It was visible to all that St. John kept stirring in his grave, the earth continually heaving and falling; yet the same persons who were sure that St. John was not actually dead, were also sure that he did not write the Apocalypse. But the Millenarians tenaciously persisted in their opinions. Sulpicius Severus, in his Sacred History, Book IX. calls those who did not hold the Apocalypse, mad and impious. At length, after many doubts and controversies, and council clashing with council, Sulpicius's opinion prevailed; and the point having undergone a thorough discussion, the church (from whose judg ment their lies no appeal) has decided the Apoca. lypse to have been indisputably written by St. John.

Every Christian sect has attributed to itself the prophecies contained in this book. The English have found it in the revolutions of Great Britain; the Lutherans in the disturbances in Germany; the French Reformed in the reign of Charles IX. and the regency of Catherine de Medicis; and they are all equally in the right. Bossuet and New. ton have both commented on the Apocalypse: but, after all, the eloquent declamations of the former, and the sublime discoveries of the latter, have done them much greater honour than their

comments.

ATHEIST, ATHEISM.

FORMERLY he who was possessed of any secret in an art, ran great risque of being looked upon as a sorcerer; every new sect was accused of murdering infants in the celebration of its mys

C

teries;

teries; and every philosopher who departed from the jargon of schools, fanatics and cheats never failed to charge with atheism, and ignorant and weak judges so surely passed sentence on them.

Anaxagoras took upon him to affirm, that the sun is not guided by Apollo, sitting in a car drawn by four mettlesome steeds; on this he is exclaimed against as an atheist, and obliged to fly his country.

Aristotle being accused of atheism by a priest, and not able to procure justice against his accuser, withdraws to Chalcis. But in all the history of Greece there is not a more heinous transaction than the death of Socrates.

Aristophanes (he whom commentators admire because he was a Greek, not considering that. Socrates was also a Greek) Aristophanes was the first who brought the Athenians to account Socrates an atheist.

To

This comic poet, who is neither comic nor a poet, would not have been allowed among us to have exhibited farces at St. Laurence's fair. me he seems more contemptible, more low-lived, and scurrilous than Plutarch makes him, who speaks of him in this manner: "Aristophanes's

language is, indeed, that of a wretched quack, "full of the lowest and most disagreeable points "and quirks; he cannot raise a laugh among the "very vulgar, and to persons of judgment and "honour he is quite insupportable; his arrogance is beyond all bearing, and all good "people detest his malignity."

So this, by the bye, is the buffoon whom Madam Dacier, amidst all her admiration of Socrates, can find in her heart to admire. This is the man who remotely prepared the poison by which

which infamous judges put an end to the existence of the most virtuous man then living in Greece.

The tanners, the shoe-makers, and sempstresses of Athens were hugely diverted with a farce, where Socrates being haled up into the air in a basket, proclaims that there is no god, and makes his boast, that he had stole a cloak, whilst he was teaching philosophy. Such a people, and whose bad government could countenance such scandalous licentiousness, well deserved what has happened to them, to be brought under subjection to the Romans, and to be at present slaves to the Turks.

We shall pass over the common space of time between the Roman commonwealth and our days; observing only, that the Romans, who were much wiser than the Greeks, never molested any philosopher for his opinion. It was not so among the barbarous nations who seated themselves in the Roman empire. The emperor Frederic II. having some difference with the popes, was immediatelv arraigned of atheism, and reported to have been, jointly with his chancellor de Vineis, the author of the book intitled THE THREE IMPOSTORS.

Our Chancellor de l'Hopital, that excellent man, was branded as an Atheist, because he opposed persecutions, "Homo doctus sed verus "atheos." A Jesuit, Garasse, as much below Aristophanes as the latter was below Homer; a wretch whose name is become ridiculous among the very fanatics, makes every body atheists;

(1) Commentarium Rerum Gallicarum. 1. xxviii.

C 2

atheists; at least this is the appellation he gives to all who have incurred his displeasure. With him Theodore de Beze is an atheist, and he it is who led the people into an error concerning Vanini.

Vanini's wretched end raises no indignation or pity like that of Socrates. This Italian was only an insignificant pedant: yet was he no atheist, for which he suffered, but as far from it as man could be.

He was a poor Neapolitan churchman, a kind of preacher and professor of divinity, a vehement disputer in quiddities and universals; "et "utrum chimera bombinans in vacuo possit co"medere secundas intentiones." There was nothing in him which looked toward atheism; and his ideas of God are perfectly agreeable to the most sound and most approved theology. "God "is his beginning and end, the Father of both, "in no need of either; eternal without existing "in time, every-where present without being in "any place. To him there is neither past nor "future, space nor time; the Creator and Go"vernor of all things; immutable, infinite with"out parts; his power is his will, &c."

Vanini was for reviving the fine thought of Plato, espoused by Averroes, that God had created a chain of beings from the most minute to the largest, and the last link of which is fastened to his eternal throne; a notion which, though it has more of sublimity than truth, is as far from atheism as something from nothing.

He travelled to dispute and make his fortune; but unluckily, disputing is the very opposite road to fortune, every person against whom one enters the list being thus made a rancorous and irrecon

cileable

cileable enemy. Hence Vanini's misfortunes; his heat and rudeness in disputing brought on him the hatred of some divines; and having a quarrel with one Francon, or Franconi, this man, being connected with his enemies, charged him with being an atheist, and teaching atheism. This Francon, or Franconi, supported by some witnesses, had the barbarity, when confronted with Vanini, to maintain, with aggravations, the whole of what he had advanced; whereas Vanini being interrogated, what he thought of the existence of God, made answer, That, agreeably to the church, he worshipped one God in three Persons; and taking up a straw, which lay on the ground, "This," says he, "sufficiently proves that there is a Creator;' then made a very fine speech on vegetation and motion, and the necessity of a Supreme Being, without whom there could be neither motion or vegetation.

The President Gramont gives us an account of this speech in his history of France, now scarce known; and this historian, from an inconceivable prepossession, will have it that Vanini spoke only out of " vanity or fear, and "not from a sincere persuasion."

What grounds could the President Gramont have for such a rash and sanguinary judgment? It is manifest, that, on Vanini's answer, he ought to have been cleared of the charge of atheism. But what was the issue? This unhappy foreign priest dabbled likewise in physic: a large living toad, which he kept in a vessel of water, being found at his house, was made use of to charge him with sorcery, and the toad was said to be the only deity he worshipped. Seve