The Religion of Nature Delineated by William Wollaston (mystery books to read .txt) 📕

contraria est: “No one virtue can be contradictory to any other virtue.” (Seneca, De Clementi.) ↩

עגי באותה שעה: “Poor at that particular time:” according to that determination in a case something like this, which occurs in Mishnah Peah V, 4. ↩

Utrique simul consulendum est. Dabo egenti; sed ut ipse non egeam, etc.: “Regard is to be had to both at the same time; I will give to one in want, yet so that I may not want myself, etc.” (Seneca, De Beneficiis.) Ita te aliorum miserescat, ne tui alios misereat: “Take pity of others, but do it in such a manner as not to stand in need of the pity of others yourself.” (Plautus, Trinummi.) ↩

Sextus Empiricus seems to be fond of that filthy saying of Zeno, in relation to what is storied of Jocasta and Oedipus: μὴ ἄτοπον εἶναι τὸ μόρίον τῆς μητρὸς⁠ ⁠… τρῖψαι, κ.τ.λ. any more, than to rub with the hand any other part of her, when in pain. Here only τρίψις is considered; as if all was nothing more, but barely τρίψις; but this is an incomplete idea of the act [Clarke chastely refuses to translate this, but the gist of it is that Sextus Empricus, in Outlines of Pyrrhonism, claims that Zeno says that rubbing your mother’s naughty bits with your own shouldn’t be considered any stranger than rubbing some more mundane part of her with your hand —⁠Editor]. For τρίψις τοῦ μόρίον is more than τρίψις by itself: and τρίψις τοῦ μόρίον τῆς μητρὸς is still more: and certainly τρίβειν τὴν χεῖρα τῇ χειρὶ is a different thing from τρίβειν τὸ μορίον τῷ μορίῳ, etc. He might as well have said, that to rub a red hot piece of iron with one’s bare hand is the same as to rub one that is cold, or any other innocent piece of matter: for all is but τρίψις. Thus men, affecting to appear freethinkers, show themselves to be but half-thinkers, or less: they do not take in the whole of that which is to be considered. ↩

Sunt res quædam ex tempore, et ex consilio, non ex sua natura considerandæ⁠ ⁠… Quid tempora petant, aut quid personis dignum sit, considerandum est, etc.: “Some things are to be considered, not as they are in their own nature, but the particular time and the intention are to be taken into the account⁠ ⁠… We are to consider what the times require, and what is proper, for such and such persons, etc.” (Cicero, De Inventione.) ↩

Οὐ λέγεις φιλόπονον τόν διά παιδισκάριον ἀγρυπνοῦντα: “You will not say that a person is industrious, because he once watched all night with his daughter.” (Arrian, Discourses of Epictetus.) Amico ægro aliquis assidet: probamus. At hoc si hereditatis causâ facit, vultur est, cadaver expectat: “A man watches with a sick friend: it is allowed to be a good action; but if he did it in order to make himself his heir, he is a vulture, and watched for the carcass.” (Seneca, Epistles.) ↩

Οὐ γὰρ εἷς ἀρνήσεώς ἐστι τρόπος: “There are more ways than one of denying a thing.” (Johannes Chrysostom, De Anna.) ↩

Τὸ κράτιστον τῶν ἁγαθῶν, ἡ ἀλήθεια, καὶ ὁ ἔσχατος ὅρος τῆς πονηρίας, τὸ ψεῦδος: “Of all the good things in the world, truth is the best, and falsehood is the utmost boundary of all evil.” (Basil.) ↩

Notwithstanding that paradox of the Stoics, Ὅτι ἴσα τὰ ἁμαρτήματα, καὶ τὰ κατορθώματα, “That all sins are equal, and all duties equal,” in Cicero, Plutarch, Diogenes Laërtius, and others, which might easily be confuted from their own words in Cicero. For if sinning be like passing a line, or limit; that is, going over or beyond that line: then, to sin being equal to going beyond that line, to go more (or farther) beyond that line must be to sin more. Who sees not the falsity of that, nec bono viro meliorem⁠ ⁠… nec forti fortiorem, nec sapiente sapientiorem posse fieri, “that it is impossible for a good man to be better⁠ ⁠… or a strong man to be stronger, or a wise man wiser?” (Cicero, Paradoxa Stoicorum) and so on. Nullum inter scelus et erratum discrimen facere, “to make no difference betwixt notorious wickedness and mere mistakes” (as St. Jerome expresses their opinion: if that epistle to Celantia be his) is to alter or destroy the natures of things. ↩

Sure that Wiseman was but a bad accountant, who reckoned, τὴν μεγίστην οὐσίαν ἀποβάλὼν, δραχμὴν μίαν ἐκβεβληκέναι: “that he who throws away the greatest estate, throws away but a drachm.” (Plutarch, De Stoicorum Repugnantiis.) ↩

This is confessed in Cicero. Illud interest, quod in servo necando, si adsit injuria, semel peccatur: in patris vita violanda multa peccantur, etc. Multitudine peccatorum præstat, etc.: “There is this difference: that he who kills a slave, if it be done wrongfully, is guilty of sin in that one respect only; but he that wickedly takes away the life of his father, sins in many respects, etc. He excels in the multitude of his sins, etc.” (Paradoxa Stoicorum.) ↩

This may serve for an answer to Chrysippus, and them who say, εἰ ἀληθὲς ἀληθοῦς μᾶλλον οὐκ ἔστιν, οὐδὲ ψεῦδος ψεύδους· οὕτως οὐδὲ ἀπάτη ἀπάτης, οὐδὲ ἁμάρτημα ἁμαρτήματος, κ.τ.λ.: “That if no one truth be greater than another truth, nor no one falsehood greater than another