But this conclusion is the essential principle of Stoicism—­that Grecian philosophical system which, as I have already said, offered a support in their hour of trial and an unwavering guide in the vicissitudes of life, not only to many illustrious Greeks, but also to some of the great philosophers, statesmen, generals, and emperors of Rome; a system which excluded chance from every thing, and asserted the direction of all events by irresistible necessity, to the promotion of perfect good; a system of earnestness, sternness, austerity, virtue—­a protest in favor of the common-sense of mankind.  And perhaps we shall not dissent from the remark of Montesquieu, who affirms that the destruction of the Stoics was a great calamity to the human race; for they alone made great citizens, great men.

To the principle of government by law, Latin Christianity, in its papal form, is in absolute contradiction.  The history of this branch of the Christian Church is almost a diary of miracles and supernatural interventions.  These show that the supplications of holy men have often arrested the course of Nature—­if, indeed, there be any such course; that images and pictures have worked wonders; that bones, hairs, and other sacred relics, have wrought miracles.  The criterion or proof of the authenticity of many of these objects is, not an unchallengeable record of their origin and history, but an exhibition of their miracle-working powers.

Is not that a strange logic which finds proof of an asserted fact in an inexplicable illustration of something else?

Even in the darkest ages intelligent Christian men must have had misgivings as to these alleged providential or miraculous interventions.  There is a solemn grandeur in the orderly progress of Nature which profoundly impresses us; and such is the character of continuity in the events of our individual life that we instinctively doubt the occurrence of the supernatural in that of our neighbor.  The intelligent man knows well that, for his personal behoof, the course of Nature has never been checked; for him no miracle has ever been worked; he attributes justly every event of his life to some antecedent event; this he looks upon as the cause, that as the consequence.  When it is affirmed that, in his neighbor’s behalf, such grand interventions have been vouchsafed, he cannot do otherwise than believe that his neighbor is either deceived, or practising deception.

As might, then, have been anticipated, the Catholic doctrine of miraculous intervention received a rude shock at the time of the Reformation, when predestination and election were upheld by some of the greatest theologians, and accepted by some of the greatest Protestant Churches.  With stoical austerity Calvin declares:  “We were elected from eternity, before the foundation of the world, from no merit of our own, but according to the purpose of the divine pleasure.”  In affirming this, Calvin was resting on the belief