These, introduced into it, commence and complete their function; they die, and are dismissed.
Like the individual, the nation comes into existence without its own knowledge, and dies without its own consent, often against its own will.
National life differs in no particular from individual, except in this, that it is spread over a longer span, but no nation can escape its inevitable term.

Each, if its history be well considered, shows its time of infancy, its time of youth, its time of maturity, its time of decline, if its phases of life be completed.
In the phases of existence of all, so far as those phases are completed, there are common characteristics, and, as like accordances in individuals point out that all are living under a reign of law, we are justified in inferring that the course of nations, and indeed the progress of humanity, does not take place in a chance or random way, that supernatural interventions never break the chain of historic acts, that every historic event has its warrant in some preceding event, and gives warrant to others that are to follow..
But this conclusion is the essential principle of Stoicism--that Grecian philosophical system which, as I have already said, offered a support in their hour of trial and an unwavering guide in the vicissitudes of life, not only to many illustrious Greeks, but also to some of the great philosophers, statesmen, generals, and emperors of Rome; a system which excluded chance from every thing, and asserted the direction of all events by irresistible necessity, to the promotion of perfect good; a system of earnestness, sternness, austerity, virtue--a protest in favor of the common-sense of mankind.

And perhaps we shall not dissent from the remark of Montesquieu, who affirms that the destruction of the Stoics was a great calamity to the human race; for they alone made great citizens, great men.
To the principle of government by law, Latin Christianity, in its papal form, is in absolute contradiction.

The history of this branch of the Christian Church is almost a diary of miracles and supernatural interventions.

These show that the supplications of holy men have often arrested the course of Nature--if, indeed, there be any such course; that images and pictures have worked wonders; that bones, hairs, and other sacred relics, have wrought miracles.