continually increased, till, in every nation, it The first gods had pro

became enormous. bably poffeffed confiderable merit in their mortal ftate; and, in their immortal, were conceived watchful, for promoting virtue, in their several provinces but afterwards, multitudes were deified without a pretence to any merit; and many whofe vices rendered them infamous and execrable. Heaven was crowded with abandoned wretches unfit to be tolerated on earth. Additions were made to the hiftory of each god, till their mythology became a huge mafs of inconfiftencies and indecencies. The characters and deeds of their divinities would have dif graced humanity, and held forth examples and patrons for every crime. With those whom they fuppofed removed into the heavens, they at length proceeded to affociate fome of the moft worthlefs of the living; raifing altars and paying divine honours, with the most abject adulation, to thofe at whofe cruelty they trembled, and whofe profligacy they could not behold without abhorrence.-For fome time their devotion was directed folely to their invisible gods; Homer gives no hint of the ufe of images, and for fome ages the Romans had

none their worfhip confifted wholly in pray ers, hymns, and facrifices. But growing fuperftition foon demanded ftatues of the gods, and plunged its infatuated votaries into the fhameful folly of adoring the works of their own hands, " falling down to the stock of a tree fpeaking to that which hath no life, calling "for health upon that which is weak, praying "for life to that which is dead, and for a good CC journey asking that which cannot fet a foot "forward t." Their religious rites were multiplied and complicated: fuitably to the imperfection of their gods, they were fometimes meanly flattering, fometimes outrageously abufive; and fuitably to their different characters, many of them became madly riotous, abominably impure, or inhumanly barbarous.

THE laft degeneracy of the primeval reliligion, was the worship of brutes and inanimate things, which prevailed chiefly among the Egyptians and their colonies. That it was the moft deteftible form of Paganifm, it is unneceffary to spend time in evincing: And it pro

* Ifa. xliv. 19.

+ Wifd. xiii. 17, 18.

ceeded from evil to worfe.-It feems to have arifen from the hiftory of their hero-gods being recorded in hieroglyphics; in which the figures of brutes and vegetables were employed as the marks or fymbols of their feveral attri butes and exploits. Fond of their hieroglyphics, they fubftituted these fymbols of their divinities, in place of the images of them in human fhape, which had been used formerly. The fymbolical representations were engraved in their temples; and by being constantly in their view while they worshipped their god, they became closely affociated with him in their imaginations, and fhared in their worship: they engaged the readier and the greater veneneration by being confidered as inftituted by the god himself.-Accustomed in this manner to venerate the figure of a plant or animal, they came by a very eafy step to hold the real one facred, as at least a fymbol of the god: And next, forgetting that it was but a symbol, they adored it as itfelf divine. Each fymbol had different fignifications; and each attribute was reprefented by different fymbols: in confequence of these two circumftances together, their animal and vegetable deities were multi

plied, till they comprehended whatever had any quality remarkable enough to fit it for being an hieroglyphic. For expreffing complex notions, in this kind of writing, they had united the parts and members of different fpecies; and hence monsters and chimeras were added to the number of their gods.

INSTEAD, therefore, of "finding mankind. "the more plunged into idolatry, the farther "we mount up into antiquity; and no marks,

no fymptoms of any more perfect religion," as has been confidently afferted to be clear from the teftimony of hiftory; we are affured by the oldest of hiftories, that in the remotest antiquity a more perfect religion, the acknowledgment and worship of the One God, did prevail and not only from it, but from the writings ftill extant in every kind, we learn with certainty, that from this religion mankinddeviated only by degrees, and were not plunged into the loweft degradations of idolatry but in the courfe of ages. In Greece, the polytheifm of the heroic times was, for its purity and

* Hume, ib.

moral influence, venerable in comparifon with the mafs of fuperftitions, which compofed its religion in its most civilized and enlightened periods.

2. THE next true religion given to the world, was the Jewish. It may be viewed in two different lights; as the religious fyftem of the Hebrew nation; and as a preparation for the Christian difpenfation. In respect of both it was, by the Jews, gradually corrupted from its original purity: but with circumstances fo different, that it will be neceffary to mark them feparately.

CONSIDERED in the former light, it contains that fyftem of belief and that body of laws and worship, which Mofes delivered to the Ifraelites and it was completed by the digeft which he gave them; all fucceeding priests and prophets and rulers being only the guardians, the interpreters, or the executioners of it, but having no authority to alter or to add to it. The Mofaical religion, viewed in this light, was, The acknowledgment of the One God, as both the God of the univerfe, and their peculiar God 3