more surprised when we see that they were not idolaters.

They had some temples more privileged than others. The great Diana of Ephesus had more reputation than a village Diana. There were more miracles performed in the temple of Esculapius at Epidaurus, than in any other of his temples. The statue of the Olympian Jupiter attracted more offerings than that of the Paphlagonian Jupiter. But to oppose the customs of a true religion to those of a false one, have we not for several ages had more devotion to certain altars than to others?

A gross and superstitious populace who reason not, and who know neither how to doubt, deny, or believe; who visit the temples out of idleness, and because the lowly are there equal to the great; who make their contributions because it is the custom; who speak continually of miracles without examining any of them; and who are very little in point of intel{lect beyond the brutes whom they sacrifice-such a people, I repeat, in the sight of the great Diana, or of Jupiter the thunderer, may well be seized with a religious horror, and adore, without consciousness, the statue itself. This is Has not our lady of Loretto been pre-what happens now and then, in our own ferred to our lady of Nieges, to that of churches, to our ignorant peasantry, who Ardens, of Hall, &c.? That is not say-however are informed that it is the blessed ing there is more virtue in a statue at mortals received into heaven whose interLoretto than in a statue of the village of cession they solicit, and not that of images Hall, but we have felt more devotion to of wood and stone. the one than to the other; we have believed that she whom we invoked, at the feet of her statues, would condescend, ; from the height of heaven, to diffuse more favours and to work more miracles in Loretto than in Hall. This multiplicity of images of the same person also proves that it is the images that we revere, and that the worship relates to the person who is represented; for it is not possible that every image can be the same thing. There are a thousand images of St. Francis, which have no resemblance to him, and which do not resemble one another; and all indicate a single saint Francis, invoked, on the day of his feast, by those who are devoted to this saint.

The Greeks and Romans augment the number of their gods by their apotheoses. The Greeks deified conquerors like Bacchus, Hercules, and Perseus. Rome devoted altars to her emperors. Our apotheoses are of a different kind: we have infinitely more saints than they have secondary gods, but we pay respect neither to rank nor to conquest. We consecrate temples to the simply virtuous, who would have been unknown on earth if they had not been placed in heaven. The apotheoses of the ancients were the effect of flattery, ours are produced by a respect for virtue.

Cicero, in his philosophical works, only allows of a suspicion that the people may mistake the statues of the gods and confound them with the gods, themselves. His interlocutors attack the established religion, but none of them think of accusing the Romans of taking marble and brass for divinities. Lucretius accuses no person of this stupidity, although he reproaches the superstitious of every class. This opinion, therefore, has never existed: there never have been idolaters.

It was precisely the same with the Pagans, who supposed the existence only of a single divinity, a single Apollo, and not? as many Apollos and Dianas as they had temples and statues. It is therefore proved, as much as history can prove anything, that the ancients believed not the statue to be a divinity; that worship was not paid to this statue or image, and consequently that they were not idolaters. It is for us to ascertain how far the im- Horace causes an image of Priapus to putation has been a mere pretext to ac-speak, and makes him say, "I was once cuse them of idolatry. the trunk of a fig-tree, and a carpenter

VOL. II.-64

D

being doubtful whether he should make of me a god or a bench, at length determined to make me a divinity." What are we to gather from this pleasantry? Priapus was one of the subaltern divinities, and a subject of raillery for the wits, and this pleasantry is a tolerable proof that a figure placed in the garden to frighten away the birds could not be very profoundly worshipped.

Lucan, too, calls the universe the abode and empire of God:--

Estue Dei, sedes, nisi terra, et poutus, et aer?

A volume might be filled with passages, asserting idols to be images alone.

There remains but the case in which statues became oracles;--- notions that might have led to an opinion that there Dacier, giving way to the spirit of a was something divine about them. The commentator, observes, that Baruch pre-predominant sentiment, however, was, dicted this adventure. "They became what the workmen chose to make them :" but might not this be observed of all statues. Had Baruch a visionary anticipation of the Satires of Horace?

A block of marble may as well be hewed into a cistern, as into a figure of Alexander, Jupiter, or any being still more respectable. The matter which composed the cherubim of the holy of holies, might have been equally appropriated to the vilest functions.

Is a

throne or altar the less revered, because it might have been formed into a kitchen { table?

Dacier, instead of concluding that the Romans adored the statue of Priapus, and that Baruch predicted it, should have perceived that the Romans laughed at it. Consult all the authors who speak of the statues of the gods, you will not find one of them allude to idolatry: their testimony amounts to the express contrary. "It is not the workman," says Martial, "who makes the gods, but he who prays to them."

Qui finxit sacros auro vel marmore vultus
Non facit ille deos, qui rogat ille facit.

the

that the gods had chosen to visit certain altars and images, in order to give audience to mortals, and to reply to them. We read in Homer and in the chorus of the Greek tragedies, of prayers to Apollo, who delivered his responses on mountains in such a temple, or such a town. There is not, in all antiquity, the least trace of a prayer addressed to a statue; and if it was believed that the divine spirit preferred certain temples and images, as he preferred certain men, it was simply an error in application. How many miraculous images have we? The ancients only boasted of possessing what we possess, and if we are not idolaters for using images, by what correct principle can we term them so?

