ical argument with the
philosophers Priscus and Maximus on the nature of the soul. The efforts
which he made, of mind as well as body, most probably hastened his death.
His wound began to bleed with great violence; his respiration was
embarrassed by the swelling of the veins; he called for a draught of cold
water, and as soon as he had drank it expired without pain, about the hour
of midnight."(25) Such, Gentlemen, is the final exhibition of the Religion
of Reason: in the insensibility of conscience, in the ignorance of the
very idea of sin, in the contemplation of his own moral consistency, in
the simple absence of fear, in the cloudless self-confidence, in the
serene self-possession, in the cold self-satisfaction, we recognize the
mere Philosopher.

7.

Gibbon paints with pleasure what, conformably with the sentiments of a
godless intellectualism, was an historical fulfilment of his own idea of
moral perfection; Lord Shaftesbury had already drawn out that idea in a
theoretical form, in his celebrated collection of Treatises which he has
called "Characteristics of men, manners, opinions, views;" and it will be
a further illustration of the subject before us, if you will allow me,
Gentlemen, to make some extracts from this work.

One of his first attacks is directed against the doctrine of reward and
punishment, as if it introduced a notion into religion inconsistent with
the true apprehension of the beauty of virtue, and with the liberality and
nobleness of spirit in which it should be pursued. "Men have not been
content," he says, "to show the natural advantages of honesty and virtue.
They have rather lessened these, the better, as they thought, to advance
another foundation. They have made virtue so mercenary a thing, and have
talked so much of its rewards, that one can hardly tell what there is in
it, after all, which can be worth rewarding. For to be _bribed_ only or
_terrified_ into an honest practice, bespeaks little of real honesty or
worth." "If," he says elsewhere, insinuating what he dare not speak out,
"if through hope merely of reward, or fear of punishment, the creature be
inclined to do the good he hates, or restrained from doing the ill to
which he is not otherwise in the least degree averse there is in this case
no virtue or goodness whatever. There is no more of rectitude, piety, or
sanctity, in a creature thus reformed, than there is meekness or
gentleness in a tiger strongly chained, or innoc