purpose, they sanctified them as emblematic of some divinity, or even worshipped them as in themselves divine; while, on the other hand, the Egyptian priests, with an affectation of mysterious wisdom, expressed the attributes of God, the operations of the elements, the motions and influences of the heavenly bodies, the rising and falling of the Nile and its effects, by symbolic representations derived from the known and familiar properties of animals and even vegetables. Hence these became, first, representations of their divinities, and afterwards the direct objects of divine reverence. Thus man was taught to bow down to birds and beasts and creeping things, to plants and herbs, to stocks and stones. Nothing was too base for grovelling superstition to adore; the heavens, the earth, the air, the sea, each hill, each river, each wood, was peopled with imaginary deities; every nation, every city, every family, had its peculiar guardian gods. The name and reverence of the Supreme Father of the universe was banished from the earth; or, if remembered at all, men scrupled not to associate with him their basest idols; and deeming him too exalted and remote to regard human affairs, they looked to these idols as the immediate authors of evil and of good; they judged of their power, by comparing the degrees of prosperity their worshippers enjoyed. Was one nation or family more successful than another, their guardian gods were adopted by their rivals; and every day extended more widely this intercommunity of folly and of blasphemy.

Connected with this worship was the opinion of the power of

other inferior 'generated gods, he adds, "We are the rather concerned to "make out this difference, because it is notorious that they did many times "also confound them together; attributing the government of the whole "world to the gods promiscuously, and without putting any due discrimi"nation between the supreme and inferior. The true reason whereof seems to have beeu this; because they supposed the supreme God not to "do all immediately in the government of the world, but to permit much to "his inferior ministers: one instance of which we had in Ovid, and innumera"ble such others might be cited out of their most sober writers." Cudworth further grants," That the same names were used to express, some"times the supreme God, sometimes the parts of nature, sometimes an hero 66 or deified man." Vide Cudworth, p. 255. Amidst this confusion, the difference occasionally acknowledged by speculative men, to exist between the Supreme Intelligence, and the subordinate but more immediate agents in the government of the world, could produce no practical effect in checking the contagion of idolatry and its attendant crimes, and rather served to aggravate the guilt of those, who "knowing God, honoured him not as God," than to enlighten or reform mankind.

*

magic, or the arts to which the priests pretended, of discovering and even directing the effects ascribed to the operations of the elements, † the conjunctions of the stars, the influence of lucky and unlucky days, the power of invisible spirits, and the rabble of their idol gods. Connected with idolatry also was the trade of oracles and augurs, of diviners and soothsayers; to whom the dupes of heathen priestcraft restored, to calm their fears of futurity, and direct their conduct in every enterprise of doubt or hazard; while the babble of wretches distracted with fanaticism, or convulsed with intoxicating vapours, the flight and chattering of birds, the recollection of fleeting dreams, the inspection of entrails, and a thousand other modes equally capricious and absurd, were used by impostors, to blind and cheat their followers.

Thus impious and absurd was the whole system of idolatry; yet was it so extensive and deeply rooted, as to seem utterly incapable of being checked or reformed by any of the ordinary dispensations of Providence. There is reason to believe, that before the dispersion of mankind, a great part of them had apostatized from the worship of the one true God, and, struck perhaps with the influence of the air and of the winds, in remedying the effects of the deluge, had commenced the structure of the tower of Babel; not with the wild conceit of raising it till its top should reach to heaven, but that its top should be sacred to the heavens, the common temple of worship, and centre of their idolatrous union; and it is probable that their dispersion was designed to defeat this impious design, by confounding not only their languages, but still more their idolatrous creed, and rendering their universal combination, in this base apostacy, impracticable and transient. But however this may be, it is certain that in the five centuries which elapsed from the birth of Abraham, to the mission of Moses, idolatry had infected every part of the world, of which any records can be

* Vide, for a full account of this subject, Banier's History of Mythology, Lib. IV.; and on the whole of this subject of idolatry, Leland's very useful work on the Advantage and Necessity of Revelation, Part. I. ch. iii. iv. v.

vi. vii.

