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 oblerved in the different facrifices of their feveral deities: to thefe a third part was afterwards added, relating to divine admonitions from portents; monftrcus births; the entrails of beafs in facrifice; and the prophecies of the Sybils. The College of Augurs prefided over the aufpices, 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 efpecially were commonly fenators of confular rank, who had paffed 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 bufinefs. The interpretation of the fybils prophecies was vefted in the decemviri, or guardians of the fybilline books, ten perfons of diftinguished rank, chofen ufually from the prieits. And the province of interpreting prodigies, and infpecting the entrails, be longed to the harufpices; 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 thofe who employed them, and to whofe protection they owed their credit and their livelihood.

This conftitution of a religion among a people naturally fuperftitious, ncceffarily 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: fo that it is perpetually applauded by Cicero as the main bulwark of the republic; though confidered all the while by men of fenfe, as merely political, and of human invention. The only part that admitted any difpute 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 beafts, the flight of birds, thunder, and other celeftial figns, which, by long obfervation, 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 fignified by it. This they called artificial divination, in diftinction from the natural, which they fuppofed to flow from an inftinct, or native power, implanted in the foul, which it exerted always with the greatest efficacy, when it was the moft free and difengaged 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 reft, and called the Pifidian: it occafioned however a fmart controverfy between him and his colleague Marcellus, who feverally publifhed books on each fide of the queftion; wherein Marcellus afferted the whole affair to be the contrivance of stairsen: 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 firft upon a perfuafion 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 fake 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 fhort period of our life on earth as a flate of trial, or a kind of fchool, in which we were to improve and prepare ourselves for that eternity of exiftence 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 oblerved, that this Spectacle belonged to no other animal but man: to whom God, for that reafon had given an erect and upright form, with eyes not prone or fixed upon the ground, like thofe of other animals, but placed on high and fublime, in a fituation the most proper for this celeftial contemplation, to remind

him perpetually of his task, and to acquaint him with the place on which he fprung, and for which he was finally defigned. He took the fyftem of the world, or the visible 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 reafons alfo and motives of his acting; till, by cbjerving what he had done, we might learn what we ought to do, and, by the operations of the divine reafon, be inftructed how to perfect our own; fince 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 avill of God manifefted in his works; or from that eternal reason, fitness and relation of things, which is difplayed in every part of the creation. This he calls the original, immutable law; the criterion of good and ill, of juft 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 fays, to be called any thing rather than laws, and are in effect nothing but acts of force, violence, and tyranny. That to imagine the diftinction of good and ill not to be founded in nature, but in custom, opinion, or human inftitution, is mere folly and madness; which would overthrow all fociety, and confound all right and justice amongst men: that this was the conflant opinion of the wifeft of all ages; who held, that the mind of God, governing all things by eternal reafon, was the principle and fovereign law; whofe fubftitute on earth was the reafon or mind of the wife: to which purpose there are many ftrong and beautiful paflages fcattered occafionally through every part of his works.

"The true law," fays 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 lofes its influence with the good, nor ever preferves it with the "wicked. This cannot poffibly be over"ruled by any other law,. nor abrogated "in the whole, or in part: nor can we be " abfolved from it either by the fenate or "the people; nor are we to feek 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

These were the principles on which Cicero built his religion and morality, which fhine indeed through all his writings, but were largely and explicitly illuftrated by him in his Treatifes on Government and on Laws; to which he added afterwards his book of Offices, to make the fcheme complete: volumes which, as the elder Pliny fays to the emperor Titus, ought not only to be read, but to be got by heart. The firft and greateft of thefe works is loft, except a few fragments, in which he had delivered his real thoughts fo profefiedly, that in a letter to Atticus, he calls thoje fix books on the republic, fo many pledges given to his country for the integrity of his life; from which, if ever he fwerved, he could never have the face to look into them

again. In his book of Laws, he purfued the fame argument, and deduced the origin of law from the will of the Supreme God. Thefe 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 eftablished in the other two; to which he often refers, as to the foundation of his whole fyftem. This work was one of the laft that he finished, for the ufe of his fon, to whom he addreffed 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 ftrictnefs of his morals, adapted to all the various cafes and circumstances of human life, will ferve, if not to inftruct, 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 thenfelves complained, till they should be bleffed with a more perfect revelation of the divine will; and this fcheme 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 defigned it upon the contemplation of which fublime truths, as delivered by a heathen, Erafmus could not help perfuading himself, that the breaft from which they flerved, muft needs have been infpired by the "Deity.

