_On the Need of Revelation._
The greatest benefit for which we are indebted to the New Testament is
its having revealed to us the immortality of the soul. It is therefore
quite in vain that this Warburton has sought to cloud this important
truth, by continually representing, in his "Legation of Moses," that
"the ancient Jews had no knowledge of this necessary dogma," and that
"the Sadducees did not admit it in the time of our Lord Jesus."
He interprets in his own way, the very words which Jesus Christ is made
to utter: "Have ye not read that which is spoken unto you by God saying,
I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: God
is not the God of the dead, but of the living." He gives to the parable
of the rich bad man a sense contrary to that of all the churches.
Sherlock, bishop of London, and twenty other learned men, have refuted
him. Even the English philosophers have reminded him how scandalous it
is in an English bishop to manifest an opinion so contrary to the Church
of England; and after all, this man has thought proper to call others
impious: like Harlequin, in the farce of "The Housebreaker" (_Le
Dévaliseur des Maisons_) who, after throwing the furniture out at the
window, seeing a man carrying some articles away, cries with all his
might--"Stop, thief!"
The revelation of the immortality of the soul, and of pains and rewards
after death, is the more to be blessed, as the vain philosophy of men
always doubted of it. The great Cæsar had no faith in it. He explained
himself clearly to the whole senate, when, to prevent Catiline from
being put to death, he represented to them that death left man without
feeling--that all died with him: and no one refuted this opinion.
The Roman Empire was divided between two great principal sects: that of
Epicurus, who affirmed that the divinity was useless to the world, and
the soul perished with the body; and that of the Stoics, who regarded
the soul as a portion of the divinity, which after death was reunited to
its original--to the great All from which it had emanated. So that,
whether the soul was believed to be mortal, or to be immortal, all
sects united in contemning the idea of rewards and punishments after
death.
There are still remaining numerous monuments of this belief of the
Romans. It was from the force of this opinion profoundly engraved on all
hearts, that so many Roman heroes and so many private citizens put
themselves to death without the smallest scruple; they did not wait for
a tyrant to deliver them into the hands of the executioner.
Even the most virtuous men, and the most thoroughly persuaded of the
existence of a God, did not then hope any reward, nor did they fear any
punishment. It has been seen in the article on "Apocrypha," that Clement
himself, who was afterwards pope and saint, began with doubting what the
first Christians said of another life, and that he consulted St. Peter
at Cæsarea. We are very far from believing that St. Clement wrote the
history which is attributed to him; but it shows what need mankind had
of a precise revelation. All that can surprise us is that a tenet so
repressing and so salutary should have left men a prey to so many
horrible crimes, who have so short a time to live, and find themselves
pressed between the eternities.