may discover the paramount principle still existing, of the persuasion of a supernatural power, and of the rejection of an uncreated and ungoverned world.

As soon as reason was discarded from religious subjects, and wild fancy only consulted, the attributes of the divinities thus devised, were such as corresponded with the impure and sordid origin from which they sprang. The human character, in its worst features, was ascribed to them; and, instead of the object of worship furnishing a model for human improvement, it was entirely assimilated to human corruption. Every vice was ascribed to the pagan deities. The whole order of nature was confounded. The most debased parts of the creation were exalted to the highest order, and superior natures were debased to the lowest condition. Male and fe male deities were introduced, and acted their parts on this imaginary theatre. All the debauchery, sensuality, fraud, violence, and every species of crime, that infest and torment the earth, were transferred into heaven. No divine and human distinction remained; extremes were joined; every correct notion of religion was subverted; celestial and terrestrial beings were amalgamated; the religious world was hurled into chaos.

2dly, As the gentile nations had formed to themselves gods who had no property that could

be called divine, so they worshipped them by rites and institutions the reverse of all that could be called sacred or holy. The worship was suited to the divinities. These rites were either futile and insignificant, or impure, or cruel. To vain and ambitious deities they instituted pompous and splendid ceremonies; the sensual and lascivious they worshipped by the abominations of impurity; the vindictive and cruel they appeased by bloody sacrifices, and even human victims. To the whole race of their divinities they adopted such a worship as might have been agreeable to human folly and vice, invested with despotic and irresistible power. It was that species of adulation, submission, and external reverence, which tyrants, fond of the exercise of dominion, without the smallest regard to the grand objects of all rational government, delight to receive from their crouching, obsequious, and trembling slaves.

When we consider how repugnant to every principle of reason, and how destructive of all real piety, and all virtue, such conceptions of deity, and such a complexion of religious worship were, it must appear to be a phenomenon of very difficult solution, that such corruption of sentiment, and such perversion of rationality, should have pervaded nearly the whole human race. Many nations of antiquity had attained to very high degrees of human science; and some of them,

particularly the Greeks and Romans, carried polite literature, and all the fine arts to such perfection, that at this day their productions are the best models of all that is elegant in conception and exquisite in execution. But no sooner did they direct their minds to divine subjects, than they seemed to be involved in impenetrable darkness, to grope in the mazes of error, and to be entangled in the meshes of absurdity. Compare the most enlightened and polished nations of antiquity with the rude and despised Jews, in regard to religion; and in point both of theory and practice, the former dwindle into mere children who have not yet been taught the first elements of knowledge.

Shall we say that any right conception of Deity exceeds the compass of human understanding, destitute of divine instruction? Acknowledgment of superior power existed, and still exists, over the whole world. We know that more cultivated minds among the ancient heathens had actually arrived at the belief of one supreme Deity, and that even the vulgar were not entirely destitute of it. Scripture declares that all might have attained this knowledge by the right exercise of their rational faculties; that by indulging" their vain imaginations," instead of cultivating their reason, they lost it; that

a Rom. i. 20-22.

they were more and more bewildered by a presumptuous profession of wisdom, while they were duped by their own folly; and that they were thus totally inexcusable. The only true, wise, and omnipotent God abandoned them therefore for a season, to all the horrors of that moral corruption which their shocking perversions of religion could not fail to produce, and which brings along with it its own punishment; and permitted the father of lies and of wickedness to enjoy a temporary triumph, that his final overthrow might be more complete and more glorious to the true God.

The fall of Satan bade confusion cease.a

Perhaps it was necessary that mankind should deeply feel their own ignorance in religious matters, and the direful consequences of every species of corruption, in order to convince them of the necessity of divine revelation, which, beside the restoration of the pure religion of nature, was destined to instruct them in those important and vital points, to the discovery of which their own unaided faculties were totally inadequate. The observations made with regard to ancient idolatry and superstition, are equally applicable.

a Abstulit hunc, tandem, Rufini pœna tumultum.

Chaud. in Rufin. lib. i.

to every species of pagan religion that has ever prevailed, or still prevails, in any part of the world. The same principle of Deity, assimilated to the human character, has pervaded every system of paganism, and has uniformly produced the same results in worship and practice. Indeed, it requires the strongest efforts of reason, even enlightened by revelation, to exclude this similarity; and revelation itself, in order to be understood by mankind, is obliged to use such figurative language, even in speaking of the infinite and omnipotent Spirit, as is founded on human conceptions, and to ascribe to him actions, gestures, motions, and feelings, analogous to those which belong to our species. In order rightly to interpret such expressions, and to exclude every anthropomorphite notion in regard to the Supreme Being, intellect is obliged to exercise a perpetual guard, and to fix its eye constantly on those other scriptural expressions on this subject, which are more strictly appropriate to the great Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all.

3dly, Notwithstanding the gross corruptions above stated, the law of nature still seemed to shed some beams of light across the gloom of gentile theology, and even to appear in the lives of its professors. The discriminations of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong, of honourable and base, were in some measure preserved. This