what he defired. But as his letters in general feldom touch upon any queftions of philofophy, except lightly and incidentally, fo they will afford very little help to us in the discovery of his Philofophical Opinions, which are the fubject of the prefent inquiry, and for which we muft wholly recur to his philofophical works.

Now the general purpofe of thefe works was, to give a history rather of the ancient philofophy, than any account of his own, and to explain to his fellow-citizens in their own language, whatever the philofophers of all fects, and all ages, had taught on every important queftion, in order to enlarge their minds, and reform their morals; and to employ himself moft ufefully to his country, at a time when arms and a fuperior force had deprived him of the power of ferving it in any other way. This he declares in his treatife called de Finibus, or on the Chief Good or Ill of Man; in that upon the Nature of the Gods; in his Tufculan Difputations; and in his book on the Academic Philofophy; in all which he fometimes takes upon himfelf the part of a Stoic; fometimes of an Epicurean; fometimes of the Peripatetic; for the fake of explaining with more authority the different doctrines of each fect; and as he affumes the perfon of the one to confute the other, fo in his proper character of an Academic, he fometimes difputes against them all; while the unwary reader, not reflecting on the nature of dialogues, takes Cicero ftill for the perpetual fpeaker; and under that mistake, often quotes a fentiment for his, that was delivered by him only in order to be confuted. But in thefe dialogues, as in all his other works, wherever he treats any fubject profeffedly or gives a judgment upon it deliberately, either in his own perfon, or that of an Academic, there he delivers his own opinions; and where he himself does not appear in the fcene, he takes care ufually to inform us, to which of the characters he has affigned the patronage of his own fentiments; who was generally the principal fpeaker of the dialogue; as Craffus in his treatife on the Orator; Scipio, in that of the Republic; Cato, in his piece on Old Age. This key will let us into his real thoughts; and enable us to trace his genuine notions through every part of his writings, from which I fhall now proceed to give a fhort abstract of them.

As to Phyfics, or Natural Philofophy, he feems to have had the fame notion

with Socrates, that a minute and partico lar attention to it, and the making it the fole end and object of our enquiries, was a ftudy rather curious than profitable, and contributing but little to the improvement of human life. For though he was perfectly acquainted with the various fyftems of all the philofophers of any name, from the earliest antiquity, and has ex plained them all in his works; yet he did not think it worth while, either to form any diftinct opinions of his own, or at leaft to declare them. From his account, however, of thofe fyflems we may obferve, that feveral of the fundamental principles of modern philofophy, which pafs for the original difcoveries of these later times, are the revival rather of ancient notions maintained by fome of the firft philofophers, of whom we have any notice in hiftory; as the Motion of the Earth; the Antipodes; a Vacuum; and an univerfal Gravitation, or attractive Quality of Matter, which holds the World in its prefent Form and Order.

But in all the great points of religion and morality, which are of more immediate relation to the happinefs of man, the being of a God; a providence; the immortality of the foul; a future ftate of rewards and punishments; and the eternal difference of good and ill; he has largely and clearly declared his mind in many parts of his writings. He maintained that there was one God, or Supreme Being; incorporeal, eternal, felf-exiftent, wh created the world by his power, and fuf tained it by his providence. This he infer red from the confent of all nations; the ar der and beauty of the heavenly bodies; the evident marks of counfel, wijdom, and a fitness to certain ends, obfervable in the wholt, and in every part of the vifible world; and declares that perfon unworthy of the name of a man, who can believe all this to have been made by chance; when with the atmet stretch of human wisdom, we cannot penstrate the depth of that wifdem which contrived it.

He believed alfo a Divine Providence, conftantly prefiding over the whole fyftem, and extending its care to all the principal members of it, with a peculiar attention to the conduct and actions of men, but leav ing the minute and inferior parts to the courfe of his general laws. This he col lected from the nature and attributes of the Deity; his omniscience, omniprefence, and infinite goodness; that could never defert

ces, and the worship of the gods: the firft was inftituted 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 these a third part was afterwards added, relating to div.ne admonitions from portents; monflrous births; the entrails of beafts 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 firft 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 auspices, 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 Friefts. And the province of interpreting prodigies, ard infpecting the entrails, be longed to the harufpices; who were the fervants of the public, hired to attend the magiflrates in all their facrifices; and who never failed to accommodate their answers to the views of those who employed them, and to whofe protection they owed their credit and their livelihood.

This conftitution of a religion among a people naturally fuperftitious, neceflarily 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 dispute 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 inftinet, or native power, implanted in the foul, which it exerted always with the greateft 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 question; 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 fubfif,ing 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 inftituted 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 wifely ri tained for the fake of its ufe to the r public.

But whatever was the origin of the religion of Rome, Cicero's religion was undoubtedly of heavenly extraction, bui't, as we have feen, on the foundation of a Ged; 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 charac ters, all the duties of that nature which was given to us. He observed, 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 bigh and fublime, in a fituation the most proper for this celeftial contemplation, to remind

again. In his book of Laws, he pursued the fame argument, and deduced the origin of law from the will of the Supreme God. These 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 established 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 ftrictness of his morals, adapted to all the various cafes and circumftances 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 ftate of ignorance and darkness, of which they themselves 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 moft 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 flowed, muft needs have been infpired by the Deity.

But after all these 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 conclufions of his reafon, fince in other parts of his works he feems to intimate not only a diffidence, but a difbelief of the immortality of the foul, and a future fate of rewards and punifoments; and especially in his letters, where he is fuppofed to declare his mind with the greatest 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 obferved, 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 stability 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 dejection, 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 exprefs 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 fometimes 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 fcattered 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 intereft 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 used to quote a verfe of old Ennius,