LETTER II. SIR, "THE doctrine of a future life, improved by every additional circumstance which could give weight and efficacy to that important truth," is the second of the causes to which you attribute the quick increase of Christianity. Now if we impartially consider the circumstances of the persons to whom the doctrine, not simply of a future life, but of a future life accompanied with punishments as well as rewards; not only of the immortality of the soul, but of the immortality of the soul accompanied with that of the resurrection, was delivered; I cannot be of opinion that, abstracted from the supernatural testimony by which it was enforced, it could have met with any very extensive reception amongst them. It was not that kind of future life which they expected; it did not hold out to them the pu nishments of the infernal regions as aniles fabulas. To the question, Quid si post mortem maneant animi? they could not answer with Cicero and the philosophers-Beatos esse concedo; because there was a great probability that it might be quite otherwise with them. I am not to learn that there are passages to be picked up in the writings of the antients which might be produced as proofs of their expecting a future state of punishment for the flagitious; but this opinion was worn out ofcredit before the time of our Saviour: the whole disputation in the first book of the Tusculan Questions, goes upon the other supposition. Nor was the absurdity of the doctrine of future punishments confined to the writings of the philosophers, or the circles of the learned and polite; for Cicero, to mention no others, makes no secret of it in his public pleadings before the people at large. You yourself, Sir, have referred to his oration for Cluentius : in this oration, you may remember, he makes great mention of a very abandoned fellow, who had forged I know not how many wills, murdered I know not how many wives, and perpetrated a thousand other villanies; yet even to this profligate, by name Oppianicus, he is per suaded that death was not the occasion of any evil*. Hence, I think, we may conclude, that such of the Romans as were not wholly infected with the annihilating notions of Epicurus, but entertained (whether from remote tradition or enlightened argumentation) hopes of a future life, had no manner of expectation of such a life as included in it the severity of punishment denounced in the Christian scheme against the wicked. Nor was it that kind of future life which they wished they would have been glad enough of an Elysium which could have admitted into it men who had spent this life in the perpetration of every vice which can debase and pollute the human heart. To abandon every seducing gratification of sense, to pluck up every latent root of ambition, to subdue every impulse of revenge, to divest themselves of every inveterate habit in which their glory and their pleasure consisted; * Nam nunc quidem quid tandem mali illi mors attulit? nisi fortè ineptiis ac fabulis ducimur, ut existimemus apud inferos impiorum supplicia perferre, ac plures illic offendisse inimicos quam hic reliquisse-quæ si falsa sint, id quod omnes intelligunt, &c. to do all this and more, before they could look up to the doctrine of a future life without terror and amazement, was not, one would think, an easy undertaking: nor was it likely that many would forsake the religious institutions of their ancestors, set at nought the gods under whose auspices the Capitol had been founded, and Rome made mistress of the world; and suffer themselves to be persuaded into the belief of a tenet, the very mention of which made Felix tremble, by any thing less than a full conviction of the supernatural authority of those who taught it. The several schools of Gentile philosophy had discussed, with no small subtlety, every argument which reason could suggest, for and against the immortality of the soul; and those uncertain glimmerings of the light of nature would have prepared the minds of the learned for the reception of the full illustration of this subject by the gospel, had not the resurrection been a part of the doctrine therein advanced. But that this corporeal frame, which is hourly mouldering away, and resolved at last into the undistinguished mass of elements from which it was at first de rived, should ever be clothed with immortality; that this corruptible should ever put on incorruption; is a truth so far removed from the apprehension of philosophical research, so dissonant from the common conceptions of mankind, that amongst all ranks and persuasions of men it was esteemed an impossible thing. At Athens the philosophers had listened with patience to St. Paul, whilst they conceived him but a setter forth of strange gods; but as soon as they comprehended that by the avastaois he meant the resurrection, they turned from him with contempt. It was principally the insisting upon the same topic, which made Festus think that much learning had made him mad. And the questions, How are the dead raised up? and, With what body do they come? seem, by Paul's solicitude to answer them with fulness and precision, to have been not unfrequently proposed to him by those who were desirous of becoming Christians. The doctrine of a future life then, as promulged in the gospel, being neither agreeable to the expectations, nor corresponding with the wishes, nor conformable to the reason, of the Gentiles, I can discover no motive (setting aside |