Deviations from the rules of sobriety, justice, and piety meet with small indulgence in the Stoic writings; and they who profess to admire Epictetus, unless they pursue that severely virtuous conduct which he everywhere prescribes, will find themselves treated by him with the utmost degree of scorn and contempt. An immoral character is indeed, more or less, the outcast of all sects of philosophy; and Seneca quotes even Epicurus to prove the universal obligation of a virtuous life.58 Of this great truth, God never left himself without witness. Persons of distinguished talents and opportunities seem to have been raised, from time to time, by Providence to check the torrent of corruption, and to preserve the sense of moral obligations on the minds of the multitude, to whom the various occupations of life left but little leisure to form deductions of their own. But then, they wanted a proper commission to enforce their precepts; they intermixed with them, through false reasoning, many gross mistakes; and their unavoidable ignorance, in several important points, entangled them with doubts, which easily degenerated into pernicious errors.

§ 38. If there are others who reject Christianity from motives of dislike to its peculiar doctrines, they will scarcely fail of entertaining more favourable impressions of it if they can be prevailed on, with impartiality, to compare the holy Scriptures, from whence alone the Christian religion is to be learned, with the Stoic writings; and then fairly to consider whether there is anything to be met with in the discourses of our blessed Saviour, in the writings of his Apostles, or even in the obscurest parts of the prophetic books, by which, equitably interpreted, either their senses or their reason are contradicted, as they are by the paradoxes of these philosophers; and if not, whether notices from above, of things in which, though we comprehend them but imperfectly, we are possibly much more interested than at present we discern, ought not to be received with implicit veneration, as useful exercises and trials of that duty which finite understandings owe to infinite wisdom.

§ 39. Antiquity furnishes but very few particulars of the life of Epictetus. He was born at Hierapolis, a city of Phrygia; but of what parents is unknown, as well as by what means he came to Rome, where he was the slave of Epaphroditus, one of Nero's courtiers.59 It is reported that when his master once put his leg to the torture, Epictetus, with great composure, and even smiling, observed to him, "You will certainly break my leg;" which accordingly happened, and he continued, in the same tone of voice, "Did not I tell you that you would break it?"60 This accident might perhaps be the occasion of his lameness, which, however, some authors say he had from his early years,61 and others attribute to the rheumatism.62 At what time he obtained his liberty doth not appear. When the philosophers, by a decree of Domitian, were banished from Rome, Epictetus retired to Nicopolis,63 a city of Epirus, where he taught philosophy; from which he doth not seem to have derived any external advantages, as he is universally said to have been extremely poor. At least he was so when he lived at Rome, where his whole furniture consisted of a bed,64 a pipkin, and an earthen lamp;65 which last was purchased for about a hundred pounds, after his death, by a person whom Lucian ridicules for it, as hoping to acquire the wisdom of Epictetus by studying over it. His only attendant was a woman, whom he took in his advanced years to nurse a child whom, otherwise, one of his friends would have exposed to perish;66 an amiable proof of the poor old man's good-nature, and disapprobation, it is to be hoped, of that shocking, yet common, instance of heathen blindness and barbarity.

In this extreme poverty, a cripple, unattended, and destitute of almost every convenience of life, Epictetus was not only obliged by the rules of his philosophy to think himself happy, but actually did so, according to the distich of which Aulus Gellius affirms him to have been the author:67

"A slave, in body maimed, as Irus poor;
 Yet to the gods was Epictetus dear."

He is said to have returned to Rome in the reign of Hadrian, and to have been treated by him with a high degree of familiarity.68 If this be true, he lived to a great age. But that he should continue alive to the time of M. Antoninus, as Themistius69 and Suidas70 affirm, is utterly improbable,71 as the learned Fabricius observes; to whose life of Epictetus72 I am greatly indebted. When or where he died is, I think, nowhere mentioned. All authors agree in bearing testimony to the unblemished conduct of his life, and the usefulness of his instructions. The last-named emperor expresses much obligation to a friend who had communicated his works to him;73 and in another place he ranks him, not only with Chrysippus, but with Socrates.74 A. Gellius calls him the greatest of the Stoics.75 Origen affirms that his writings had done more good than Plato's;76 and Simplicius says, perhaps by way of indirect opposition to an infinitely better book, that he who is not influenced by them is reclaimable by nothing but the chastisements of another world.77 In what manner he instructed his pupils will be seen in the following treatise.

§ 40. There are so many of the sentiments and expressions of Christianity in it, that one should be strongly tempted to think that Epictetus was acquainted with the New Testament, if such a supposition was not highly injurious to his character. To have known the contents of that book, and not to have been led by them into an inquiry which must have convinced him of their truth, would argue such an obstinacy of prejudice as one would not willingly impute to a mind which appears so well disposed. And, even passing over this consideration, to have borrowed so much from Christianity as he seems to have done, without making the least acknowledgment from whence he received it, would be an instance of disingenuity utterly unworthy of an honest man, and inconsistent with his practice in other respects; for he often quotes, with great applause, the sentences of many writers not of his own sect. Possibly indeed he might, like the other heathens in general, have a peculiar contempt of, and aversion to, Christian authors, as akin to the Jews, and opposers of the established worship; notwithstanding those parts of them which he must approve. But still, I hope, his conformity with the sacred writings may be accounted for without supposing him acquainted with Christianity as such. The great number of its professors, dispersed through the Roman empire, had probably introduced several of the New Testament phrases into the popular language; and the Christian religion might by that time have diffused some degree of general illumination, of which many might receive the benefit who were ignorant of the source from whence it proceeded; and Epictetus I apprehend to have been of this number. Several striking instances of this resemblance between him and the New Testament have been observed in the notes; and the attentive reader will find many which are not mentioned, and may perceive from them, either that the Stoics admired the Christian language, however they came to the knowledge of it, or that treating a subject practically, and with a feeling of its force, leads men to such strong expressions as we find in Scripture, and should find oftener in the philosophers if they had been more in earnest; but, however, they occur frequently enough to vindicate those, in which the Scriptures abound, from the contempt and ridicule of light minds.

§ 41. Arrian, the disciple of Epictetus, to whom we are obliged for these discourses, was a Greek by birth, but a senator and consul of Rome, and an able commander in war.78 He imitated Xenophon, both in his life and writings; and particularly in delivering to posterity the conversations of his master. There were originally twenty books of them, besides the Enchiridion, which seems to be taken out of them, and an account of his life and death. Very little order or method is to be found in them, or was from the nature of them to be expected. The connection is often scarcely discoverable; a reference to particular incidents, long since forgotten, at the same time that it evidences their genuineness, often renders them obscure in some places, and the great corruption of the text in others. Yet, under all these disadvantages, this immethodical collection is perhaps one of the most valuable remains of antiquity; and they who consult it with any degree of attention can scarcely fail of receiving improvement. Indeed, it is hardly possible to be inattentive to so awakening a speaker as Epictetus. There is such a warmth and spirit in his exhortations; and his good sense is enlivened by such a keenness of wit, and gaiety of humour, as render the study of him a most delightful as well as profitable entertainment.

§ 42. For this reason it was judged proper that a translation of him should be undertaken; there being none, I believe, but of the Enchiridion in any modern language, excepting a pretty good French one, published about a hundred and fifty years ago, and so extremely scarce that I was unable to procure it, till Mr.