L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits | Page 5

without adequate reason, to have
borrowed directly from the other. [Footnote: It is hardly necessary to
refer to the pretended letters between St. Paul and Seneca. Besides the
evidence from style, some of the dates they contain are quite sufficient
to condemn them as clumsy forgeries. They are mentioned, but with no

expression of belief in their genuineness, by Jerome and Augustine. See
Jones, "On the Canon," ii. 80.]
But the philosopher, be it remembered, discoursed to a large and not
inattentive audience, and surely the soil was not all unfruitful on which
his seed was scattered when he proclaimed that God dwells not in
temples of wood and stone, nor wants the ministrations of human
hands;[Footnote: Sen., Ep. 95, and in Lactantius, Inst. vi.] that He has
no delight in the blood of victims:[Footnote: Ep. 116: "Colitur Deus
non tauris sed pia et recta voluntate."] that He is near to all His
creatures:[Footnote: Ep. 41, 73.] that His Spirit resides in men's
hearts:[Footnote: Ep. 46: "Sacer intra nos spiritus sedet."] that all men
are truly His offspring:[Footnote: "De Prov," i.] that we are members of
one body, which is God or Nature;[Footnote: Ep. 93, 95: "Membra
sumus magni corporis."] that men must believe in God before they can
approach Him:[Footnote: Ep. 95: "Primus Deorum cultus est Deos
credere."] that the true service of God is to be like unto Him:[Footnote:
Ep. 95: "Satis coluit quisquis imitatus est."] that all men have sinned,
and none performed all the works of the law:[Footnote: Sen. de Ira. i.
14; ii. 27: "Quis est iste qui se profitetur omnibus legibus innocentem?"]
that God is no respecter of nations, ranks, or conditions, but all,
barbarian and Roman, bond and free, are alike under His all-seeing
Providence.[Footnote: "De Benef.," iii. 18: "Virtus omnes admittit,
libertinos, servos, reges." These and many other passages are collected
by Champagny, ii. 546, after Fabricius and others, and compared with
well-known texts of Scripture. The version of the Vulgate shows a
great deal of verbal correspondence. M. Troplong remarks, after De
Maistre, that Seneca has written a fine book on Providence, for which
there was not even a name at Rome in the time of Cicero.--"L'Influence
du Christianisme," &c., i., ch. 4.]
"St. Paul enjoined submission and obedience even to the tyranny of
Nero, and Seneca fosters no ideas subversive of political subjection.
Endurance is the paramount virtue of the Stoic. To forms of
government the wise man was wholly indifferent; they were among the
external circumstances above which his spirit soared in serene
self-contemplation. We trace in Seneca no yearning for a restoration of
political freedom, nor does he even point to the senate, after the manner
of the patriots of the day, as a legitimate check to the autocracy of the

despot. The only mode, in his view, of tempering tyranny is to educate
the tyrant himself in virtue. His was the self-denial of the Christians,
but without their anticipated compensation. It seems impossible to
doubt that in his highest flights of rhetoric--and no man ever
recommended the unattainable with a finer grace--Seneca must have
felt that he was labouring to build up a house without foundations; that
his system, as Caius said of his style, was sand without lime. He was
surely not unconscious of the inconsistency of his own position, as a
public man and a minister, with the theories to which he had wedded
himself; and of the impossibility of preserving in it the purity of his
character as a philosopher or a man. He was aware that in the existing
state of society at Rome, wealth was necessary to men high in station;
wealth alone could retain influence, and a poor minister became at once
contemptible. The distributor of the Imperial favours must have his
banquets, his receptions, his slaves and freedmen; he must possess the
means of attracting if not of bribing; he must not seem too virtuous, too
austere, among an evil generation; in order to do good at all he must
swim with the stream, however polluted it might be. All this
inconsistency Seneca must have contemplated without blenching; and
there is something touching in the serenity he preserved amidst the
conflict that must have perpetually raged between his natural sense and
his acquired principles. Both Cicero and Seneca were men of many
weaknesses, and we remark them the more because both were
pretenders to unusual strength of character; but while Cicero lapsed
into political errors, Seneca cannot be absolved of actual crime.
Nevertheless, if we may compare the greatest masters of Roman
wisdom together, the Stoic will appear, I think, the more earnest of the
two, the more anxious to do his duty for its own sake, the more sensible
of the claims of mankind upon him for such precepts of virtuous