their great proximity to human weakness, introduce the various diftribution and divifion of their authority; and thereby give rise to allegory. The fame principles naturally deify mortals, fuperior in power, courage, or understanding, and produce hero-worfhip; together with fabulous hiftory and mythological tradition, in all its wild and unaccountable forms. And as an invifible spiritual intelligence is an object too refined for vulgar apprehenfion, men naturally affix it to fome fenfible reprefentation; fuch as either the more confpicuous parts of nature, or the statues, images, and pictures, which a more refined age forms of its divinities.

Almost all idolaters, of whatever age or country, concur in these general principles and conceptions; and even the particular characters and provinces, which they affign to their deities, are not extremely different*. The GREEK and ROMAN travellers and conquerors, without much difficulty, found their own deities every where; and faid, This is MERCU RY, that VENUS; this MARS, that NEPTUNE; by whatever title the ftrange gods might be denominated. The goddess HERTHA of our SAXON ancestors feems to be no other, according to TACITUS †, than the Mater Tellus of the ROMANS; and his conjecture was evidently juft.

SECT. VI. Origin of Theifm from Polytheifm.

THE doctrine of one fupreme Deity, the Author of Nature, is very ancient, has spread itself over great and populous nations, and among them has been embraced by all ranks and conditions of men: But whoever thinks that it has owed its fuccefs to the prevalent force of thofe invincible reasons, on VOL. II. Bb which

* See CAESAR of the religion of the GAULS, De bello Gallico, lib. xi.

+ De Moribus GERM.

which it is undoubtedly founded, would fhow him. felf little acquainted with the ignorance and ftupidity of the people, and their incurable prejudices in favour of their particular fuperftitions. Even at this day, and in EUROPE, afk any of the vulgar, why he believes in an omnipotent Creator of the world; he will never mention the beauty of final caufes, of which he is wholly ignorant: He will not hold out his hand, and bid you contemplate the fuppleness and variety of joints in his fingers, their bending all one way, the counterpoife which they receive from the thumb, the foftness and fleshy parts of the infide of his hand, with all the other circumstances which render that member fit for the ufe to which it was deftined. To these he has been long accustomed; and he beholds them with liftleffness and unconcern. He will tell you of the fudden and unexpected death of fuch a one; the fall and bruife of fuch another; the exceffive drought of this feafon; the cold and rains of another. These he afcribes to the immediate operation of Providence: and fuch events as, with good reasoners, are the chief difficulties in admitting a fupreme Intelligence, are with him the fole arguments for it.

Many theists, even the most zealous and refined, have denied a particular providence, and have afferted, that the Sovereign mind, or firft principle of all things, having fixed general laws by which nature is governed, gives free and uninterrupted course to these laws, and difturbs not, at every turn, the fettled order of events by particular volitions. From the beautiful connection, fay they, and rigid obfervance of established rules, we draw, the chief argument for theifm; and from the fame principles are enabled to answer the principal objections against it. But fo little is this understood by the generality of mankind, that, wherever they obferve any one to afcribe all events to natural caufes, and to remove the particular interpofition of a Deity, they are apt to fufpect

fufpect him of the groffeft infidelity. A little philojophy, fays Lord BACON, makes men atheists; a great deal reconciles them to religión. For men, being taught by fuperftitious prejudices to lay the ftrefs on a wrong place, when that fails them, and they difcover, by a little reflection, that the course of nature is regular and uniform, their whole faith totters, and falls to ruin. But being taught, by more reflection, that this very regularity and uniformity is the ftrongest proof of defign and of a fuprème intelligence, they return to that belief which they had deferted; and they are now able to establish it on a firmer and more durable foundation.

Mad

Convulfions in nature, diforders, prodigies, miracles, though the most oppofite to the plan of a wife fuperintendent, impress mankind with the strongest fentiments of religion; the causes of events feeming then the most unknown and unaccountable. nefs, fury, rage, and an inflamed imagination, tho' they fink men neareft to the level of beafts, are, for a like reason, often fuppofed to be the only difpofitions in which we can have any immediate commu-. nication with the Deity.

