85 Or that some God does whirl the circling SUN, And fiercely lash the FIRY HORSES on: For ev'n those few exalted Souls, that know, 90 If they admire, and view the WORLD above, } And then the World with heav'nly TYRANTS fill, De 95 Whose Force is as unbounded as their Will. NOTES. compar'd to a Dance, from the Tempora momentis, sunt qui regular Measures of them. 85. Or that, &c.] Epicurus himself to Herodotus. Τὲ ἡ θεία formidine nullâ Imbuti spectent. · διύαμις πρὸς ταῦτα μὴ προσαγέθω, ἀλλὰ ἀλειτέργητο 210- will be more in the right than Τηρείοθω, ἐὰ ἐν τῇ πάση μακαριόΙκι· ὡς εἰ μὴ τῆτο πραχθήσε), ἅπασα ἀεὶ τῶν μετεώρων αἰτιολογία μάταια έται. 86. Firy Horses] The Horses of the Sun are faid to be four in Number: Pyroeïs, so call'd from wὺρ, Fire; Eous, from ήως, the Morning; Æthon, from αἴθω, I burn, or I heat; and Phlegon, from φλέγω, I burn. Lucretius mentions them not, but owes this Verse to his Tranflatour. 87. For ev'n, &c.] This and the twelve following Verses are repeated in Book VI. v. 51. and seqq. And in Book I. v. 78. and Book II. v. 606. he teaches almost the fame Doctrine. Explain that Paffage of Horace by this of Lucretius, and you the other Interpreters. Moreover this is exactly the Doctrine of Socrates: and therefore this Saying, The Things that are above us, are nothing to us, which is commonly afcrib'd to Socrates by others, is by Tertullian afcrib'd to Epicurus: Sed Epicurus qui dixerat, Quæ fuper nos nihil ad nos, cum & ipfe cœlum afpicere defiderat, folis orbem pedalem apprehendit, &c. lib. 2. ad Nationes. 94. Heav'nly Tyrants] In the fecond Book he calls them Dominos fuperbos, proud, imperious Lords. And Velleius, in Cicero, 1. 1. de Nat. Deor. says the fame Thing. Dum Deum rerum authorem facitis,imposuistis in cervicibus noftris Dominum sempiter 90. If they admire, &c.] Ho-num, quem dies & noctes timere race, the Epicurean, manifestly Nil admirari prope res est una, Solaque quæ poffit facere & fer- Hunc folem, & ftellas, & decedentia certis & a mus. Quis enim non timeat omnia providentem, & cogitantem,& nimadvertentem, & omnia ad se pertinere putantem, curiofum & plenum negotii Deum? By making God the Authour of all Things, you set over us an eternal Lord, of whom we must Day and Night stand in Awe. For who can not but dread a God, who be; Deluded Ignorants! who ne'er did see,.... 100 But now to prove all this; first cast an Eye, NOTES... who oversees all, provides for all, thinks of all, takes Notice of all, and believes that all belongs to him, in short, a meddling, inquifitive, and never idle God? 100. But now, &c.] In these 19. v. he at length falls upon his Subject; which, he says, is a noble one indeed, but intricate, and to which he shall find it difficult to gain Belief: for Men do not eafily give Credit to what they are unwilling to believe: and who would willingly regard the Ruin of the World, of of which he can not be a Witness without his Destruction? The Poet himself feems to commiserate so great a Misfortune: own tria talia texta Una dies dabit exitio V. 95. Which he did certainly dread, when he said, Quod procul à nobis flectat For- All-ruling Chance, avert it far Exitio terras cum dabit una dies. 104. This Frame must fall,] This is deny'd by Aristotle, l. 1. de Cœlo, and by Plato in Timaus; tho they difagree in the Manner of it: For Plato says, the World had a Beginning, and that God created it; but denies it will ever have an End; not that it is immortal in its own Nature, but because it would be unworthy of the Wisdom of God, whose Wo orkmanship it is, to diffolve fo glorious a Frame, or to fuffer it to be diffolv'd! But Aristotle holds, That whatever has had a Beginning, may, and will have an End: but that the Heavens never were created, and will never be dissolv'd: Nor. ought Ariftotle alone to boaft, that he afferted a World uncreated and eternal: for before him Xenophanes, Parmenides, Meliffus, Philolaus, Ocellus, Aristæus, the Chaldeans, and others taught the same Doctrine. In like manner, not Epicurus alone of all the antient Philosophers, gave the World a Beginning; for Empedocles, Heracli tus, Anaximander, Anaximeogenes, Leucippus, Democritus, the Brachmans, the Egyptians, and others, were of the fame O Moreover, upon the Words of Lucretius cited above, Tria talia, &c. Faber observes, that O-nes, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, Di vid pays him a Compliment in his own Coin; Carmina fublimis tunc funt pe- pinion; to which Pliny too fubritura Lucretî, Icribes, in these Words: Nu men 105 I know, that this seems strange, and hard to prove, (Strong harden'd Prejudice will scarce remove) And so are all Things new, and unconfin'd To Sense, nor which thro' that can reach the Mind, Whose Notice, Eye, nor Hand, those only Ways, 110 Where Science enters, to