might as well have held his tongue as to say, in his sixth canto of the Eneid,

66 Unhappy Theseus, doom'd for ever there,

Is fix'd by fate to his eternal chair."

His ipse dixit, that Theseus is seated in a chair, where he must sit world without end, and that this is his punishment, is protested against by many, who further think the poet to have wronged him greatly, he rather deserving a place in the Elysian fields, than in Tartarus.

Not long since an honest, well-meaning Huguenot minister advanced in his sermons, and even in print, that there would be a day of grace to the damned; that there must be a proportion between the tresspass and the penalty; and that a momentary fault could not deserve an everlasting punishment. This clement judge was deposed by a body of ministers, one of whom said to him, " Brother, I as little believe the eternity of hell torments as yourself; but, let me tell you, it is very proper that your servant-maid, your tailor, and even your attorney should believe so."

HISTORY

OF THE KINGS AND CHRONICLES OF JUDAH.

ALL nations have written their history, as soon as ever they knew what writing was. The Jews have also written theirs. Before they had kings, they lived under a theocracy, and were reputed to be governed by God himself.

When the Jews clamoured to have a king, like the other neighbouring nations, the prophet Samuel, whose interest it was to exclude a regal government, declared to them, in the name of God, that it was God himself whom they were rejecting. Thus, the beginning of monarchy among the Jews, was the period of their theocracy. It may, therefore, be said without blasphemy, that the history of the Jewish kings was written like that of other nations; and that God did not trouble himself to dictate the history of a people whom he no longer governed.

This opinion, however, is advanced with all possible mistrust and deference. What may be thought a confirmation of it is, that the Paralipomena, or Chronicles, very often contradict the book of Kings, both in the chronology and the events, as profane histories are known to disagree. Further, if God

continued to write the history of the Jews, we are, of course, to believe that he still writes it, the Jews being still his favourite people. They are, one day, to be converted, and apparently they may as justly look upon the history of their dispersion to be of divine composition, as to say that God wrote the history of their kings.

Another remark likewise offers itself: if God, after having been their sole king for a very long time, condescended to be their historian, it becomes us to entertain the most profound respect for all the Jews universally the very meanest Jew pedlar is infinitely above. Cæsar and Alexander. Shall we not prostrate ourselves before an old-clothes man, who proves to you that his history was written by the Deity himself, whilst all the Greek and Roman histories are but the productions of profane pagans?

If the style of the history of the books of Kings and Chronicles be divine, it does not necessarily follow that the actions related therein are also divine. David murders Uriah; Isbosheth and Mephibosheth are murdered; Absalom murders Ammon; Joab murders Absalom; Solomon murders Adonijah, his brother; Baza murders Nabab; Zimri murders Ela; Hamri murders Zimri; Ahab murders Naboth; Jehu murders Ahab and Joram; the inhabitants of Jerusalem murder Amaziah, the son of Joash; Selom, the son of Jabes, murders Zachariah, the son of Jeroboam; Manahaim murders Selom, the son of Jabes; Phaceus, the son of Romeli, murders Phaceia, the son of Manahaim; Hoshea, the son of Ela, murders Phaceus, the son of Romeli; with a multitude of other murders of less note. Thus, it must be owned, if the Holy Spirit did write this history, he has not chosen a very edifying subject.

IDOL-IDOLATER-IDOLATRY.

IDOL comes from the Greek eidos, a figure; eidolos, the representation of a figure; latreuein, to serve, to revere, to adore. The word adore is originally Latin, and has various meanings; as, to put the hand to the mouth, in token of respect; to bend the body; to kneel; to salute; and, more commonly, to pay a supreme worship.

It is proper to observe here, that the Trevoux Dictionary begins this article with saying, that all the Pagans were idolaters, and that the Indians are still so. First, nobody was

called Pagan before the time of Theodosius the younger, when that appellation was given to the inhabitants of the country-towns of Italy, Pagorum incola Pagani, who retained their ancient religion. Secondly, Indostan is entirely Mahometan, and they are implacable enemies to images and idolatry. Thirdly, many people of India, who are of the ancient religion of the Parsis, a certain tribe which admits of no idols, cannot, with any propriety, be termed idolaters.

WHETHER IDOLATRY WAS EVER THE PROFESSED RELIGION OF ANY NATION.

It appears that there never was any people on the earth who took to themselves the name of idolaters. It is rather an abusive word, a term of detestation; as the Spaniards formerly used to call the French Gavachos, which the French returned, by calling the Spaniards Maranas. Had the senate of Rome, the areopagus of Athens, the court of the kings of Persia, been asked, Are you idolaters? they would hardly have known what the question meant; at least not one of them would have answered, We worship idols or images. The word idolater, or idolatry, does not occur either in Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, or any Gentile author. Never was there any edict or law ordering idols to be worshipped, to be accounted as deities, or to be considered as such.

