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Before I totally dismiss this matter it may not be improper to observe, that both VIRGIL and APULEIUS have represented the genuine MYSTERIES, as Rites of perfect sanctity and purity; and recommended only such to their Countrymen; while they expose impure and impious Rites to the public execration; for it was their purpose to stigmatize the reigning corruptions, and to recommend the ancient sanctity. On the other hand, a man attached by his office to the recommendation of the Mysteries, as then practised, was to do the best he could, when deprived of the benefit of this distinction; and was to endeavour to give fair colours to the foulest things. This was the case of JAMBLICHUS, His friend Porphyry had some scruples on this head. He doubts whether those Rites could come from the Gods, which admitted such a mixture of lewdness and impurity. Such a mixture Jamblichus confesses; but, at the same time, endeavours to account for their divine original, by shewing, that they are only the emblems of natural Truths; or a kind of moral purgation of the inordinate passions*. You will say, he might have given a better answer; That, they were modern abuses and corruptions. He asks your pardon for that. Such a confession would have been condemning his own Platonic fanaticism; that very fanaticism which had brought in these abominations. He was reduced therefore to the necessity of admitting that they were no after-corruptions, but Goeval with the Rites themselves. And this admission of so learned a Hierophant, is, as far as I'am able to collect, the only support which any one can now have for saying, that the Mysteries were impure and abominable, even from their first Institution.

* De Mysteriis, Sect. i. cap. xi.

Hitherto

Hitherto we have considered the Legislator's care in perpetuating the doctrine of a FUTURE STATE. And if I have been longer than ordinary on this head, my excuse is, that the topic was new*, and the doctrine itself, which is the main subject of the present inquiry, much interested in it.

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A very remarkable circumstance (for which we are indebted to the observation of modern travellers) may convince us, that Rulers and Governors cultivated the belief of this doctrine with a more than common assiduity. Many barbarous nations have been discovered in these later times, on the coasts of Africa, which, in the distractions of Government, and transmigrations of People, have, it is probable, fallen from a civilized to a savage state of life. These are found to have little or no knowledge of a God, or observance of Religion. And yet, which is a surprising paradox, they still retain the settled belief and expectation of a FUTURE STATE. A wonder to be accounted for no other way than by what hath been said above of the Legislator's principal concern for the support of this

* A well-known writer, Mr. Jackson (not to speak at present of Others of a later date) who had long and scurrilously railed at the author of the D. L. in a number of miserable pamphlets, hath at length thought fit in a Thing, called Chronological Antiquities, to borrow from this book, without any acknowledgment, all he had to give the public concerning the pagan MYSTERIES; and much, concerning the HIEROGLYPHICS and origin of idolatry. But this is the common practice of such sort of writers: and is only mentioned here to shew the reader to what class they belong. The treatment these volumes have met with from some of the most worthless of my Countrymen, made me think it expedient to contrast their behaviour with that of the most learned and respectable foreign Divines and Critics of France, Germany, and Holland, in their animadversions on this Work, occasionally inserted in the notes.

VOL. II.

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Doctrine;

Doctrine; and of the deep root, which by its agreeable nature, it takes in the Mind wherever it has been once received. So that though, as it hath been observed, no Religion ever existed without the doctrine of a Future State, yet the doctrine of a Future State hath, it seems, sometimes existed without a Religion.

APPENDIX

TO

BOOK II.

WE

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E have seen with what art, and care in contrivance, the Sages of the GENTILE World endeavoured, by the intervention of the MYSTERIES, to prevent the memory of THE FIRST CAUSE of all things from being totally obliterated from the minds of men; while the perverse constitution of the National Idolatries prevented the true God's being received into any PUBLIC Worship. To the SECRET of the Mysteries it was, that these Pseudo-Evangelists invited their more capable Disciples, awfully admonishing them to give heed unto it, as unto a light shining in a dark place. For it was no more than such a glimmering, till the rising of the day-star of the Gospel, in the hearts of the Faithful.

But if the late noble Author of THE FIRST PHILO SOPHY deserves credit; all this care was as absurd as it was fruitless.

The Institutors of the Mysteries imparted this SECRET, as the true and only solid foundation of RELIGION; for the FIRST CAUSE was, in their ideas, a God whose ESSENCE indeed was incomprehensible, but his ATTRIBUTES, as well moral as natural, discoverable by human reason. Such a God was wanted

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for that foundation: for unassisted reason taught them, as, in its most assisted state, it had taught St. PAUL, That he who cometh to God, must believe that he is; and that he is a REWARDER of them who diligently seek him. Thus Plato, in his Book of Laws, speaking of Religion, and it's use to civil Society, says, "It is 66 not of small consequence, that what we here reason "about the Gods, should, by all means and methods, "be made probable; as that they ARE, and that they "are GOOD*." Hence, though their mistaken mode of teaching, deprived the pagan world of the fruit of the Doctrine, the purpose however was laudable and rational.

But now comes a modern Sage -PHILOSOPHER and STATESMAN like the Ancient, (in all things else how unlike!) who tells us "that they made the Basis of Religion far too wide; that men have no further concern with GOD than TO BELIEVE THAT HE IS, which his physical Attributes make fully manifest; but, That he is a rewarder of them who diligently seek him, Religion doth not require us to believe, since this depends on God's MORAL ATTRIBUTES, of which we have no conception." In this manner, by the turn of a hand, hath our Noble Philosopher changed Natural Religion into NATURALISM; and made this care of the ancient Sages as ridiculously conceived as it was ineffectually prosecuted.

But to do justice to the weak endeavours of those Friends and Servants of mankind, who surely deserve a grateful memory with Posterity, I shall take the liberty to examine his Lordship's reasoning on this

ὡς θεός τ ̓ εἰσι, καὶ ἀγαθοί. + Lord Bolingbroke.

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