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ESSAY I.

ON THE LOVE OF TRUTH.

§ 1. THAT any one who undertakes to propagate or to maintain any religion should represent it as a true one, and should demand reception for it on that ground, seems to us of the present day so natural and unavoidable, that many probably would be ready to take for granted that this must have been the case always;—that the question of "true or false?" must always have stood, as it certainly ought to stand, on the very threshold of every inquiry respecting such a subject; and that all who adhered to an old, or embraced a new religious system, or rejected either, however credulous, or prejudiced, or otherwise bad judges of evidence they might be, yet must have supposed themselves at least to be determined by evidence of some kind or other,

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to belief or disbelief in the truth of what was proposed to them. And accordingly, there are, probably, many who do not estimate the full force and importance of our Lord's reply to Pilate, "For this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness of the Truth."

A moderate acquaintance, however, with the habits and modes of thought which prevailed among the ancient heathen, may convince us that the real state of things was by no means such as the above reasoning would lead us to suppose. Their minds were, on this subject especially, estranged from the love of truth. Many circumstances indeed concurred to render them habitually indifferent to it. Among the learned, philosophical pursuits seem to have been originally introduced as an elegant recreation (oxon): and there can be no doubt that many at least attached themselves to this or that sect, not from any sincere conviction of the truth of its doctrines, but to furnish themselves with suitable topics for declamations. The Schools of the philosophers were a kind of intellectual palæstra; and there was a close analogy between their disputations, and the prevailing

gymnastic contests: each was a game; the object of which was victory, without any ulterior end, but only for the display of strength and skill, bodily or intellectual. And the zealous cultivation of rhetoric, to which the majority of eminent men made all other studies subordinate, and whose most appropriate object is not the discovery of truth, but the invention of arguments, could not but foster the prevailing disregard of truth. It seems too, to have been the settled conviction of most of those who had the sincerest desire of attaining truth themselves, that to the mass of mankind truth was in many points inexpedient, and unfit to be communicated; that however desirable it might be for the leading personages in the world to be instructed in the true nature of things, there were many popular delusions which were essential to the well-being of society. And in the foremost rank of these they placed their popular religions. Their own notions respecting the Deity were totally unconnected with morality; and they despaired of imbuing the vulgar with the philosophical principles on which they made virtue to rest. They made it a point of duty,

therefore, to testify by their example the utmost respect for the established religion; and to impress on the multitude that reverence for the gods, and dread of divine judgment on crimes, which they themselves in their own more private writings derided. They did not however seek to effect this object, (and this is a circumstance deserving of especial attention,) by undertaking to prove the truth of the popular religions. He who labours to prove, implies the possibility of doubt, and challenges inquiry; and they well knew that there was no evidence for the existing superstitions which could satisfy doubts, or stand the test of inquiry. The only thing to be done, therefore, was to forbid all doubts as impious,to suppress all inquiry; and, consequently, to forego even the practice of asserting the truth of the established systems, which had, as Paul expresses it," changed the truth of God into a lie." They were maintained as politically expedient, by the civil magistrates; whose appropriate instrument is not argument, but coercion and who for the most part utterly disbelieved them, and were sensible that they

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a Rom. i. 25.

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could not be established by evidence, yet were convinced that they ought to be established by law. And as it is the nature of legal enactments to produce, not belief, but merely outward conformity and submission, it was the inevitable result of this state of things that the ideas of religion and of truth,-of pious demeanour, and of sincere belief,-should come to be completely disjoined in men's minds: and that they should even be somewhat startled at the very pretension to truth as resting on evidence, in any religion, and at the requisition of faith in it, on the ground of its truth. It was what they had never been used to. Philosophers of the most discordant tenets, poets of all descriptions, politicians and other men of business, amidst all the variety of their views and conduct, had always concurred in maintaining the popular religions, and in maintaining them on any other ground than that of truth: "The worship of the gods is an institution of our country;—these rites are venerable from their antiquity;"-the

b Such was the remark of Tacitus respecting the religion of the Jews: "Hi ritus, quoquo modo inducti, vetustate defenduntur;" a description much more suitable to the pagan

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