were notorious hypocrites; the latter, scandalous libertines.

The Essenes were a Jewish sect; some suppose they took their rise from that dispersion of their nation which took place after the Babylonian captivity. They maintained that rewards and punishments extended to the soul alone, and considered the body as a mass of malignant matter, and the poison of the immortal spirit. The greatest part of this sect considered the laws of Moses as an allegorical system of spiritual and mysterious truth, and renounced all regard to the outward letter in its explanation.

Besides these eminent Jewish sects, there were several of inferior note at the time of Christ's appearance: the Herodians, mentioned by the sacred writers, and the Gaulonites, mentioned by Josephus.

The Herodians derived their names from Herod the Great. Their distinguishing tenet appears to be, that it is lawful, when constrained by superiors, to comply with idolatry, and with a false religion..

2. GENTILE PHILOSOPHY.

Ar the important era of Christ's appearance in the world, two kinds of philosophy prevailed among the civilized nations. One was the philosophy of the Greeks, adopted also by the Romans; and the other, that of the Orientals, which had a great number of votaries in Persia, Syria, Chaldea, Egypt, and even among the Jews. The former was distinguished by the simple title of philosophy; the latter was honoured by the more pompous appellation of science or knowledge; since those who adhered to the latter sect pretended to be the restorers of the knowledge of God, which was lost to the world.*

Amongst the Grecian sects, there were some who declaimed openly against religion, and denied the immortality of the soul; and others, who acknowledged a

Hannah Adams' Dict. of Religions.

Deity, and a state of future rewards and punishments. Of the former kind were the Epicureans and Academics; of the latter, the Platonists and Stoics.

The Epicureans derived their name from Epicurus, who was born 242 years before Christ. He accounted for the formation of the world in the following manner :-a finite number of that infinite multitude of atoms, which, with infinite space, constitutes the universe, falling fortuitously into the region of the world, were, in consequence of their innate motion, collected into one rude and undigested mass. All the various parts of nature were formed by those atoms which were best fitted to produce them. The fiery particles formed them-selves into air; and from those which subsided, the earth was produced. The mind, or intellect, was formed of particles in their nature, and capable of the most rapid motion. The world is preserved by the same me-chanical causes by which it was framed; and from the same cause it will at last be dissolved.

The followers of Aristotle were another famous Grecian sect. That philosopher was born in the ninetyninth Olympiad, about 384 years before the birth of Christ.

Aristotle supposed the universe to have existed from eternity. He admitted, however, the existence of a Deity, whom he styled the first mover, and whose nature, as explained by him, is something like the principle which gives motion to a machine. It is a nature wholly separated from matter, immutable, and far superior to all other intelligent natures. The celestial sphere, which is the region of his residence, is also immu⚫ table; and residing in his first sphere, he possesses neither immensity nor omnipresence. Happy in the contemplation of himself, he is entirely regardless of human affairs. In producing motion, the Deity acts not voluntarily, but necessarily; not for the sake of other beings, but for his own pleasure.

Nothing occurs in the writings of Aristotle, which decisively determines whether he supposed the soul of man mortal, or immortal. Respecting ethics, he taught,

that happiness consisted in the virtuous exercise of the mind, and that virtue consists in preserving that mean in all things, which reason and prudence prescribe. It is the middle path between two extremes, one of which is vicious through excess, the other through defect.

The stoics were a sect of heathen philosophers, of which Zeno, who flourished about two hundred and fifty years before Christ, was the original founder. They received their name Stoics from a place in which Zeno delivered his lectures, which was a portico in Athens. Their distinguishing tenets were as follows :— that God is underived and eternal, and by the powerful energy of the Deity, impressed with motion and form; that though God and matter existed from eternity, the present regular frame of nature had a beginning, and will have an end; that the element of fire will at last, by an universal conflagration, reduce the world to its pristine state; that at this period all material forms are lost in one chaotic mass, all animated nature is reunited to the Deity, and matter returns to its original form that from this chaotic state, however, it again emerges, by the energy of the efficient principle; and gods and men, and all forms of regulated nature, are renewed, to be again dissolved and renewed in endless succession; that at the restoration of all things, the race of men will return to life. Some imagined that each individual would return to its former body; while others supposed, that after the revolution of the great year, similar souls would be placed in similar bodies.

According to the doctrine of the Stoics, all things are subject to an irresistible and irreversible fatality; and there is a necessary chain of causes and effects, arising from the action of a power which is itself a part of the machine it regulates, and which, equally with the machine, is subject to the immutable law of necessity.

The Platonic philosophy is denominated from Plato, who was born in the eighty-seventh Olympiad, 426