Those who profess magic, and who either believe, or affect to believe it, a science, pretend to possess the secret of making the gods descend into their statues, not indeed, the superior gods, but the secondary gods or genii. This is what Hermes Trismegistus calls 'making' gods a doctrine which is controverted by St. Augustin in his City of God. But even this clearly shows that the images were not thought to possess anything di

It is Jove whom we adore in the vine, since it required a magician to aniimage of Jove," writes Ovid :

Colitur pro Jove, forma Jovis.

"The gods inhabit our minds and bosoms," observes Statius, "and not images in the form of them :"

Nella autem effigies, nulli commissa metallo.
Forma Dei, mentes habitare et pectora gaudet.

mate them, and it happened very rarely that a magician was successful in these sublime endeavours.

In a word, the images of the gods tue, launched his thunderbolts; it was were not gods. Jupiter, and not his stanot the statue of Neptune which stirred up tempests, nor that of Apollo which bestowed light. The Greeks and the

Romans were gentiles and polytheists, and even in the blessed, only revere

but not idolaters.

the virtues of God manifested in them. The image-breakers (iconoclastes) and the Protestants who reproach the Catholic church with idolatry, claim the answer.

We lavished this reproach upon them when we had neither statues nor temples, and have continued the injustice even after having employed painting and sculp-same ture to honour and represent our truths, precisely in the manner in which those we reproach employed them to honour and personify their fiction.

SECTION III.

Whether the Persians, the Sabaans, the
Egyptians, the Tartars, or the Turks,

have been Idolaters? and the extent
of the Antiquity of the Images called
Idols. History of their worship.

As men rarely form precise ideas, and still less express them with precision, we call the gentiles, and still more the polytheists, idolaters. An immense number of volumes have been written in order to develop the various opinions upon the origin of the worship rendered to the opinions proves nothing, except ignodeity. This multitude of books and

rance.

It is not known who invented coats, shoes, and stockings, and yet we would It is a great error to denominate those { would know who invented idols. What idolators who worship the sun and the signifies a passage of Sanchoniathon, who stars. These nations for a long time had lived before the battle of Troy? What neither images nor temples. If they were does he teach us, when he says, that wrong, it was in rendering to the stars that Chaos-the spirit, that is to say, the which belonged only to the creator of the breath-in love with his principles, draws stars. Moreover, the dogma of Zoroas- the veil from it, which renders the air luter, or Zerdusht, unfolded in the Sadder, {minous; that the wind Colp, and his teaches a Supreme Being, an avenger wife Bau, engendered Eon; that Eon and rewarder, which opinion is very dis- engendered Genos, that Cronos, their tant from idolatry. The government of descendant, had two eyes behind as well China possesses no idol, but has always as before; that he became a god, and preserved the simple worship of the mas-that he gave Egypt to his son Thaut? ter of heaven, Kien-tien. Such is one of the most respectable monuments of antiquity.

Orpheus will teach us no more in his Theogony, than Damascius has preserved to us. He represents the principles of the world under the figure of a dragon with two heads, the one of a bull, the other of a lion; a face in the middle, which he calls the face of God, and golden wings to his shoulders.

Ghengis Khan, among the Tartars, was not an idolater, and used no images. The Mahometans, who inhabit Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, India, and Africa, call the Christians idolaters and giaours, because they imagine that Christians worship images. They break the statues which they find in Sancta Sophia, the church of the Holy Apostles; and others they convert into mosques. Appearances have deceived them, as they are eternally deceiving man, and have led them to believe, that churches dedicated to saints, who were formerly men ; images of saints worshipped kneeling; and miracles worked in these churches, As to polytheism, good sense will tell are invincible proofs of absolute idola-you, that as long as men have existedtry; although all amount to nothing. that is to say, weak animals capable of Christians, in fact, adore one God only, reason and folly, subject to all accidents,

But, from these fantastic ideas may be drawn two great truths the one, that sensible images and hieroglyphics are of the remotest antiquity; the other, that all the ancient philosophers have recognised a First Principle.

Isaiah, in chapter vi. sees the Lord seated on a throne, and his train filled the temple. The Lord extends his hand, and touches the mouth of Jeremiah, in{tions, their images. chap. i. of that prophet. Ezekiel, in chap. i. sees a throne of sapphire, and God appeared to him like a man seated on this throne. These images alter not the purity of the Jewish religion, which never employed pictures, statues, or idols,vidual was left to act according to his to represent God to the eyes of the peo ple.

believed nothing of it; but the old woman, to whom Encolpus gave a crown to { buy geese and gods, might very well credit it.

The same idea may be formed of the worship which all Egypt rendered to the cow, and that several towns paid to a dog, an ape, a cat, and to onions. It appears that these were first emblems. Afterwards, a certain ox Apis, and a certain dog Anubis, were adored: they al-immolated men. ways ate beef and onions; but it is difficult to know what the old women of Egypt thought of the holy cows and