er liberties with him. There is too much of pleas antry, and too little of seriousness, in this method of considering the subject.

A similar remark may be made on the interview that Socrates had with a celebrated courtesan of the name of Theodota, whom he had the curiosity to visit on account of what he had heard of her extraordinary beauty and elegant form, so that statuaries applied to her to take models from her; and to whom the historian says she exhibited her person as much as decency would permit. In this situation Socrates and his pupils found her; but in the conversation that he had with her he discovered no just sense of the impropriety of her life and profession. She spake to him of her galants as her friends, who contributed to her support without labour, and hoped that by his recommendation she should procure more; adding, "How shall I persuade

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you to this." He replies, "This you must find "out yourself, and consider in what way it may be "in my power to be of use to you." And when she desired him to come often to see her, he only jestingly said, that he was not sufficiently at leisure from other engagements. (p. 251.) Ready as So crates was to give good advice to young men, he

said nothing to her to recommend a more vituous and reputable course of life than that which he knew she led.

It was not in this manner that Jesus and his a

postles would have conversed with such a person. He did not decline all intercourse with women of her character, but it was not at their houses; and what he said was intended to instruct and reclaim them. He considered them as the sick, and himself as the physician.

Women of the profession of this Theodota, if they had been well educated, were resorted to in the most open manner by men of the first character at Athens, as Aspasia by Socrates himself, and by Pericles, who afterwards married her. Nor was fornication in general, with women of that profession, at all disreputable, either in Greece, or at Rome.

How much more pure are the morals of christianity in this respect. So great, however, was the prevalence of this vice, and so little had it been considered as one, in the heathen world, that the apostle Paul, writing to the christian churches in Greece, and especially at Corinth, the richest and most voluptuous city in that part of the world, is urgent to dissuade his converts from it. See particu

E 3.

particularly (1. Cor. vi. 9. &c.) where among those who would be excluded from the kingdom of heaven, he mentions fornicators in the first place. Know ye not, that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

SECTION V.

Of Socrates's Belief in a future State.

Though Socrates had more just ideas concerning the nature and character of deity, and also of the nature and obligations of virtue, than the generality of his countrymen, and even of the philosophers, he does not appear to have had any more knowledge than others concerning the great sanction of virtue, in the doctrine of a future state. In none of his conversations recorded by Xenophon on the subject of virtue with young men and others, is there the least mention of it, or allusion to it; which was certainly unavoidable if he had been really acquainted with it, and believed it.

Speak

Speaking of the happiness of his virtuous pupils, he mentions the pleasure they would have in this life, and the respect that would be paid to them; and says that," when they died they would not be "without honour, consigned to oblivion, but "would be for ever celebrated, (p. 111.") Having said this, could he have forborne to add their happier condition after death, if he had had any be lief of it?

All his dissuasives from vice are grounded on some natural and necessary inconvenience to which men expose themselves by it in this life, but none of them have any respect to another. Thus he represents intemperate persons as slaves to their appetites, (p. 322.) and treating of what he considered as being the laws of nature, and therefore as those of the gods, as the prohibition of marriage between parents and their children, (p. 828.) he only says that "the offspring of such a mixture is bad, "one of the parties being too old to produce

healthy children;" and this reason does not apply to the case of brothers and sisters, Another law of nature, he says, is to do good in return for good received; but the penalty of not doing it he makes to be nothing more than being deserted by a E 4.

man's

man's friends when he will have the most want of them, and to be forced to apply to those who have no friendship for him. (p. 329.)

It is particularly remarkable that nothing that Xenophon says as coming from Socrates, not only in his conversations with his pupils, but even at his trial, and the scenes before his death, implies a belief of a future state. All that we have of this kind is from Plato; and though he was present at the trial, and therefore what he says is, no doubt, entitled to a considerable degree of credit, it wants the attestation of another witness; and the want of that of Xenophon is something more than negative; especially as it is well known that Plato did not scruple to put into the mouth of Socrates language and sentiments that never fell from him, as it is said Socrates himself observed, when he was shewn the dialogue entitled Lysis, in which he is the principal speaker, as he is in many others.

In Plato's celebrated dialogue intitled Phado, in which he makes Socrates advance arguments in proof of a future state, we want the evidence of some person who was present; for Plato himself was at that time confined by sickness, (P. p. 74.) so that it is very possible, as nothing is said of it by