Stoics,[1] who were the most popular and most numerous sect among the religionaries of antiquity, were the great asserters of Fate and Necessity. The case was also the same among the Jews, as among the heathen; the Jews, I say, who besides the light of nature, had many books of Revelation (some whereof are now lost) and who had intimate and personal conversation with God himself. They were principally divided into three sects, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes.[2] The Sadducees, who were esteemed an irreligious and atheistical sect,[3] maintained the liberty of man. But
- ↑ Cicero de Nat. Deor., l. 1.
- ↑ Josephus Antiq., l. 18, c. 2.
- ↑ With respect to the Sadducees also, I fancy Collins relied upon Cudworth. Our author’s reference to Josephus is erroneous. In the section referred to, the Jewish historian deals only with their belief that death was the end of all. It is in two other places (Antiquities, Bk. xiii, ch. vi, § 9; and Wars, Bk. II., chap. viii., § 14) that he deals with their opinions on fate. He says that the Sadducees utterly rejected fate, that the Essenes absolutely accepted it, and that the Pharisees taught a mixture of fate and free-will. But this “fate” was obviously a divine constraint, and not a natural necessity; for the dispute among these sects was clearly upon whether—to use the very words of Josephus—God is concerned in our doing or not doing what is evil. Collins adds that the Sadducees were esteemed an irreligious and atheistical sects, but this is using language very loosely. They admitted the existence of God and kept the law: yet they were “irreligious” to this extent, that they would have no more religion than was absolutely necessary.—G.W.F.
Now it is remarked by Cudworth (Chap. V., § 1) that Epicurus not only rejected divination and prediction of future events because he denied providence, but “pretended this further reason also against it, because it was a thing absolutely inconsistent with liberty of will, and destructive of the same.” But Diogenes Laertius, from whom Cudworth derived his information, does not represent Epicurus as holding the doctrine of Free Will as it is taught by modern divines, and as it was opposed by Collins. He speaks, like Collins, of the liberty to act as we please, but he does not teach that our choice is capricious and incalculable; and while he denies the tyranny of gods and the necessity of destiny, he also rebukes those who adore Fortune as a deity, although it contributes nothing to the course of events. On the whole, it would seem that Epicurus denied Necessity in the sense of a positive constraint upon our will, and not in the sense of what is called moral causation, which would be inconsistent with his teaching as to the cultivation of good habits.—G.W.F.