+Vide Stanleii Historia Philosophia Orientalis, cum notis Clerici, Lib. I. ch. xvi. xvii.; and from ch. xxiii. to the end of the first Book.

Vide Hutchinson's Works, i. 28, or the Abridgment of them by Duncan Forbes, in a Letter to a Bishop, p. 30 of his Works.

traced it had been carried to the fullest extent of mischievous

and absurd impiety by the Egyptians, the wisest and most celebrated nation of the then civilized globe: it had totally corrupted the Assyrians, and above all the Canaanites, who were the most warlike nations of the earth; as well as the Phænicians, who conducted the commerce of the world, and who diffused it wherever they extended their traffic, or planted their colonies.

Unhappily indeed experience proves, that the progress of reason and science has ever been totally ineffectual in checking the progress of idolatry. The order and beauty of the heavens; the grateful vicissitudes of days, and nights, and seasons; the fertility of the earth; all these, the more they were contemplated, instead of raising men's thoughts to the great first Cause, only rivetted more deeply the admiration and the idolatry which were paid to the host of heaven, and the elements of nature.* The ordinary judgments of God, famine and earthquake, sword and pestilence, were ascribed to the influence of the invisible and malignant powers and spirits, whom fear had created, and superstition adored. Pride and policy, gratitude and affection, daily added to the number of deified men: the whole system of paganism was defended by kings and legislators, who employed it as an engine of government, and derived from it sacredness and dignity; as well as by priests and divines, who relied on it for subsistence. While to the great mass of the people it presented temples and statues, pomps and festivals, to interest the imagination, and gratify the sense; it raised their curiosity, by the hope of prying into futurity; it employed the influence of magical arts and malignant powers, to work upon their fears; while it interested their private partialities and prejudices, by local, national, and even family gods. But above all, idolatry recommended itself to degraded and corrupted man, by indulging and almost consecrating every licentious passion, and every vicious propensity of the human heart.

We have seen how man, who had been formed after the image of his Creator-man, who bore that sacred image stamped upon his soul in the bright characters of reason, truth, and virtue— forgot that Creator, and, stooping from his high original, degraded that sacred image, by bowing down to his fellow

* For a remarkable instance, vide Jer. xliv. 17.

creature, and blasphemously deifying his fellow man. Thus reason, and truth, and virtue seemed to vanish from his nature; folly, and error, and vice to triumph in their stead. When men were exalted into gods, every the basest passion and the foulest vice found an example to justify, and a patron to protect it.* Gods, whose characters and actions had been impure, revengeful, and cruel, were honored by adopting, as parts of their worship, impurity, cruelty, and bloodshed. Demons, who were worshipped, not from love but fear, not because beneficent but malignant, it was naturally supposed could be appeased or conciliated, only by the suppliant inflicting sufferings and death, even on the object whom he held most dear. Hence "every “abomination to the Lord which he hateth did the heathens do "unto their gods:" so that "even their sons and their daugh"ters did they burn in the fire to their gods." In truth, we know from other sources than the Scripture, that theft, bloodshed, and cruelty, that incest, adultery, and unnatural crimes, were sanctioned by the example of the heathen gods, and even consecrated as parts of their worship: we know that every species of lewdness was practised in the temples of some, and that human sacrifices blend upon the altars of others, and this in the most polished and celebrated nations of antiquity;

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* Vide Lucian passim-Hesiod, Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles passimOvid, Terence, &c. &c.-Cicero de Nat. Deorum, Lib. I. cap. xvi. Vide also Tertullian's Apology, ch. ii. 10. 15. Augustine de Civitate Dei pas sim. The Octavius of Minutius Felix, especially seet. xx. to xxx. And Leland's Advantage of Revel. ch. vii.-Cicero's words are worth transcribing: "Exposui pene non philosophorum judicia sed delirantium somnia (speaking of the stoic's opinions) nec enim multo absurdiora sunt quæ poetarum vocibus fusa, ipsa suavitate nocuerunt; qui et ira inflammatos, "et lubidine furentes induxerunt deos; feceruntque ut eorum bella, pugnas, prælia, vulnera, videremus; odia præterea, dissidia, discordias, ortus, interitus, querelas, lamentationes, effusas in omni intemperantia libidines, “adulteria, vincula, cum humano genere concubitus, mortalesque ex immor"tali procreatos, cum poetarum autem errore conjungere licet portenta magornm, Ægyptiorumque in eodem genere dementiam, tum etiam vulgi opiniones quæ in maxima inconstantia, veritatis ignorantia versantur." Yet Cicero was a worshipper, nay, a priest, of these very gods!!

