universe,[311] and consequently favoured with their peculiar care and protection. Hence proceeded that obstinate and undaunted courage, that insuperable contempt of danger, and death itself in defence of their country, which complete the idea of the Roman character as it is drawn by historians in the virtuous ages of the republick. As long as the manners of the Romans were regulated by this first great principle of religion, they were free and invincible. But the atheistical doctrine of Epicurus,[312] which insinuated itself at Rome, under the respectable name of philosophy, after their acquaintance with the Greeks, undermined and destroyed this ruling principle. I allow that luxury, by corrupting manners, had weakened this principle, and prepared the Romans for the reception of atheism, which is the never-failing attendant of luxury. But as long as this principle remained, it controlled manners, and checked the progress of luxury in proportion to its influence. But when the introduction of atheism had destroyed this principle, the great bar to corruption was removed, and the passions at once let loose to run their full career without check, or control. The introduction therefore of the atheistical tenets attributed to Epicurus,[313] was the real cause of that rapid depravity of the Roman manners, which has never been satisfactorily accounted for, either by Sallust, or any other historians. The learned, I know, are not a little divided in their opinions about Epicurus. But a disquisition into what were, or were not the real tenets of that philosopher, would be wholly foreign to my purpose. By the doctrine of the Epicureans, I mean that system which Lucretius has dressed up in his poem with all the beauties of poetry, and all the elegance of diction. This, like the rest of the atheistick systems, which are attributed to most of the Grecian philosophers, is pregnant with the wildest absurdities that ever entered into the human imagination. Epicurus, if Lucretius has given us his genuine tenets, ascribes the formation of the universe to the fortuitous concourse of senseless atoms of matter.[314] His master, Democritus, from whom he borrowed his system, asserts the same. But Epicurus has exceeded him in absurdity. For Democritus, if we may credit Plutarch, endowed his atoms with a certain living-intelligence, which Epicurus scorns to make use of. He boldly deduces life, intelligence, and free-will itself, from the direct, oblique, and other various motions of his inanimate atoms. He admits a sort of insignificant beings, whom he terms gods; but as he would not allow them to have any hand in the formation of his universe, so neither will he suffer them to have the least share in the conduct of it. He has showed them plainly, that he could do without them, and, as he has made them so egregiously insignificant as to be able to do neither good nor harm, he has packed them off at a distance, to live an