Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/133

 "Theological Institution," is able to say, "I am not aware, indeed, that even Christian writers who have attempted to defend the same truth within the same limits of natural theology, have been able to do anything better than to reaffirm his position, and perhaps amplify and illustrate his argument." The tract referred to is, of course, the famous production known as the "De Sera Numinis Vindicta." It is a bold and beautiful attempt to reconcile the existence of an actively benevolent Deity with the long-continued, often permanent, impunity of wickedness in this world; an endeavour to solve the question raised, especially by Epicureans, but not unfraught with solicitude for philosophers of other schools, respecting the patent fact that human virtue and human vice have no natural and necessary connexion with human happiness on the one hand and human misery on the other. Christian translators of the piece, from Amyot down to the writers just quoted, have hailed it as an effective vindication of the ways of God to man, and Comte Joseph de Maistre, whose paraphrase is designed, as he says, to please "ladies and foreigners," is quite convinced that such a justification could not possibly have been written by one who was not a Christian. Even*