+ Deut. xii. 31.

Vide supra note; also a full collection of testimonies to this fact, by my learned friend, Dr. Magee, in his very able work on Atonement and Sacrifice, notes, p. 90 to p. 102. When we reflect on the facts briefly but faithfully sketched here, and in the authorities referred to, what must we think of the understanding, or the moral and religious feelings, of those who, to discredit Revelation, panegyrize heathenism, under the pretext of its tolerance? Thus Mr. Gibbon, History of the Decline of the Roman Em

amongst the Egyptians and Assyrians, the Canaanites and Phoenicians, and from them were these abominations transferred to Greece, and Carthage, and Rome.

n;

Thus foul and odious was the nature, thus wide the diffusion, and thus fatal the effects, of that idolatry; to provide an antidote to which in the Jewish nation, a special divine interposition was employed. Former interpositions had been tried in vain the deluge, the dispersion of mankind, the divine communication to Noah, and we have reason to believe, to other patriarchs, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, had been ineffectual. Idolatry extended, till there was scarce any apparent mode of

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pire, Vol. I. ch. ii. sect. 1. confesses indeed, that not only "every virtue, but even vice acquired its divine representation; that the philosopher could "not adore as gods those imperfect beings whom he must have despised as "men." Yet he speaks with evident approbation of those philosophers, who, viewing with a smile of pity and indulgence the various errors of the vulgar, diligently practised the ceremonies of their fathers; devoutly frequented the temples of the gods, and, sometimes condescending to act a part on the theatre of superstition, concealed the sentiments of an atheist "under sacerdotal robes:" and tells us, "That the emperors, who always "exercised the office of supreme pontiff, were convinced that the various "modes of worship contributed alike to the same salutary purposes; and "that in every country the form of superstition which had received the "sanction of time and experience was the best adapted to the climate and its inhabitants." The same Mr. Gibbon tells us of "the mild spirit of "antiquity, less attentive to the difference than to the resemblance of their religious worship :" "of the elegant mythology of Homer [see it described "by Cicero in the last note,] which gave a beautiful and almost a regular "form to the polytheism of the ancient world:" of "the public festivals which humanized the manners of the people," (probably by accustoming them to obscene rites, or gladiatorial combats;) and of "the arts of divina"tion, managed as a convenient instrument of policy." Of the same system of polytheism, Mr. Hume* tells us in his Natural History of Religion, sect. xi. That if we examine without prejudice, the ancient heathen mythology, as contained in the poets, we shall not discover in it any such monstrous absurdity as we may at first be apt to apprehend. Where is the difficulty," (asks this cautious investigator of probabilities) "in conceiving that the same powers or principles, whatever they were, which formed this visible world, men and animals, produced also a species of intelligent creatures of more refined substance and greater authority than the rest? That these "creatures may be capricious, revengeful, passionate, voluptuous, is easily conceived; nor is any circumstance more apt among ourselves to engender "such vices, than the license of absolute authority. And in short" (concludes this cautious academic investigator of truth) "the whole mythological system is so natural, that in the variety of planets and worlds contained "in this universe, it seems more than probable, that somewhere or other it "is really carried into execution. The chief objection to it with regard "to this planet is, that it is not ascertained by any just reason or authority. "The ancient tradition insisted upon by heathen priests and theologers, is "but a weak foundation, and transmitted also with such a number of con* Vide Hume's Essays, Vol. II. p. 442

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