dreams of charging the Romans with mistaking marble and brass for deities. Lucretius, who never gives any quarter to the superstitious, reproaches nobody with this folly: I must, therefore, again say it, this opinion never existed, never was thought of: nor was there ever any such thing as idolatry. Horace introduces a statue of Priapus, saying,

"In days of yore, our godship stood

A very worthless log of wood;
The joiner doubting, or to shape us
Into a stool, or a Priapus,

At length resolv'd, for reasons wise,
Into a god to bid me rise."

What is to be inferred from this passage? Priapus was one of those petty deities, which were given up to the sarcasms of the jocular; and this very joke is as strong a proof as can be, that the figure of Priapus was not greatly revered, being made a

scare-crow.

Dacier, commentator like, has taken care to observe, that Baruch had foretold this business, saying, they shall be whatever the artist pleases. But he might, withal, have remarked, that the like might be said of all the statues that ever existed. A tub may be made out of a block of marble, as well as the statue of Alexander or Jupiter, or something still more respectable. The matter, of which were formed the cherubims of the holy of holies, might have equally served for the meanest purposes. A throne, or an altar, lose nothing of the reverence due to them, because the artist might have formed them into a kitchen table.

Dacier, instead of inferring that the Romans worshipped Priapus's image, and that Baruch had predicted it, ought rather to have concluded, that the Romans made a jest of it. Look into all the authors who speak of the statues of their gods, not one shall you find mentioning idolatry, but quite the contrary. You read in Martial

In Ovid

66 He who the sacred fronts hath form'd in gold,
Or e'en in marble, doth not gods unfold."

"The form of Jove adored as Jove himself."

In Statius

"No storied vase, no bust of paltry clay,
The mind or will, alone, doth God display."

In Lucan

"Where is God's temple? is it placed on high?
It is the earth, sea, firmament, and sky."

To enumerate all the passages in confirmation, that images were accounted images, would take up a volume. The only case which could favour an opinion, that they had any thing divine in them, was the oracular images. But certainly the current notion was, that the gods had chosen some particular altars, and particular statues, where they sometimes condescended to reside, giving audience to men, and answering them. In Homer, and in the choruses of Greek tragedies, we only meet with prayers addressed to Apollo himself, as delivering his oracles on such a mount, in such a temple, or in such a city. Throughout all antiquity, there is no vestige left of supplications made to a statue.

They who professed magic, who believed it to be a science, or who feigned to believe it, pretended to be possessed of the secret of bringing down the gods into statues; but not the great gods, only the secondary, the genii. This, Mercurius. Trismegistus used to term, making deities; and it is refuted by St. Austin, in his City of God. But this very thing evidently shows the images to have had nothing divine in them, as not animated without the art of a magician. I fancy few of these were found so dexterous as to animate a statue so as to make it speak.

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In a word, the images of the gods were not gods: it was Jupiter, and not his image, which hurled the thunderbolt: it was not the statue of Neptune, which agitated the sea, nor that of Apollo, which diffused light. The Greeks and Romans were Gentiles, Polytheists; but by no means idolaters.

WHETHER THE PERSIANS, THE EGYPTIANS, THE SABEANS, THE TARTARS, AND THE TURKS, HAVE BEEN IDOLATERS. -ÆRA OF THE ORIGIN OF FIGURES, CALLED IDOLS-HISTORY OF THEIR WORSHIP.

To call those nations, who worshipped the sun and stars, idolaters, is wronging them. For a long time, neither images nor temples were known among them: if they were mistaken, it was in paying to the heavenly bodies the homage due only to the Creator. Besides, the doctrine of Zoroaster, or Zerdust, as preserved in the Sadder, teaches the existence of a Supreme Being, who punishes and rewards. Now, this is very far from idolatry. The Chinese government never admitted of idols,

constantly adhering to the simple worship of Kingtien, the master of heaven. Genghis Khan, among the Tartars, cannot be charged with idolatry, never having had any such thing as an image. The Mussulmans of Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, India, and Africa, called the Christians idolaters, Giaours, imagining that the Christians worship images. Several images which they found at Constantinople, in St. Sophia, and in the church of the holy apostles, and others, they broke to pieces, converting the churches into mosques. Appearances, as usual, deceived them, and led them to believe, that the dedicating of temples to saints, who had formerly been men, the worshipping of their images with genuflection, and the performing of miracles in those temples, were undeniable proofs of the most arrant idolatry, yet the farthest from it in the world. The Christians, in reality, worship only one God, and, in the blessed themselves, revere only the virtue of God, acting in his saints. The Inconoclasts and the Protestants have brought the same charge of idolatry against the church of Rome, and the same answer has been given to them.

Men having very seldom precise ideas, and still more seldom expressing them in precise words, clear of all ambiguity, the name of idolaters was given to the Gentiles, and especially to the Polytheists. Immense volumes have been written, according to the multitude of varying sentiments, on the origin of worshipping God, or several gods, and under sensible representations. This multitude of books and opinions only prove the ignorance of the authors.

