total extinction of all religious principle; and all religious principle must be necessarily subverted wherever this doctrine of annihilation is received.[319] I allow that Lucretius gives us some excellent maxims from Epicurus, and inveighs in many places against the vices of his countrymen. But the cheat is too gross and palpable, and only proves, that he has gilt over the pill of atheism to make it go down more smoothly.[320] For how can a superstructure stand when the foundation is taken away; and of what service is the best system of morality when the sanction of future rewards and punishments, the great motive which should enforce the practice, is removed by the denial of a Providence, and the doctrine of annihilation? Cicero informs us, that all the fine things, which Epicurus asserts of the existence of his gods, and their excellent nature, are mere grimace, and only thrown out to screen him from censure.[321] For he could not be ignorant, that the laws of his country punished every man with the utmost severity, who struck at that fundamental principle of all religion, the existence of a Deity. Cicero therefore, who had thoroughly examined his tenets, affirms him, by his own principles, to have been a downright atheist.[322] For in reality, a man who should assert the existence of such idle gods, as are neither capable of doing good or hurt, must, if he expects to be believed, be a greater fool than the man, “who says in his heart there is no God at all.” Yet this strange system, though fraught with such absurdities and contradictions as could scarce be palmed upon the genius of a Hottentot, has been implicitly swallowed by too many of those gentlemen, who affect to call themselves the _esprits forts_ of the present age. These are the atheistical tenets of Epicurus, preserved by Lucretius in his beautiful poem, which, like poison, conveyed in sweets, please and murder at the same time.