are, θεοῦ γεννήματα καὶ ἔργα, Δημιουργοῦ ὑπηρέται, Beol bev, who derive all their power from the first Creator. Vid. Timæus, and his other philosophical works, passim. Plotinus, Numenius, and the Platonists of the Alexandrian school, give a very different account: with them the supreme Deity is the father of the Anuoupyès, the second Deity, and the Anima Mundi is the third. Eusebius, Præp. Evang. lib. xi. c. 17, 18. edit. Vigeri, Paris, 1628. In the wild and blasphemous speculations of Cerinthus and other early heretics, the supreme Deity is also distinguished from the Anμougyos, or Creator. Irenæus adv. Hæreses, lib. i. cap. 1. 13. 16. 19. 25. 33. lib. v. cap. 4. t Vid. Appendix, note E. every declaration of belief as insincere, which is at variance with the inference deducible from such a theory? Are all those expressions, in which the feelings of the man triumph over the abstractions of the philosopher, to be set aside in favour of a principle which none of those who held it either comprehended or consistently explained? The best evidences of a man's real conviction are not his speculative views, but those natural sentiments to which he gives utterance more in unison with the ordinary tendencies of the human mind. On the lofty heights of metaphysical speculation ", clouds and darkness hover, which it u The speculatist may declare, if he will, that the law of causation cannot be proved, and that the free-agency of man is disproved; yet from the very next moment to the last hour of his life, the natural course of his thoughts, words, and actions, will be in direct contradiction to his theories. If he argue that the immortality of the soul cannot be demonstrated on the principles of pure reason, the desire of the heart, the "longing after immortality," will still remain ; and this (omitting revelation) is of itself the best evidence of its truth. Αἱ γὰρ βέλτισται ψυχαι ΜΑΝΤΕΥΟΝΤΑΙ ταῦτα οὕτως xe. Plato, 2 Epist. ad Dionys. Bekker, pars iii. vol. iii. p. 400. Warburton |