We know not who invented any part of our clothing, and yet we would fain know who was the first inventor of idols. What signifies a passage of Sanchoniathon, who lived before the Trojan war? What information does he give us, in saying, that the chaos, the mind, that is, the breath, being enamoured with its principles, extracted the mud from them; that he made the air luminous; that the wind Colp, and his wife Bau, begat Eon, and he begat Genos; that Cronos, their descendant, had two eyes behind as before; that he came to be god, and gave Egypt to his son Jaut? This is one of the most respectable monuments of antiquity.

Orpheus, who was prior to Sanchoniathon, gives us just as much light in his Theogonia, which Damascius has preserved. He represents the mundane principle in the form of a dragon, with two heads, one of a bull, and the other of a lion, with a face in the middle, which he terms god face, and gilded wings to the shoulders.

Yet these ideas, fantastical as they are, give us an insight

into two important truths; one, that sensible images and hieroglyphics are derived from the most remote antiquity; the other, that all ancient philosophers acknowledged a primordial principle.

As to Polytheism, common sense will tell you, that, at the commencement of mankind, that is, of weak creatures, susceptible of reason and folly, subject to every accident, to sickness and death, they soon came to a sense of their weakness and dependence: they easily conceived that there was something superior to themselves; they felt a power in the earth, which produced their food; another in the air, which often destroyed them; and another in the consuming fire, and the submerging water. What could be more natural, in men absolutely ignorant, than to fancy that there were beings which presided over these elements? What could be more natural, than to revere the invisible power, which made the sun and the stars to shine? And, on proceeding to form an idea of these superior powers, what was again more natural, than to represent them in a sensitive way? or, I may even ask, how could they go about it otherwise? Judaism, anterior to our religion, and prescribed by God himself, was full of those images, under which the deity is represented. He condescends to speak the language of men in a bush; he makes his appearance on a mountain; the heavenly spirits sent by him, all come in a human shape; in a word, the sanctuary itself is filled with cherubims, human bodies, and the wings and heads of beasts. This led Plutarch, Tacitus, Appian, and so many others, into the ridiculous mistake of upbraiding the Jews with worshipping an ass's head. Thus God, who had forbidden the painting and carving of any figure, has been pleased, nevertheless, to accommodate himself to human weakness, which requires the senses to be spoken to by images.

Isaiah, chap. vi. sees the Lord seated on a throne, and his train fills the temple. In chap. i. of Jeremiah, the Lord stretches out his hand, and touches the prophet's mouth. Ezekiel, chap. iii. sees a throne of sapphire, and God appears to him like a man seated on that throne. This imagery does not, in the least, defile the purity of the Jewish religion, which never made use of pictures, statues, and idols, as public representations of the deity.

The lettered Chinese, the Parsis, and the ancient Egyptians, had no idols; but Isis and Osiris were soon represented in figures. Bel, at Babylon, was as soon exhibited in a huge colossus. Brama was, in the Indian peninsula, a hideous kind The Greeks, above all, multiplied the names of

of monster.

the deities, and, of course, the statues and temples: but ever attributing the supreme power to their Zeus, by the Latins named Jupiter, the sovereign of gods and men. The Romans imitated the Greeks; both always placed their gods in heaven, without knowing what they meant by heaven and their Olympus. These superior beings could not be supposed to reside in the clouds, which are only water. At first, seven of them were placed in the seven planets, among which was reckoned the sun; but, afterwards, the residence of all the gods was extended to the whole heavenly expanse.

The Romans had twelve great deities, six male and six female, who they distinguished by the appellation of Dii majorum gentium: Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, Vulcan, Mars, and Mercury; Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Venus, and Diana. Pluto was then omitted, and Vesta was called to supply his place.

Next were the gods, minorum gentium, the indigetes, or heroes as Bacchus, Hercules, and Esculapius; the infernal deities, Pluto and Proserpine; the sea gods, as Thetis, Amphitrite, the Nereides, and Glaucus; afterwards the Dryades, the Naiades; the gods of gardens; the pastoral deities: every profession, every action of life, children, maidens, wives, and women in child-bed, all had their deity: there was even the god F-t: lastly, emperors were deified; not that these emperors, nor the god F-t, nor the goddess Pertunda, nor Priapus, nor Rumilia, the goddess of bubbies, nor Stercutius, the god of privies, were accounted the lords of heaven and earth. Some of the emperors indeed, had temples; the petty household gods were without them, but all had their image or their idol.

These were little grotesque figúres, set up in a closet, by way of ornament. Old women and children were highly delighted with them; but never were these figures authorised by any public worship: every one was left to follow his own private superstition. These little idols are still found in the ruins of ancient cities.

Though we cannot fix the precise time when men began to make idols, they are, however, known to belong to the most remote antiquity. Thara, Abraham's father, used to make them at Ur, in Chaldea. Rachael purloined and carried off Laban's idols. There is no going higher.

But what did the ancient nations think of all these images? what virtue, what power did they attribute to them? Was it thought that the gods quitted heaven to come down and hide themselves in these statues? or that they imparted to them a