human race, unless where divine revelation has diffused its light. For, it must be acknowledged, that even the philosophers of antiquity, together with the belief of a supreme Deity, admitted others of inferior rank and power, and considered them as objects of religious veneration. Into this opinion they seem to have been led by their conception of orders of beings superior to man, such as Christians acknowledge angels to be, on the authority of scripture. On this point these philosophers had, and could have, no positive information, and, being destitute of divine light, they indulged the suggestions of their own imaginations. Acknowledging, however, one supreme Deity, it is astonishing that they perceived not that he must be adequate to the government of the universe; that nothing could happen without his express agency, appointment, or permission; and that he, therefore, should be the sole object of divine honours.

The sun, the moon, the stars, and the whole host of heaven, seem to have been the first objects of idolatrous worship. Their influence on our globe probably suggested the idea of their divinity, and to these luminaries were ascribed intelligence and mind. Gratitude for the benefits derived from them dictated the veneration with which they were viewed in the first instance; and in the second, the adoration that was addressed to them. Instead of regarding these heavenly

bodies as the most resplendent displays of the omnipotence, wisdom, and goodness of the Supreme Being, and as demanding from man the concentration of his devotion in the great author and governor of all, deluded mortals stopped short in their ascent to his throne, and "worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever." But, proceeding on the same absurd, though, in some respects, specious principles, they, in the succeeding stages of idolatry, deified departed heroes, whose memories they revered; such of the inferior animals as are useful to man; and, lastly, the vilest and most insignificant of the brute creation. "They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." Nay, inanimate substances were converted into objects of religious veneration, as the residences of some superior spirits. Hence, the Dryads, Hamadryads, and Napææ, appropriated to groves, and forests. Every river, lake, fountain, and hill, had its peculiar deity. These were the offspring of licentious imagination, directed to religious subjects, emancipated. from the guidance of reason, and blindly led by: overweening superstition. Amidst all this accumulation of folly and aberration, however, we

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 female 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,

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particularly the Greeks and Romans, carried lite 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.