true theism. But if the sphere of Posidonius had been sent to the Britons, or to the Scythians, in the days of Balbus and Tully; if the machine called, I know not why, the Orrery, was sent, in our days, to the Hottentots, or the Samojedes ; these savages would smile at the stupidity of any of their brethren, if any so stupid should be found among savages, who could imagine such a machine to be the effect of chance, or to have contrived and made itself. They would all conclude, that it was the work of intelligence, and of greater skill than that which they employed to build their huts, or to shape their canoes. The most reasonable among them could not fail to see, in the unity of the design, the unity of the artificer. But the vulgar, who make themselves, their own ideas, and their own manners, the measure of all things, might very easily conclude, that the several parts of this machine were made, and the several motions of it were directed, by different intelligencies. This opinion too might grow up to be general among them, and the most rational savages might be obliged to yield to the least rational, in advancing of which no more is assumed than what has happened in every age and country, even the most civilised, and the least ignorant. But none of these savages would be absurd enough to suppose, though philosophers such as the stoicians have done little less, that the intelligence which made every wheel of the machine to move was in the wheel.

The Romans, the Greeks, and before them, all

the

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the learned nations of the East, were in this case. The vulgar acknowledged a multitude of divinities, to whom they ascribed every excellency, and every defect of their own nature, so that in worshipping them they worshipped in some sort themselves. Their wise men, who acknowledged the unity of a Supreme Being, and held these inferior divinities to be his creatures and ministers, inade even this being after their own image. The lovers of ease made him an indolent being, and wholly unconcerned about human affairs. The proud, who thought every thing that related to man equally important, and equally an object worthy of the divine care, made him a busy trifling being. Myrmecides aliquis, minutorum opusculorum "fabricator." They who converted, with profane timidity, a reverential awe into a superstitious fear of God, and made the existence of a Supreme Being, which ought to be the comfort, the terrour of mankind, ran into one of these extremes. They either screened him from human sight by the interposition of mediating, interceding, atoning beings: or, fierce and cruel themselves, they represented him hating without reason, revenging without provocation, and punishing without mea sure. The gay, the wanton, the luxurious, made gods and goddesses of the same characters; and Jupiter himself, the father of gods and men, was liable to human passions, and partook of sensual pleasures. Thus the vulgar believed, and thus the priests encouraged; while the philosophers, overborne by the torrent of polytheism, suffered

them

them to believe, in ages when true theism was reputed atheism. There were others again who had, beside that vanity which is common to all men, the particular vanity of believing themselves chosen objects of the care of Heaven, distinguished by singular privileges, and predestinated to some glorious purpose or other. The Egyptians were the first of all men admitted to the sight of the gods, and to a communication with them, according to Jamblicus, and we may see what notions had been instilled into the Romans, of grandeur and empire, to which they were designed by the gods. when we read the pompous answer that Jupiter makes to his daughter, in the first book of the Æneid. I wave any further instances of the same kind that of the Israelites, the most extraordinary of any, is too well known to be mentioned.

It is unnecessary too that I should enumerate, in this place, any of those metaphysical whimsies, concerning the divine and human nature, which philosophers broached, and brought into fashion; as the vulgar had brought, though they had not been alone to invent, all the false conceptions that prevailed about the Deity. Much has been said already, and more will be said on that subject What is to my purpose to observe here is, that the systems of theology, which philosophers, priests, and the rabble of the world, conspired to frame, were systems of superstition; that they passed, however, for systems of religion revealed some how or other, to somebody or other, sometimes

sometimes by the Supreme Being himself, sometimes by any other divine person, and, therefore, always of more authority than such as human reason could collect from the appearances of things. This persuasion too made it quite unnecessary to employ human reason about so superfluous a work, and thus an immense crop of superstitions grew up, choaked the seeds of natural religion, and corrupted, in a great degree, both publick and private morality. In short, reason has been always controlled, natural religion and natural law have been almost entirely superseded in every society of men, and many instances might be produced to show, that this has happened most in those which have been esteemed the most civilised. This has been the effect of imagination and passion, necessary, but dangerous, parts of our composition, under the influence of particular prejudices, and the direction of private motives in matters of the most publick concern. If the revelations had not been pretended only, if the same Divine Wisdom, that shows both the existence and the will of God in his works, had prescribed any particular form of worship to mankind, and had inspired the particular applications of his general laws, the system of religious and civil government would have been uniform in the whole world, as well as conformable to nature and reason, and the state of mankind would have arrived at human perfection. But it was not in the councils of the Most High, which it becomes us to adore, and not to examine, that this should be

So,

so, and therefore, all these systems of religions and laws, being nothing more than human expedients, there is no room to wonder, that they have not been more effectual to good purposes, nor that the state of mankind is such as we feel, and as we are apt to complain that it is..

XXIII.

WE may assure, from fact, that this has been the divine œconomy, and leave those men to assume from imagination what this economy has or should have been, who have so much theological presumption. But while we leave them to imagine without fact, we must not suffer them to imagine against it. Nothing can be, I think, more true than what has been advanced concerning the unnatural religions, laws, and customs established in the several societies of men, and yet it is not less true, that the tables of natural religion and law are hung up in the sight of all All may read them, and though errour has prevailed, and will ever prevail in the bulk of mankind against knowledge, more or less, and to some degree, because it is agreeable to the private interests of those who lead, and to the prejudices of those who are led, that it should, I do not believe that there ever was a time, when it could be said with truth, that the law of nature was imperfectly known, or that it was an incomplete system of morality before the Christian reve

men.

lation;