But after all thefe glorious fentiments 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 reafon, fince in other parts of his works he feems to intimate Lot only a diffidence, but a disbelief of the crtality of the foul, and a future fate of rena ds and punishments; and efpecially in his letters, where he is fuppofed to declare his mind with the greateft franknefs. But in all the paffages brought to fupport this objection, where he is imagined to fpeak of death as the end of all things to man, as they are addreffed to friends in diftrefs by way of confolation; fo fome

commentators take them to mean nothing more, and that death is the end of all things here below, and without any farther fenfe of what is done upon earth; yet fhould 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 fuch topics of comfort to them from their own philofophy, as they them felves held to be the most effectual. But if this alfo fhould 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 fome mixture of doubt, and admits the degrees of more and lefs, fo it admits alfo fome variety in the ftability of our perfuafion: thus, in a melancholy hour, when his fpirits were depreffed, the fame argument will not appear to him with the fame force; but doubts and difficulties get the afcendant, and what humoured his prefent chagrin, find the readieft admiffion.

The paffages alledged were all of this kind, and written in the feafon of his dejedion, 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 poffibly bear, and to express what Cicero really meant at that time; yet they prove at laft 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 fenfe of them, it cannot furely be thought reafonable to oppose a few scattered hints, accidentally thrown out, when he was not confidering the fubject, to the volumes that he had deliberately written on the other fide 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 infeparable 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 fupported, and ufed to quote a verfe of old Ennius,

as the dictate of an oracle, which derived all the glory of Rome from an adherence to its ancient manners and difcipline. Moribus antiquis ftat res Romana virifque.

Fragm. de Repub. 1. 5.

It is one of his maxims, which he incul. cates in his writings, that as the end of a pilot is a profperous voyage; of a phyfician, the health of his patient; of a general, victery; fo that of a fatejman is, to make his citizens happy to make them firm in power, rich in wealth, Splendid in glory, eminent in virtue, which he declares to be the greatest and best of all works among men: and as this cannot be effected but by the concord and harmony of the conftitucnt members of a city; fo it was his conftant aim to unite the different orders of the ftate into one common intere, and to infpire them with a mutual confidence in each other; fo as to balance the fupremacy of the people by the authority of the fenate; that the one bould enat, but the other advife; the one have the laft refort, the other the chief influence. This was the old conftitution of Rome, by which it had been raifed to all its grandeur; whilft all its misfortunes were owing to the contrary principle of diftruft and diffenfion 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 fenate and the magiftrates, as far as it was confitent 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 efpoufed from the beginning, and purfued to the end of his life: and though in fome paffages of his hiftory, he may be thought perhaps to have deviated from it, yet upon an impartial view of the cafe, we fhall find that his end was always the fame, though he had changed his measures of purfuing it, when compelled to it by the violence of the times, and an over-ruling force, and a neceffary regard to his own fafety: fo that he might fay with great truth, what an Athenian orator once faid in excufe of his inconftancy; that he had acted indeed on fome occafions contrary to himSelf, but never to the republic: and here alfo his academic philofophy feems to have fhewed its fuperior ufe in practical as well as in fpeculative 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 Academic; and the chief ornaments of cach were, Cato, Atticus, and Cicero, who lived together in ftrict friendship, and a mutual efteem of each other's virtue; but the different behaviour of these three, will fhew by fact and example, the different merit of their feveral principles, and which of them was the beft adapted to promote the good of fociety. The Stoics were the bigots or enthufiafts 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 rithout reafon, the fame crime as to kill a parent s a wife man could never forgive, never be moved by anger, favour or pity; never be deceived; never repent; never change his mind. With thefe principles Cato entered into public life, and acted in it, as Cicero fays, as if he had lived in the polity of Plato, not in the dregs of Romulus. He made no diftinction of times or things; no allowance for the weakness of the republic, and the power of those who oppreffed it: it was his maxim to combat all power, not built upon the laws, or to defy it at leaft if he could not controul it: he knew no way to this end but the direct, and whatever obftructions he met with, refolved ftill to push on, and either furmount them or perish in the attempt; taking it for bafenefs and confeflion of being conquered, to decline a tittle from the true road. an age, therefore, of the utmoft libertinifm, when the public difcipline was loft, and the government itself tottering, he ftruggled with the fame zeal against all corruption, and waged a perpetual war with a fuperior force; whilit the rigour of his principles tended rather to alienate friends, than reconcile enemies; and by provoking the power that he could not fubdue, helped to haften that ruin which he was ftriving to avert; fo that after a perpetual courfe 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 philofophy to put an end to his life.

