nition, who ought, in fairness, to be included under it. Atheists, like other errorists, have in most instances been disposed to practice artifice and concealment. They have freely used the name of God, while in fact they denied him.

Those, says Cudworth, are Atheists, "who assert that there is no conscious, intellectual nature presiding over the uni verse" or who assert that the first cause of all things (out of himself) is not an intelligent, conscious, designing, active, Being. Those who come under this definition may speak of God as respectfully as they please, still, if their God be no other than chance, or nature, or necessity or a figure of speech; if he is not an independent, intellectual Being, the author and governor of all other beings and things; they have no claim to be ranked in the number of Theists. They are Atheists.

The religion of man, in the first ages of the world, was pure Theism. God revealed himself to our first progenitors as their Creator and Sovereign, and as the creator of all other beings and things. Whether the perverseness of men, previous to the deluge, was such as to result in literal Atheism, we have no means of determining. Their wickedness, we are told, "was great in the earth, and every imagination and thought of their hearts were only evil, and that continually;" still, it is not said that they were theoretically Atheists.

In the renewal of the race, subsequent to the deluge, the religion of man, as at the first, was a pure Theism. Noah and his immediate descendants had abundant means of knowing God, and they regarded him as the intelligent Creator and Sovereign of the Universe. But men at that period, as in every other, "did not like to retain God in their knowledge." They soon forgot him, and forsook him ; and God gave up the great mass of mankind to the unrestrained indulgence of their own errors and lusts.

Idolatry seems to have been first practised in Mesopotamia. The ancestors of Abraham, we are told, "served other Gods." Josh. 24: 2. Shortly after this, idolatry was planted in Egypt, and from these two central positions it soon diffused itself through the greater part of the then inhabited earth.

According to our definition, however, we are not to class the great body of the ancient idolators under the denomination of Atheists; since, in connexion with their idolatrous

superstitions, they believed in and worshipped one Supreme Being, the Father and Sovereign Ruler of all. Their fault lay, not in rejecting the doctrine of one God, but in worshiping him through the intervention of images, or in bestowing upon inferior divinities, some portion of that Divine worship and honor which was due to him alone.

Yet the tendency of idolatry was to Atheism; and it was not long before the results of this tendency began actually to appear. We hear of some, in what may be termed the fabulous age of the world, who sustained the bad reputation of being called Atheists. Thus, among the confederates at Latium, in opposition to Eneas, there was found a Mezentius, "contemptor Deum," who acknowledged no God, save his weapons, and his own right hand.

The most ancient of the philosophical sects in Grecia Propria was the Ionic. It was founded by Thales, one of the seven wise men of Greece. The successor of Thales was Anaximander. He first taught philosophy in a public school, and was the first to commit his philosophical principles and maxims to writing. He was born in the year 610 before Christ and is generally regarded as the first speculative Atheist. He taught that matter, in its substance or essence, is the only thing which has existed from eternity; that all the appearances in nature, even those to which we attach the names of intelligence and will, are but different modifications or affections of matter; and that these, by an inherent, plastic tendency, are generated from itself. There is no need, therefore, of an intelligent, designing first cause. Matter itself, in possession. from all eternity, of these inherent, plastic tendencies, is competent to the production of all the phenomena in nature.

This species of Atheism is sometimes called the Anaximandrian, after the name of its author. It has also been denominated the Hylopathian, from λ (matter.) and as, (an affection,) because it traces all the appearances in nature to spontaneously generated affections or modifications

In proof of this position, see Cudworth's Intellectual System, Book i. Chap. 4.

The Pythagorean Sect, which was more ancient than the Ionic, was established in that part of Italy commonly called Grecia Magna.

of matter. The same form of Atheism was taught by Anax imenes, the successor of Anaximander, and by their joint influ ence was widely diffused.

The successor of Anaximenes was Anaxagoras. He had the wisdom to discover the lurking fallacy in the reasonings of his predecessors, and the firmness to expose and reject it. He introduced into his philosophy a distinct, intelligent cause of all things. Matter being, as he clearly saw, without life or motion, he concluded that there must have been, from eternity, an intelligent principle, an infinite mind, which, having the power of motion in itself, first imparted motion to the material mass and produced the different forms of nature. To Anaxagoras, therefore, belongs the credit of restoring to the Ionic School the pure light of Theism, after it had been obscured and lost by his immediate predecessors.

