tions of the Deity than those already alluded to? We call you also to witness, ye learned theologians, whether the monuments of antiquity do not all unanimously bear record to the same facts?" (w 3.)

SECT. II. Second System: Worship of the Stars, or Sabeism.

"BUT those very monuments afterwards present to us a more methodical and complex system, that of the worship of all the stars, adored at one time under their proper form, at another under emblems and figurative symbols. This worship, however, was also the effect of the knowledge of man in physics, and derived immediately from those causes which first gave rise to the social state: that is to say, from wants and arts of the first necessity, which indeed may be reckoned as essential elements in the formation of society.

"For, when men began to unite in society, they found it indispensably necessary to enlarge the means of their subsistence, and consequently to apply themselves to agriculture; but the practice of agriculture, of course, required the observation and knowledge of the heavens (3.) It was absolutely requisite, therefore, to know the periodical return of the same operations of nature, of the same phonomena in the celestial regions; in a word, to regulate the duration and succession of seasons, of months, and the year. It was necessity then, that prompted them to become acquainted with the course of the sun, which, in

its zodiacal revolution, showed itself the first and supreme agent of the whole creation; and, in the next place, of the moon, which by its various aspects, periodical changes, and returns, dispensed and regulated the distribution of time; finally, of the stars, and even of the planets, which, by their appearance and disappearance on the horizon and nocturnal hemisphere, formed the lesser divisions. In a word, it was necessary to establish an entire system of astronomy, to form an almanack; and the labour of this undertaking in a short time spontaneously gave birth to a new method of considering the over-ruling and governing powers. Having observed that there was a regular and constant correspondence betwixt the appearance of the heavenly bodies and that of the productions of the earth; that the origin, growth and decay of every plant, were accompanied with the appearance, ascension, and declination of the same planet, of the same groupe of stars; in short, that the languor or activity of vegetation seemed to depend on celestial influences, men began to conceive from this an idea of action, of power in those bodies over terrestrial beings; and hence the stars, the acknowledged dispensers of abundance or scarcity, became powers, Genii, (y 3,) Gods, authors of good and evil.

"As the state of society had already introduced a methodical hierarchy of ranks, employments, and conditions, men, continuing to reason by comparison, transfused their newly acquired notions into their theology; and hence resulted a complicated system of gra

dationary Divinities, in which the sun, as the first God, was a military chief, a political king; the moon, a queen, his consort; the planets, servants, bearers of commands, messengers and the multitude of stars, a nation, an army of heroes, Genii, appointed to govern the world under the direction of their officers; so that every individual had a name, office, and attributes, adapted to its supposed relations and influences, and even a sex derived from the gender of the noun by which it was appellatively distinguished. (z 3.)

"As the state of society had introduced certain usages and complex practices, religious worship, leading the van, adopted similar ones. Ceremonies, of a simple and private nature at first, became public and solemn; the offerings were more rich and in greater number, rites more methodical; places of assembly, chapels, and temples were erected; persons were chosen to officiate in them: pontiffs and priests started up; devotional forms and times were settled; and thus religion became a civil act, a political tie. But, in this state of progressive developement, it altered not its first principles; for, the idea of God was still the idea of physical beings, operating good or ill, that is to say, impressing sensations of pleasure or pain: the doctrinal part was the knowledge of their laws or rules of conduct; piety and sin the observance or infringement of those laws; and morality, appearing in all its native simplicity, was a judicious practice of all that is conducive to the pre

servation of existence; to the well-being of the individual and of his fellow-creatures. (a 4.)

Should it be asked at what epoch this system took birth, we shall answer, supported by the authority of the monuments of astronomy itself, that its principles can be traced back with certainty to a period of nearly seventeen thousand years (b 4.) Should we farther be asked to what people or nation it ought to be attributed, we reply, that those self-same monuments, seconded by unanimous tradition, attribute it to the first tribes of Egypt. And, when human reason finds in that region a concurrence of all the physical circumstances calculated to give rise to it; when it finds a zone in the vicinity of the tropic, equally free from the rains of the equator, and the fogs of the north (c4;) when it finds there the central point of the antique sphere, a salubrious climate, an immense yet manageable river; a land fertile without art, without fatigue,-inundated, without pestilential exhalations; situate between two seas which wash the shores of the richest countries-it is forcibly impelled to conclude, that the inhabitant of the Nile, inclined to agriculture from the nature of his soil; to geometry, from the annual necessity of measuring his possessions; to commerce, from the facility of communication; to astronomy, from the state of the sky ever open to observation, must first have passed from the savage to the social state, and consequently have attained that degree of physical and moral knowledge appropriated to civilized man. "It was accordingly upon the upper shores

of the Nile, and among a nation of a sable complexion, that the complex system of the worship of the stars, as relatively connected with the produce of the soil and the labours of agriculture, was constructed. And this first form of worship, characterised by the adoration of the stars under their natural forms, or their natural attributes, was a procedure of the human understanding perfectly simple; but, in a short time, the multiplicity of objects with their astrological relations, and their reciprocal agency, having rendered the ideas and the signs that represented them intricate and complex, a confusion ensued, which was as absurd in its nature, as pernicious in its tendency.

SECT. III. Third System: Worship of Symbols, or Idolatry.

"FROM the instant this race of agriculturists had begun to make observations on the stars, they found it necessary to distinguish the individuals and groupes one from another, and to assign to each a proper name, in order to make themselves, by means of this nomenclature, intelligible one to another. But a considerable difficulty here presented itself; for, on the one hand, the celestial bodies, from their similarity of form, offered no peculiarity of character by which to denomi nate them; and, on the other hand, the poverty and infant state of the language, had no terms to express so many new and metaphysical ideas. Necessity, however, the usual in

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