Yet in this persuasion, foolish as human reason pronounces it to be, all heathens persevered, from before the days of Homer to the establishment of Christianity, and afterwards. What can we think of a practice so strange, so notorious, and so universal, but that the voice of reason was overpowered by the authority of a divine institution, which custom and tradition spread abroad through all places and all ages? I can tell you of another doctrine, in which the most ancient of the poets agree with the Scripture, in opposition to the dictates of human philosophy. I think it never was pretended by any of those modern writers, who have drawn schemes of natural religion for us, that government is of divine authority, and that monarchy is sacred: so far from it, that all deists, to a man, abhor the notion; and are out of patience with the Scripture for giving countenance to it. But it was an established doctrine with the first heathen writers, Homer and Hesiod, that magistrates are the vicegerents of Heaven; that government is sacred; and that kings derive their honour and support from God; as you may see by the following passages: Εκ δε Δια βασιληες Hes. Theog. 1. 96. δικαστ -δικασπολοι, οι τε θεμισας Προς Διο ειρυκται Iliad, a. 238. Μητε συ, Πηλειδή θελ' εριζέμεναι βασιλης Ibid. 277: Θυμός δε μεγάς εσι Διοτρεφε βασιλης B. 196. If this doctrine is contrary to human reason, it was no human invention: if it was not invented, it was received: and if it contradicts that desire of liberty and self-government which prevails in all mankind, it must have been received on some great authority. For it is to be observed, that we are here not insisting merely on the fact, that monarchical government did actually obtain universally in the earliest ages; but also that their writers allowed it in theory as a divine institution; which is the doctrine of revelation. It was also an opinion of heathen antiquity, nearly allied to the foregoing, that property, in the most remote times, was authoritatively divided among the people by princes; not assumed at random, I random, as it must have happened, if nations had emerged at first out of a state of nature: Romulus, et Liber pater, et cum Castore Pollux Post ingentia facta, Deorum in templa recepti, Dum terras hominumque colunt genus, aspera bella Componunt, AGROS ASSIGNANT, oppida condunt. Hor. Epist. lib. ii. ep. 1. When you have considered all these particulars, to which I might have added a multitude of others, but that I would not exhaust your patience, you will despise the suggestion, that an affection to Greek and Roman literature has a necessary tendency to lessen the belief of divine revelation. They are but very superficial scholars, who think there are no evidences of Christianity in those writers of antiquity, whom, for their eminence, we call classical. This is indeed so far from being the case, that there is scarcely a doctrine of the Scriptures which they have not preserved, nor a miracle which they have not imitated, and transferred to themselves, in some form or other; insomuch, that Celsus, one of the earliest writers against Christianity, most impudently pretended, that the books of Moses were compiled from the miracles of paganism. He He might have said with equal truth, that the two tables of the Ten Commandments were borrowed from the Laws of Solon; whereas, it is certain, on the contrary, that there were no written laws among the heathens till more than a thousand years after the law of Moses; and that the laws of the Twelve Tables among the Romans, and other heathen laws of the first antiquity, were evidently borrowed from the laws of the Jews; as Josephus proves admirably well, in his Discourse against Appion. Any person may see this who will read over attentively the laws of the Twelve Tables, as they are given in page 315 of the first volume of Mr. Hook's Roman History. LETTER LETTER XVI. ON HORACE'S LOVE OF SOLITUDE. WHEN the course of our study carries us to the Epistles of Horace, I generally meet with some particular passage in every lesson, which engages my attention, and fixes itself upon my mind, either on account of the elegance of the expresssion, or the value of the sentiment. In the epistle of yesterday he spoke of his country-seat as a situation which restored him to himself; his meaning is, that in this place of solitude and retirement, he could follow his meditations, and be happy in his own company; which was not the case with him when at Rome; Villice, sylvarum et mihi me reddentis agelli. Can any thing be more more characteristic of a scholar and a man of genius than these few words? There never was a good, or a wise, or an ingenious man, who did not frequently wish to be thus put in possession of himself, in some scene of peace and quietness. In the life of a city, amidst the variety of impertinent objects, |