Vindiciae Christianae; A Comparative Estimate of the Genius and Temper of Th Greek, the Roman, the Hindu, the Mahometan, and the Christian Religions

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1826 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER X. THE FUTURE STATE. SECT. I. AH nations have acknowledged a future state--Views of the Greeks--The realms of the shades visited by the Grecian heroes--Details of the poets--Homer's evocation of the ghosts--Their appetite for blood--Earthly passions and discontents--Reward scantily conferred--Retribution abundant, but not always equitable--No felicity for the good--Fabulous punishment of the wicked--Virgil--Inimitable description of the entrance into hell--Various regions--Their inhabitants--Tartarus--The surrounding and fiery deluge of Phlegethon--Terrific punishments--Elysium--Poetical embellishments--Meads, groves, streams--Insipid enjoyments--Continued predominance of earthly passions and desires--Moral estimate--Violation of all probability and justice by the poet--The terrors of his ghosts--Their cold and languid siknee--Their mangled or mutilated limbs--Their unspiritual character--Their unimproved existence--Philosophy of Virgil in his views of hell--Ambiguous and obscure--Purgation preparatory to Elysium--Elysium to be succeeded, after a thousand years, by a state of transmigration--The change unaccounted for--Philosophers of Greece and Rome--Various and contradictory opinions on the nature of the soul--Doctrine of Pythagoras and of Plato--Their metempsychosis--The three-fold nature of the soul--The soul an emanation from God, and to return, after due purifications in its earthly state, to its original source--Contradiction and absurdity of these tenets--Socrates--His uncertainty and doubts--General scepticism of the learned avowed and diffused. HT H E tenet of a future state has been embraced _ to be diffused by the reasonings of the philosopher, or the enunciations of the legislator. The ignorant It remained not and the wise, the rude an...