ces, and the worship of the gods: the first was instituted by Romulus; the fecond by his fucceffor, Numa; who drew up a ritual, or order of ceremonies, to be obferved in the different facrifices of their feveral deities to thefe a third part was afterwards added, relating to divine admonitions from portents; monftrous births; the entrails of beafs in facrifice; and the prophecies of the Jybils. 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 especially 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 Sybils 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, belonged to the barufpices; who were the fervants of the public, hired to attend the magiftrates 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, neceffarily threw the chief influence of affairs into the hands of the fenate, and the better fort; who by this advantage frequently checked the violence 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 auf pices. The Stoics held that God, out of his goodness to man, 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 celef tial gus, 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 diftinétion from the natural, which they fuppofed to flow from an inftinct, or native power, implanted in the foul, which it exerted always with the greateft efficacy, when it was the most 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 severally publifhed books on each fide of the queftion; wherein Marcellus afferted the whole affair to be the contrivance of statesmen: Appius, on the contrary, that there was a real art and power of divining fubfifting in the augural difcipline, 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 inflituted at first upon a perfuafion of its divinity; and when by the improvements of arts and learning, that opinion was exploded in fucceeding ages, yet the thing itself was wijely retained for the fake of its ufe 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 ftate 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 here after; 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 or fixed upon the ground, like thofe of other animals, but placed on high and fublime, in a fituation the most proper for this celestial contemplation, to remind

hin 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 obferving what He had done, we might learn what we ought to do, and, by the operations of the divine reason, 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 will of God manifefted in his works; or from that eternal reafon, 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 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 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 conftant opinion of the wifeft of all ages; who heid, 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 strong and beautiful paffages fcattered occafionally through every part of his works.

"The true law," fays he, " is right " reafon, 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 "itfelf: nor can there be one law at "Rome, another at Athens; one now, "another hereafter; but the fame eter

In another place he tells us, that the study of this law was the only thing which could teach us that most important of all leffons, faid to be prefcribed by the Pythian oracle, TO KNOW OURSELVES; that is, to know our true nature and rank in the univerfal fyftem, the relation that we bear to all other things, and the purposes for which we were fent into the world. "When a man," fays he, "has atten"tively furveyed the heavens, the earth, "the fea, and all things in them, ob"ferved whence they fprung, and whither

they all tend; when and how they are "to end; what part is mortal and perith"able, what divine and eternal: when he "has almost reached and touched, as it

were, the Governor and Ruler of them "all, and difcovered 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 pro"fpect and knowledge of nature, good

gods! how will he learn to know himJelf? How will he contemn, defpife, and "fet at nought all thofe things which "the vulgar efteem the moft fplendid and "glorious?"

These were the principles on which Cicero built his religion and morality, which thine 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 scheme compleat: volumes which, as the elder Pliny fays to the emperor Titus, ought not only to be read, but to be got by heart. firft and greateft of thefe works is loft, except a few fragments, in which he had delivered his real thoughts fo profeffedly, 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 Sf2

The

again.

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 virifque. Fragm. de Repub. 1. 5.

It is one of his maxims, which he inculcates 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, victory; fo that of a ftatefman is, to make his citizens happy to make them firm in power, rich in wealth, fplendid in glory, eminent in virtue, which he declares to be the great eft and best of all works among men and as this cannot be effected but by the concord and harmony of the conftituent members of a city; fo it was his conftant aim to unite the different orders of the state into one common intereft, 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 should enact, 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 raised 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 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 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 meafures of pursuing 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 himfelf, 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 recourfe to new means for the attainment of the fame end.

;

The three fects, which at this time chiefly engroffed the philofophical part of Rome, were the Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Academic; and the chief ornaments of each 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 best 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 stripped of every other good; affirmed all fins to be equal; all deviations from right equally wicked; to kill a dunghill cock without reafon, the fame crime as to kill a parent; 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 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 least 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 confeffion of being conquered, to decline a tittle from the true road. In an age, therefore, of the utmoft libertinifm, when the public difcipline was loft, and the government itfelf tottering, he ftruggled with the fame zeal against all corruption, and waged a perpetual war with a fuperior force; whilft 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 difappointments and repulfes, finding himself unable to purfue his own way any farther, inftead of taking a new one, he was driven by his phi lofophy to put an end to his life.

But as the Stoics exalted human nature too high, fo the Epicureans depreffed it S13

too

too low; as thofe raifed 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 happiness confequently in the fecure enjoyment of a pleafurable life, eftecming virtue on no other account, than as it was a hand-mail to pleasure; and helped to infure the poffeflion of it, by preferving health and conciliating friends. Their wife man had therefore no other duty, but to provide for his own eafe; to decline all truggles; 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 midst of rural fhades and pleafant 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, generofity; 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 himfelf; or never at leaft fo far as to disturb his eafe, 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 friendflip 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 ufelefs 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 statefman to the pilate, whole art confifts in managing every turn of the winds, and applying even the most perverte to the progrefs of his voyage; fo that by changing his courfe, and enJarging his circuit of failing, to arrive with afety at his defined port. He mentions

likewife an obfervation, 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 repulfed by the fenate. This was verified by all their civil diffenfions, from the Gracchi down to Cæfar: fo that when he saw men of this fpirit at the head of the govern ment, who by the fplendor of their lives and actions had acquired an ascendant 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 defperate counfels. He declared contention to be no longer prudent, than while it either did fervice, or at leaft not hurt; 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 cut 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 flate. 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 moft liable to exception, on the account of that compla cence, 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 confulship, in his province, and after Cæfar's death, the only periods of his life in which he was truly mafter of himfelf; there we fee him thining 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 best witness of his confcience, that he had always done the greatest fervice to his 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