The Eleatic sect of philosophers belonged to the school of Pythagoras. The most of them were natives of Elia, a town of Magna Grecia, from which the sect derived its name. Among the teachers of this School, we find the second form of speculative Atheism which appeared in Greece. It originated with Leucippus and Democritus. It was afterwards embraced by Protagoras, who on account of it, was expelled from Athens, and his writings were burnt. These men were the advocates of pure chance. The universe, they taught, contained nothing but innumerable corpuscles, or material atoms of various figures, which, falling into the vacuum, struck against each other; and hence arose a variety of curvilinear motions, which continued, till at length atoms of similar forms met together, and bodies were produced. Or to describe the process in the expressive language of Cudworth: "Wherefore infinite atoms, of different sizes and figures, devoid of all life and sense, moving fortuitously from all eternity in infinite space, and making successively several encounters, and consequently various implexions and entanglements one with another, produced first a confused chaos of these omnifarious particles, jumbling together with an infinite variety of motions, which afterward, by the tugging of their different and contrary forces, whereby they all hindered and abated each other, came, as it were, by a joint conspiracy, to be conglomerated into a vortex, or vortices; where after many convolutions and evolutions, molitions and essays, in which all manner of tricks were tried,

and all forms imaginable experimented, they chanced, in length of time, here to settle into this form and system of things which now is, of earth, water, air, and fire, sun, moon, and stars, planets, animals, and men; so that senseless atoms fortuitously moved, and material chaos, were the first original of all things."

These philosophers, we are told, had many disciples, and, strange as it may seem, the above was the more popular form of atheism, of which we have any account in ancient history. In the next century after it originated, it was taught with great success by Epicurus, and became one of the distinguishing characteristics of his school at Athens.

The Epicurean philosophy, and with it that form of Atheism of which I here speak, made their appearance at Rome in the later times of the republic, and were embraced by some of the more distinguished citizens; among whom were Piso, Atticus, and Pansa. The Epicurean system found an eloquent advocate in the poet Lucretius; who, with much accuracy and elegance, unfolded the doctrine in his celebrated poem, de Rerum Natura. The same doctrine afterwards numbered among its votaries the elder Pliny, Celsus, Lucian, and Diogenes Laertius.

The third in the succession from Aristotle in the Peripatetic school, was Strato of Lampsacus. He taught a peculiar kind of Atheism, which has been denominated, sometimes the Stratonic, from the name of its author, and sometimes the Hylozoic, from matter, and on life. He supposed every particle of matter to possess within itself an inherent principle of life and motion, though destitute of intelligence; which principle is the only cause of the production and dissolution of bodies. He denied that the world was created by the agency of a Deity distinct from matter, or by an intelligent, animating principle; asserting that it arose from a force or life innate to matter, and to every particle of it. This theory agrees with that first described, the Hylopathian, in representing matter as eternal; but differs from it, in that this ascribes a sort of animal though senseless life to each particle of matter, whereas that ascribed to matter in the general a plastic, generative tendency.

In the school of the Stoics, the intelligent mind was regarded as a celestial (ther or fire, which pervaded the whole system, much as the soul of man does his body. Hence the

universe was thought to be a species of animal, of which the Deity was the forming, guiding, ruling principle. From this account of the God of the Stoics, it must be evident that there was a strong tendency in their system to gross and palpable Atheism; and this tendency ere long showed itself. There were those among the Stoics, who regarded the universe as more a vegetable than an animal, and the life by which it was pervaded and animated as rather a plastic, vegetative nature, than an intelligent, active spirit. Among these Pseudo-Atheistical Stoics are reckoned Boethus and the younger Pliny.

The Pyrrhonic philosophers cannot be regarded as positive Theists, or positive Atheists; because they were not positively any thing. They neither believed in the Divine existence, nor disbelieved it. They were universal sceptics. That every thing was to be considered as matter of doubt, was the only point about which they had no doubt.

Besides these philosophic Atheists, there have been in all ages, as Cudworth remarks, "other Atheists, who have not pretended to maintain any particular system or hypothesis in a way of reason, but entertained a dull and sottish, though confident disbelief of whatever they could not see or feel. "This kind of Atheist," he says, " may well be accounted enthusiastical or fanatical Atheists. Perhaps they may better be denominated brute Atheists, or Asinus Atheists; since, in point of stupidity, they may well vie with the long-eared animal by whose cognomen it is proposed to distinguish them.

We have seen that the form of Atheism which ascribes every thing to chance, was transplanted from Greece to Rome, and flourished there, under the patronage of the Epicureans. Probably the same may be said of most of the other forms of Atheism; though in regard to them, our information is not so definite. They originated among the philosophers of Greece; but when Grecian learning came to be cultivated at Rome, they were transferred, and cultivated with it.

Before dismissing the ancient Atheists, two general remarks may be made respecting them. In the first place, they were all of them materialists. They discarded not only the Divine existence, but the existence of angels, and of an immaterial soul or spirit. They held that there is no

SECOND SERIES, VOL. II. NO. IV.

9