The Roman and Carthaginian generals at the making of a treaty, called all their gods to witness; it is in their presence, say they, that we swear to this peace. Now the statues of all these gods, their number being none of the smallest, were not in the generals' tents; but they held the gods to be, as it were, present at the actions of men, as witnesses and judges; and certainly it was not the image which made the deity.

In what light did they then look on the statues of their false deities, which stood in the temples? In the same light, if I may be allowed the expression, as we view the images of the objects of our veneration. Their error was not the worshipping a piece of wood or marble, but the worshipping a false deity, represented by the wood and marble. The difference between them and us, is not, that they had images and we have none, but that their images represented imaginary beings, and in a false religion: whereas ours represent real beings, and in a true religion. The Greeks had the statue of Hercules, and we that of St. Christopher; they had Esculapius and

his goat, and we St. Roch and his dog: they had Jupiter and his thunder-bolts, and we St. Anthony of Padua, and St. James of Compostella.

When the consul Pliny, in the exordium of his panegyric on Trajan, addresses his petitions to the immortal gods, he cannot be thought to mean the images, which were far from being immortal.

Neither in the latter nor the more remote times of Paganism, one single fact occurs, to conclude that they worshipped idols. Homer only mentions gods dwelling in lofty Olympus. The palladium, though it fell from heaven, was no more than a sacred pledge of the protection of Pallas: it was the goddess herself who was reverenced in the palladium.

But the Romans and Greeks kneeled down before statues, put crowns on them, decked them with flowers, burnt incense to them, and carried them in solemn state through public places. These usages we have consecrated in our religion, and yet we are not idolaters.

In times of drought, the women, after keeping a fast, carried forth the statues of the gods in public, walking barefooted, with their hair loose; and immediately, according to Petronius, the rain would pour down by pails full-statim unceatim pluebat. Have we not adopted this rite, which, though an abomination among the Gentiles, is doubtless genuine devotion with Catholics? How common is it, among us, to carry barefooted the shrines of saints, in order to obtain a blessing from heaven by their intercession. A Turk, or a lettered Chinese, at seeing those ceremonies might, from his ignorance, accuse us of placing our confidence in the images which we thus carry about in procession: but a word or two would undeceive him.

We are surprised at the prodigious number of declamations thundered out in all ages, against the idolatry of the Romans and the Greeks; and afterwards, our surprise is still greater, at finding that they were not idolaters.

Some temples were more privileged than others. The great Diana of Ephesus stood in higher fame than a village Diana: more miracles were performed in the temple of Esculapius, at Epidaurus, than in any other of his temples. More offerings were made to the statue of Jupiter the Olympian, than to that of the Paphlagonian Jupiter: but, since it is proper always to contrast the usages of a true religion, to those of a false worship, have not some of our altars, for ages past, been more frequented than others? What are the offerings to our lady des Neiges, in comparison to those made to our lady

of Loretto? It is our business to examine whether this instance affords a just pretence for charging us with idolatry, or

not.

The original invention was only one Diana, one Apollo, and one Esculapius, not as many Dianas, Apollos, and Esculapiuses, as they had temples and statues. Thus it is evidenced, as far as a point of history can be, that the ancients did not hold a statue to be a deity; that the worship could not relate to the statue or idol, and consequently, that the ancients were not idolaters.

A rude, superstitious populace, incapable of reflection, either to doubt, to deny, or to believe: who flocked to the temples, as having nothing else to do, and because the little are there on a level with the great; who carried their offerings merely out of custom; who were continually talking of miracles, without having ever examined any one, and who were very little above the victims they brought; such a populace, I say, might, at the sight of the great Diana, and the thundering Jupiter, be struck with a religious horror, and without knowing it, worship the statue itself. This is no more than what has been the case with our ignorant peasants; and care is accordingly taken, to give them to understand, that it is the blessed in heaven they are to invoke for their intercession, and not figures of wood and stone; and that their worship is due to God alone.

The Greeks and Romans increased the number of their deities by apotheoses. The Greeks deified illustrious conquerors, as Bacchus, Hercules and Perseus. Rome raised altars to its emperors. Of a very different kind are our apotheoses if we have saints, answerable to their demi-gods and secondary gods, it is without any regard to rank or conquest. We have erected temples to men, merely for their exemplary virtues, and most of whom would not have been known on earth, had they not been placed in heaven. The apotheoses of the ancients were acts of adulation, ours of respect to virtue. But these ancient apotheoses are another convincing proof that the Greeks and Romans cannot properly be called idolaters. It is manifest that they no more held a divine virtue to be residing in the statues of Augustus and Claudius, than in their medals.

Cicero, in his philosophical works, does not leave so much as the least suspicion, that any mistake could be committed with regard to the statues of the gods, so as to confound them with the deities themselves. His speakers inveigh, with great acrimony, against the established religion, but not one of them