verses deserved the name: his principles were temperate, moral, humane, and above all things pacifying and conciliatory: when he admitted a disciple into his presence, he took him ever after into his most cordial friendship and confidence, and men esteemed it the highest honour of their lives to have passed their probation in the school of Pythagoras, and to be allowed access to his person.

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After he had staid twenty years at Croton, he removed to Metapontum, where he had a magnificent house, which was afterwards converted into a temple to Ceres, and a school which was called the Museum here he was visited by the famous Abaris, priest of the Hyperborean Apollo; and his fabulous historians give out, that having taken Abaris's arrow, he rode upon it through the air to Tauromi nium in one day, though distant from Metapontum some days sailing. Hearing that his aged master Pherecydes was dying of a loathsome disease in Delos, he went thither, and exerted all his art to recover him; and, when he was dead, having buried him with all the ceremonies due to a father, he returned to Italy. This instance of friendship is the last public action I find recorded in his life: the manner of his death is variously reported, as well as the age at which he died; the most probable account fixes it at eighty years; as to the catastrophe of his death, the relation most to be credited informs us, that one Cylon of Croton, a rich, ambitious, and disorderly man, having offered himself to the college and been rejected by Pythagoras, was so enraged thereby, that having collected a hired mob, he assaulted the house of Milo, when Pythagoras and his disciples were there assembled, and burnt the house with every body in it, two or three excepted, who narrowly escaped. Pythagoras, to whom his disciples even in the last extremity paid a filial reve

rence and attention, was solicited to make his escape; but not being willing to expose himself to the people, as a fugitive anxious to preserve life, when his friends were on the point of perishing, he resisted their entreaties, and was burnt to death. To this account I incline; but others contend, that he escaped from the flames, and was killed in pursuit; some relate that he took refuge in the Muses' Temple at Metapontum, where being kept from victuals forty days, he was starved; and other historians, with as little probability on their side, say, that being pursued into a bean-plot, he there stopped, because he would not pass over prohibited ground, and yielded his throat to the pursuers. After his death, his surviving disciples were dispersed into Greece and the neighbouring countries.

Thus perished Pythagoras, the Samian philosopher, founder of the Italian school, and the great luminary of the heathen world.

NUMBER X.

HAVING in my two preceding papers been at some pains in collecting an account of the life of Pytha goras, from the many various unconnected particulars scattered up and down in the works of the sophists and biographers touching that extraordinary man, I now come to my main object, in which I desire the reader's attention, whilst I attempt to shew in what manner the heathen writers have applied these particulars in opposition to the life and actions of Christ; this will be the subject of the present paper; in my next I purpose to con

clude by answering those arguments on which modern cavillers have grounded their reasonings against the gospel miracles; a subject to which I have been led by Dr. Mac-Infidel's discourse, of which some notice has been taken in former papers. It has been unfortunate for Pythagoras, that the writers of Julian's time, to pay court to the emperor, should have corrupted their account of him with so many fictions and absurdities; for he was truly a very wonderful man: but when they undertook to depreciate the character of Christ, his doctrines and miracles, by ascribing actions to Pytha goras equal, or, as they conceived, superior to what Christ had done upon earth, they were driven to strange resources in deifying their philosopher; for in fact, the time was rather past for those delusions; deification after death was the most that could be attempted, and even the Julium Sidus held its place in the heavens by a precarious tenure: at the same time an apotheosis would not serve their purpose; it was necessary to make Pythagoras a god or the son of a god, and to give him a supernatural birth from the womb of a virgin: their next business was to invest him with the power of working miracles; but here some stubborn facts laid in their way; he had visited Epimenides in his last sickness without being able to prolong his life; they were driven to ridiculous resources; and, taking Abaris's arrow in aid, sent their philosopher upon it through the air from Metapontum to Taurominium; because Christ had walked on the sea, Pythagoras rode through the skies; because Christ had been forty days fasting in the wilderness, Pythagoras was to be forty days without food in the Temple of the Muses at Metapontum; because Christ descended into Hades, and rose again from the dead, and appeared upon earth, Pythagoras descended to the

shades below, remained there a complete year, saw Homer, Hesiod, and other departed spirits, returned upon earth wan and emaciated, and reported what he had seen in full assembly of his disciples, whilst his mother, by his special direction before his descent, registered upon tablets all that passed, and noted the times of his temporary death and resurrection; to carry on the competition, he was made to allay winds, tempests, and earthquakes, to cure diseases, whether of mind or body, and to foretel to certain fishermen, whom he found at work, how many fish they should inclose in their net: the reader, who has consulted Porphyry and Jambli chus, will call to mind other coincidences.

With what superior, what incontestible strength of evidence does the disciple of Christ meet the disciple of Pythagoras in his comparison between their masters! The heathen teacher was almost a miracle of erudition; he traversed the East in pursuit of science, and collected knowledge, wherever it was to be found, with unremitting industry: Christ lived in privacy and obscurity, educated only in the humble trade and occupation of his parents, to whom he was obedient and devoted, till he set out upon the functions of his mission. The person of the first was captivating and comely, not to be approached but with awe and adoration, with preparatory penances and rigid initiations, with every artifice to set him off that human wit could devise; the other was despised and rejected of men, the simplest and the meekest being that ever walked the earth; conversing freely with all men, presenting himself to the poor and lowly, to women and to little children; in him was no form of comeliness that men should desire; no artifice or trick to catch applause or to excite surprise: if he exercised his miraculous power in healing the infirm, or reviving

the dead, he did it in silence, and under injunction of secrecy, directing men to pay their thanks to God alone, and forbidding them even to call him good. No magic numbers, nor mystic symbols obscured his doctrines, but he delivered the simple system of his pure morality in little easy anecdotes, levelled to the capacity, and fitted to the memory of the poorest and most illiterate. From such he chose his disciples, that the wisdom of this world might have no share in his ministry, and he rested upon the weakest agents the task of preaching and propagating the sublimest religion. Gloomy enthusiasts have buried themselves in desarts and caverns of the earth to brood in solitude and spend their days in penances and prayers; ambitious innovators have been carried to the highest pitch of human greatness by becoming founders of a new religion; but Christ taught his disciples neither to shun society, nor to disturb authorities; he told them indeed that they should die for the faith they professed, but it was not the death of soldiers, but of martyrs, they should suffer, and these precepts he confirmed by his own example, being led like a lamb to the slaughter; if they who profess his religion were to practise it, Universal Love and Benevolence would ob. tain upon earth.

But of the internal evidences of Christ's religion I am not now to speak; so long as the distinctions between good and evil exist, these can need no defence; if men agree in the one, they cannot differ or dispute about the other. With regard to the gospel account of Christ's miracles, I may be allowed, in general, to observe, that these forgeries of Porphyry and Jamblichus in imitation of them, warrant a fair presumption, that if these writers could have disproved the authority of the Evangelists and controverted the matter of fact, they would