and wars, in degrading religion into an engine of the most unrighteous policy.

In a word, from fmall beginnings, numberlefs corruptions, aided by centuries of ignorance, grew up into that "mystery of iniquity," which formed the predominant religion at the Reformation, the total depravation of which is fo well known, and fo explicitly confeffed by popish writers themselves, that I may spare myself the pain of attempting the odious portrait.

THUS every religion that has any claim to truth, has been in time corrupted.

II, THE SECOND part of our propofition, That all falfe religions have, in time, been amended and improved, is equally true; and, fo far as our prefent defign requires it, may be more briefly evinced. Each of the depravations which we have mentioned, having at length acquired a determinate shape, became a falfe religion, for fome time prevalent, established, and unqueftioned. But in the progress

of inquiry and knowledge, they have been all examined, cleared in fome measure from the groffnefs which they had gradually contracted, and reduced to a lefs exceptionable form.

1. To begin with paganifin. The Egyptian worship of brutes and vegetables aftonished the inquifitive: it fhocked the idolaters of other fects; it was oftener than once legally profcribed by the Romans, who gloried in adopting the gods and the rites of all nations, as a token of their piety and the caufe of their profperity: it could fcarcely fail fometimes to ftagger its own votaries. They extenuated its abfurdity, by refolving the ignoble objects of their adoration into mere emblems both of herogods and of the celeftial bodies, the divinities acknowledged by all idolaters. Emblems they

had originally been: but by ingenuity in illuftrating their fignificance, they were rendered more plaufible than at their introduction, and reprefented as even more refined and expreffive images of the gods, than the idols fet up by other pagans.

THE worship of dead men, however implicit ly and extenfively practifed, could not, naked

E

and undifguifed, efcape condemnation as foon as it had excited the curiofity of thinking men. Even the fymbolical images of the Egyptians, it has been fpecioufly fuppofed, were contrived on purpose to veil the objectionable genealogies of the gods. To give that worship the fairer appearance, fpeculative men devifed the diftinction of fouls, into human, heroic, and demoniac: when the gods were conceived, not as ordinary mortals, but as Superior Beings who had deigned to visit the earth for the fake of mankind, and lived only to heap bleffings on them, there was a fhew of reafon in paying them religious honours. This hypothefis was, however, contradicted by their mythology, which proved their gods to have been mere men, often not of the worthiest kind; and the authority of their admired poets had early rendered this too facred to be rejected; but they explained it away, and reprefented the popular hiftories of the gods as only ingenious allegories, fhadowing forth moral or phyfical truths.

AT an early period, in the most civilized nations of the east, the more enlightened worshipers of the celestial bodies reformed the received

idolatry, fo far as to confine their adoration to the fun, and, reprobating images, to addrefs him by no other medium but fire.When, in other nations, the elements, and even the most splendid luminaries were, by the researches of philofophers, afcertained to be inanimate, the worship of them required a vindication: and it was attempted by the refinement of referring it, not to the material mafs, but to the intelligent divinity who inhabited and govern

ed it.

BUT none of the forms of paganism, however each of them might be disguised, or however the absurdities of them all might be fhuffled out of fight by involving them in confufion, blending them together, and deriving fupport to one from another in their turns, could bear the fcrutiny of enlightened minds. Without entering into the controverted import of the myfteries, we may remark that the speculations of the old philofophers of Greece forced them to acknowledge One fupreme God, diftinct from all the vulgar deities, though along with him they continued to admit these. But the luftre of religious truth diffused by the gospel,

constrained the later philofophers to acknow, ledge him as the Only God; and, determined as they were not to relinquish the popular religion, to endeavour by a new refinement to render it confiftent with that acknowledgment. Even the brute-gods of Egypt were made only emblematical of his feyeral attributes; the fabies of their hero-gods, but parabolical hiftories of his providence; the deified parts of nature, no more than his fenfible representatives; all their rites, a varied fervice to him under different names, or different ideas. Their idolatries thus explained away by a reference to the true God, gave paganifm the most unexceptionable form of which it was capable.-In fome countries, this refinement refted not with philo fophers. Whether in an early age, by means of the Jewish fcriptures, or at a later era, by the publication of the Alcoran, the Magian re ligion of the eaft was much reformed; one fupreme and eternal God introduced; the worfhip of him alone eftablished by books accounted divine; and eftablifhed fo firmly that its votaries, though full of fuperftitions, continue to deteft idolatry, and profeffedly worship before the fire or towards the rifing fun, only as the