We may conclude, therefore, upon the whole, that fince the vulgar, in nations which have embraced the doctrine of theifm, ftill build it upon irrational and fuperftitious principles, they are never led into that opinion by any procefs of argument, but by a certain train of thinking, more fuitable to their genius and capacity.

It may readily happen, in an idolatrous nation, that though men admit the exiftence of feveral limited deities, yet is there fome one God, whom, in a particular manner, they make the object of their worship and adoration. They may either fuppofe that, in the deftribution of power and territory among the gods, their nation was fubjected to the jurifdiction of that particular deity; or reducing heavenly objects to the model of things below, they may Bb 2

re

represent one God as the prince or fupreme magistrate of the reft, who, though of the fame nature, rules them with an authority like that which an earthly fovereign exercises over his fubjects and vaffals. Whether this god, therefore, be confidered as their peculiar patron, or as the general fovereign of heaven, his votaries will endeavour, by every art, to infinuate themselves into his favour; and suppofing him to be pleased, like themselves, with praise and flattery, there is no eulogy or exaggeration which will be fpared in their addreffes to him. In proportion as mens fears or diftreffes become more urgent, they ftill invent new ftrains of adulation and even he who outdoes his predeceffor in fwelling up the titles of his divinity, is sure to be outdone by his fucceffor in newer and more pompous epithets of praife. Thus they proceed, till at laft they arrive at infinity itself; beyond which there is no farther progrefs: And it is well if, in ftriving to get farther, and to represent a magnificent fimplicity, they run not into inexplicable mystery, and destroy the intelligent nature of their deity, on which alone any rational worship or adoration can be founded. While they confine themselves to the notion of a perfect being, the Creator of the world, they coincide, by chance, with the principles of reafon and true philofophy; though they are guided to that notion, not by reafon, of which they are in a great measure incapable, but by the adulation and fears of the most vulgar fuperftition.

We often find, amongst barbarous nations, and even fometimes among civilized, that when every ftrain of flattery has been exhaufted towards arbitrary princes, when every human quality has been applauded to the utmoft; their fervile courtiers reprefent them at laft as real divinities, and point them out to the people as objects of adoration. How much more natural therefore is it, that a limited deity, who at firft is fuppofed only the immediate author

of the particular goods and ills in life, fhould in the end be represented as fovereign maker and modifier of the universe?

Even where this notion of a fupreme deity is already established; though it ought naturally to leffen every other worship, and abafe every object of reverence; yet if a nation has entertained the opinion of a fubordinate tutelar divinity, faint, or angel, their addreffes to that being gradually rise upon them, and encroach on the adoration due to their fupreme deity. The Virgin MARY, ere checked by the reformation, had proceeded, from being merely a good woman, to ufurp many attributes of the Almighty GoD and St NICHOLAS go hand in hand, in all the prayers and petitions of the MuscoVITES.

Thus the deity who, from love, converted himself into a bull, in order to carry off EUROPA, and who, from ambition, dethroned his father SATUrn, became the OPTIMUS MAXIMUS of the heathens. Thus the God of ABRAHAM, ISAAC, and JACOB, became the fupreme deity or JEHOVAH of the Jews.

The JACOBINS, who denied the immaculate conception, have ever been very unhappy in their doctrine, even though political reasons have kept the ROMISH Church from condemning it. The CORDELIERS have run away with all the popularity. But in the fifteenth century, as we learn from BoULAINVILLIERS*, an ITALIAN Cordelier maintained, that during the three days when CHRIST was interred, the hypoftatic union was diffolved, and that his human nature was not a proper object of adoration during that period. Without the art of divination, one might foretel, that so gross and impious a blasphemy would not fail to be anathematized by the people. It was the occafion of great infults on the part of the JACOBINS; who now got fome recompence for their misfortunes in the war about the immaculate conception.

Bb3

* Hiftoire abregée, p. 499.

Rather