In

But as the Stoics exalted human nature too high, fo the Epicureans depreffed it

too

too low; as thofe raised to the heroic, thefe debafed it to the brutal ftate; they held pleasure to be the chief good of a man; death the extinction of his being; and placed their happineís confequently in the fecure enjoyment of a pleafurable 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 preferving health and conciliating friends. Their wile man had therefore no other duty, but to provide for his own eafe; to decline all fruggles; to retire from public affairs, and to imitate the life of their gods; by paffing his days in a calm, contemplative, undisturbed repofe; in the midft of rural lades and pleafant gardens. This was the fcheme that Atticus followed: he had all the talents that could qualify a man to be ufeful 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 advifing and urging to act, yet determined never to act himdelf; or never at leaft fo far as to diflurb his cafe, or endanger his fafety. For though he was fo ftrictly united with Cicero, and valued him above all men, yet he managed an intereft all the while with the oppofite party faction, and a friendship even with his mortal enemies, Clodius and Antony; that he might fecure against all events the grand point which he had in view, the peace and tranquillity of his life.

Thus two excellent men by their miftaken notion of virtue, drawn from the principles of their philofophy, were made uleles in a manner to their country, each in a different extreme of life; the one always 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 chofe the middle way between the obftinacy 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 ftatesman to the pilot, whofe art confifts in managing every turn of the winds, and applying even the moft perverfe to the progrefs of his voyage; to that by changing his courfe, and enJarging his circuit of failing, to arrive with fafety at his delined port. He mentions

likewise an observation, which long experience had confirmed to him, that none of the popular and ambitious, who afpired to extraordinary commands, and to be leaders in the republic, ever chofe to obtain their ends from the people, till they had first been repulsed by the fenate. This was verified by all their civil diffenfions, from the Gracchi down to Cæfar: fo that when he faw men of this fpirit at the head of the government, who by the fplendour of their lives and actions had acquired an afcendant over the populace; it was his conftant 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 defperate counfels. He declared contention to be no longer prudent, than while it either did fervice, or at least not burt; but when faction was grown too ftrong to be withftood, 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 poffible, to the intereft of the ftate. This was what he advised, and what he practifed; and it will account, in a great measure, for thofe parts of his conduct which are the most liable to exception, on the account of that complacence, which he is fuppofed to have paid, at different times, to the feveral ufurpers of illegal power.

He made a juft diftinction between bearing what we cannot help, and approving what we ought to condemn; and fubmitted therefore, yet never confented to thofe ufurpations; and when he was forced to comply with them, did it always with a reluctance, that he expreffed very keenly in his letters to his friends. But whenever that force was removed, and he was at liberty to purfue his principles and act without controul, as in his conjulfhip, in his province, and after Cæfar's death, the only periods of his life in which he was truly mafter of himself; there we fee him fhining out in his genuine character, of an excellent citizen; a great magiftrate; a glorious patriot: there we fee the man who could declare of himself with truth, in an appeal to Atticus, as to the beft witness of his confcience, that he had always done the greateft fervice to bis country, when it was in his power; or when it was not, had never harboured a thought of it, but what was divine. If we muit needs compare him

therefore