the Soul conveys. And yet I'll fing: perchance the foll'wing Fall 115 When ev'ry rebel Arom breaks the Chain, NOTES. men effe mundum credi par est, æternum, immenfum ; neque genitum, neque interiturum unquam. Nat. Hift. lib. 2. cap. 1. Thus Epicurus agreed with us, That the World had a Begin. ning; but he err'd in teaching, that God was not the Creatour of it: And we know, for certain, that, In principio creavit Deus cœlum & terram. And both Epicurus, and the other Philosophers with him, were mistaken, when they taught, That the World was not created out of Nothing, but made of a preexisting Matter. Lucan, in Pharsal. lib. 1. V. 73. describes the future Dissolution of the World, in the following Verfes: Ibit, & obliquum bigas agitare Which May has not amiss inter- So when this Knot of Nature is And the World's Ages in one Skies shall join, And Stars, with Stars confound- To keep the Ocean out: the Follow the Sun; but, scorning 109. Those only Ways, &c.] For all Men give most Credit to those Things which they see or touch, and Sig and Sight is is the chief Inles But now before I teach these Truths, more fure 120 And certain Oracles, and far more pure, Than what from trembling PYTHIA reach'd our Ears; I'll first propose some Cure against thy Fears: NOTES. meatu Left let of Knowledge: Therefore, Vis animæ divina regit, sacroq; Milton, complaining of his being blind, says finely; Of Nature's Works, to me ex- Conspirat Deus, & tacitâ ratione gubernat. Which Creech thus renders: To this vast Frame, in which By fecret Methods, rules and Thro' all the Mass, and ev'ry But these Men the Poet despises, 121. Pythia] See the Note upon v. 758. Book I. from whence this and the foregoing 119. But now,&c.] But because Verse are repeated. And to what the Folly of the Stoicks, the Ig- is there said on them, I will here norance of others, and the Su- add some farther Particulars perstition of the Generality of concerning the Oracle of Apollo, Men had oppos'd many Obje- who was call'd Pythius, from his ctions to this Opinion, Lucre- killing the Python, a huge Sertius removes them all, and first, pent, which had its Name in 39.v.confutes the Stoicks, who f αυθές, because he was engenheld, that the Sun, the Sea, the der'd of the Putrefaction of the Earth, in short, the Universe, Earth, and sprung from the being animated by a Spirit in- Filth that the Flood of Deucalifus'd thro' the whole, is God. on had left behind it, Ovid. Thus Manilius, lib. 1. v. 238. Metam. 1. V.438. Hoc opus immenfi constructum Aeris, atque ignis, terræ, pe- Te quoque, maxime Python, Tum genuit; populisque novis, incognite Serpens, Terror eras: tantum spatii de monte tenebas; Hunc Left SUPERSTITION prompt thee to believe, ПоNOTÈ S. Hunc Deus arcitenens, Are spir'd by the God, she was about to pronounce the Oracle. : At Delphi, when the The bounded Deity does shoot And beats the Skin out like ex Now the Person, or Prophetess, who, instead of Apollo, pronounc'd the Oracle, and gave Answer to those that came to confult the God, was a Maid, and the first that perform'd it was Phenomoë, the Daughterpanded Gold.... of Apollo. The Oracle was delivered from a Place in the Tem- And Dryden, in OEdipus, makes ple, call'd the Adytum, which the old Tirefias say : was the most secret and retir'd Now the God shakes me! he Part of it, and into which none but the Prophetess was permitted to enter; and, according to the Description Strabo gives of it, it was a deep and crooked Cave, with a Mouth or Entrance but indifferently large, and out of which the Answer of the God was thought to afcend, and inspire the Prophetess. Over the Mouth of this Cave stood the Tripod, upon which when the Prophetess got up, the was im mediately transported with a Spirit of Divination; and then gave the Answer, sometimes in Profe, sometimes in Verse. Du comes! he comes! feel him now Like a strong Spirit, charm'd into a Tree, without a Wind: He struggles, and he tears my aged Trunk 4 ries burft; I shall be young again, &c. Choul, in his Treatise de la Religion des anciens Romains, gives us the Form of the Tripod with a Crow fitting on it, as a Bird facred to Apollo, and with a Harp and Laurel at the Feet of it. To which we may add, that in Constantine's Oration, ad Sacrorum cœtum, in Eufebius. there is Mention made, cap. 18. of a Serpent also twining about the Tripod, and of a Diadem with which the Prophetess was adorn'd. Lee, in the Tragedy of Mithridates, defscribes the Ago- by confidering the admirable Orny of the Pythian, when, in-der and Connexion of all the 124. That Sun, &c.] Pythagoras, Plato, Trifmegiftus, and many others of the antient Philosophers, imagin'd the World to be endow'd with a rational Soul, and to partake of the Nature of the God that made it. They were induc'd to this Belief, Parts |