of mind, men have little leisure or inclination to think of the unknown invisible regions. On the other hand, every disastrous accident alarms us, and sets us on inquiries concerning the principles whence it arose: Apprehensions spring up with regard to futurity: And the mind, sunk into diffidence, terror, and melancholy, has recourse to every method of appeasing those secret intelligent powers on whom our fortune is supposed entirely to depend. No topic is more useful with all popular divines than to display the advantages of affliction, in bringing men to a due sense of religion; by subduing their confidence and sensuality, which, in times of prosperity, make them forgetful of a Divine Providence. Nor is this topic confined merely to modern religions. The ancients have also employed it. Fortune has never liberally, without envy, says a GREEK historian, bestowed an unmixed happiness on mankind; but with all her gifts has ever conjoined some disastrous circumstance, in order to chastise men into a reverence for the gods, whom, in a continued course of prosperity, they are apt to neglect and forget. What age or period of life is the most addicted to superstition? The weakest and most timid. What sex? The same answer must be given. The leaders and examples of every kind of superstition, says STRABO†, are the women. These excite the men to devotion and supplications, and the observance of religious days. It is rare to meet with one that lives apart from the females, and yet is addicted to such practices. And nothing can, for this reason, be more improbable, than the account given of an order of men among the GETES, who practised celibacy, and were notwithstanding the most religious fanatics. A method of reasoning which would lead us to entertain a bad idea of the devo tion of monks; did we not know by an experience, not so common, perhaps, in STRABO's days, that one may practise celibacy, and profess chastity; and yet maintain the closest connections and most entire sympathy with that timorous and pious sex. SECT. IV. Deities not considered as creators or formers of the world. THE only point of theology, in which we shall find a consent of mankind almost universal, is, that there is invisible, intelligent power in the world: But whether this power be supreme or subordinate, whether confined to one being, or distributed among several; what attributes, qualities, connections, or principles of action ought to be ascribed to those beings; concerning all these points, there is the widest difference in the popular systems of theology. Our ancestors in EUROPE, before the revival of letters, believe, as we do at present, that there was one supreme God, the author of nature, whose power, though in itself uncontroulable, was yet often exerted by the interposition of his angels and subordinate ministers, who executed his sacred purposes. But they also be lieved, that all nature was full of other invisible powers; fairies, goblins, elves, sprights; beings, stronger and mightier than men, but much inferior to the celestial natures, who surround the throne of God. Now sup pose; that any one, in those ages, had denied the existence of God and his angels; would not his impiety justly have deserved the appellation of atheism, even though he had still allowed, by some odd capricious reasoning, that the popular stories of elves and fairies were just and well-grounded? The difference; on the one hand, between such a person and a genuine theist is infiaitely greater than that, on the other, between him and one that absolutely excludes all invisible intelligent power. And it is a fallacy, merely from the casual resemblance of names, without any conformity of meaning, to rank such opposite opinions under the same denomination. To any one, who considers justly of the matter, it will appear, that the gods of all polytheists are no better than the elves or fairies of our ancestors, and merit as little any pious worship or veneration. These pretended religionists are really a kind of superstitious atheists, and acknowlege no being, that correspond to our idea of a deity. No first principle of mind or thought: No su preme government and administration: No divine contrivance or intention in the fabric of the world. * The CHINESE, when their prayers are not answered, beat their idols. The deities of the LAPLANDERS are any large stone which they meet with of an extraordinary shape t. The EGYPTIAN mythologists, in order to account for animal worship, said, that the gods, pursued by the violence of earth-born men, who were their enemies, had formerly been obliged to disguise themselves under the semblance of beasts 1. The CUNNI, a nation in the Lesser ASIA, resolved to admit no strange gods among them, regularly, at certain seasons, assemble themselves completely armed, beat the air with their lances, and proceed in that manner to their frontiers; in order, as they said, to expel the foreign deities §. Not even the immortal gods, said some GERMAN nations to CÆSAR, are a match for the SUEVI |. Pere le compte. Diod. Sic. lib. i. Regnard, Voiage de Laponie. Lucian. de Sacrificiis. OVID alludes to the same tradition, Metam. lib. v. l. 321. So also MANILIUS, lib. iv. Herodot. lib. i. * Cæs. Comment. de bello Gallico, lib. iv. Many ills, says DIONE in HOMER to VENUS Wounded by DIOMEDE, many ills, my daughter, have the gods inflicted on men: And many ills, in return, have men inflicted on the gods*. We need but open any classic. author to meet with these gross representations of the deities; and LONGINUS+ with reason observes, that such ideas of the divine nature, if literally taken, contain a true atheism. Some writers have been surprised, that the impieties of ARISTOPHANES should have been tolerated, nay publicly acted and applauded by the ATHENIANS; a people so superstitious and so jealous of the public religion, that, at that very time, they put SoCRATES to death for his imagined incredulity. But these writers do not consider, that the ludicrous, familiar images, under which the gods are represented by that comic poet, instead of appearing impious, were the genuine lights in which the ancients conceived their divinities. What conduct can be more criminal or mean, than that of JUPITER in the AMPHITRION? Yet that play, which represented his gallant exploits, was supposed so agreeable to him, that it was always acted in ROME by public authority, when the state was threatened with pestilence, famine, or any general calamity §. The ROMANS supposed, that, like all old letchers, he would be highly pleased with the recital of his former feats of prowess and vigour, and that no topic was so proper, upon which to flatter his vanity. The LACEDEMONIANS, says XENOPHON ||, always, during war, put up their petitions very early in the morning, in order to be beforehand with their enemies, and, by being the first solicitors, pre-engage the gods in Lib. ix. 382. + Cap. ix. Pere Brumoy, Theatre des Grecs; & Fontenelle, Histoire des Oracles. Arnob. lib. vii. their favour. We may gather from SENECA*, that it was usual, for the votaries in the temples, to make interest with the beadle or sexton, that they might have a seat near the image of the deity, in order to be the best heard in their prayers and applications to him. The TYRIANS, when besieged by ALEXANDER, threw chains on the statue of HERCULES, to prevent that deity from deserting to the enemy t. AUGUSTUS, having twice lost his fleet by storms, forbad NEPTUNE to be carried in procession along with the other gods; and fancied, that he had sufficiently revenged himself by that expedient‡. After GERMANICUs's death, the people were so enraged at their gods, that they stoned them in their temples ; and openly renounced all allegiance to them . To ascribe the origin and fabric of the universe to these imperfect beings never enters into the imagination of any polytheist or idolater. HESIOD, whose writings, with those of HOMER, contained the canonical system of the heathen§; HESIOD, I say, supposes gods and men to have sprung equally from the unknown powers of nature**. And throughout the whole theogony of that author, PanDORA is the only instance of creation, or a voluntary production; and she too was formed by the gods merely from despight to PROMETHEUS, who had furnished men with stolen fire from the celestial regions ++. The ancient mythologists, indeed, seem throughout to have rather embraced the idea of generation than that of crea * Epist. xli. Quint. Curtius, lib. iv. cap. 3. Diod. Sic. lib xvii. Herodot. lib. ii. Lucian. Jupiter confutatus, de luctu Saturn, &c. ** Ως ομόθεν γεγάασι θεοί θνητοι τ' ανθρωποι. Hes. Opera & Dies, 1. 108. Theog. 1. 570. |