worship of the Supreme God, or of confounding it with that of the multitude of idol-deities. They first deviated from the worship of one God, to the worshipping heaven and the heavenly bodies; then to the worship of heroes and deified men; then they turned the names and attributes of God into distinct divinities, and worshipped them as such; then they paid divine honours to the images and symbols of the gods; and then they deified whatever was useful in human life, however mean, and the qualities, affections, and dispositions of the human mind, however grovelling and despicable. It did not suffice with them to worship oxen, and burn incense to crocodiles and serpents. It did not satisfy them merely to metamorphose beasts into gods, but they conversely transformed their gods into beasts, ascribing to them drunkenness, sodomy, and the most loathsome vices. Drunkenness they worshipped under the name of Bacchus; lasciviousness under that of Venus. Momus was with them the god of calumny, and Mercury the god of thieves. How little scrupulous would they be respecting adultery and rebellion, when they considered Jupiter, the greatest of their gods, to be an adulterer and a rebellious son. The consequence of all this was that, at length, the worship of avowedly evil beings became very prevalent. Hence many of their rites were cruel and contrary to humanity; and hence the licentiousness and impurity of their religion and worship became notorious. Thus, to select only one or two instances out of many, the rites of the goddess Cybele were no less infamous for lewdness than for cruelty; and these impure customs

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spread far and wide. Strabo relates that there was a temple of Venus at Corinth so rich that it maintained above a thousand harlots sacred to her service, iɛpodéλus Tapas, which were consecrated both by men and women to that goddess. And Eusebius (e) is compelled to use language, when describing the height of wickedness and impurity the worship of the heathens attained, which no virtuous man can read without shuddering. Well might it be said of the heathens by an Apostle, "God gave them up to uncleanness through "the lusts of their own hearts." The vices and enormities in which the heathens indulged were not checked by any suitable restraining motive: for whatever might be the speculative opinions of one or two philosophers, who were influenced to believe the immortality of the soul by very fanciful reasonings, (f) the belief of a future state was totally set at nought by the majority of both Greeks and Romans. Thus, according to Plato, the doctrine taught by Socrates, concerning the immortality of the soul and a future state, “met "with little credit among men ;" and indeed Socrates

(e) Præpar. Evangel. lib. ii. cap. 6, p. 74. The reader may however find, in the Octavius of Minutius Felix, an account of the heathen gods and worship, delivered in a fine strain of irony, with the suppression of the grosser circumstances.

(f) As Pythagoras, who we are informed by Diogenes Laertius (in Pythag.) held that the human soul is a portion of the ether (añóσraoμa dilépos), and therefore immortal, because the ether is so. And Pliny the naturalist, speaking thus of Hipparchus, gives at the same time his own opinion:- "The never enough commended Hipparchus, being one than "whom no one more fully approved the relation of the stars to man, and "the opinion of our souls being a part of the heaven, Animasque nos"tras partem esse cœli." Nat. Hist. lib. ii. cap. 26.

himself remarked that the opinion of the soul's being blown away, and perishing with the body, prevailed generally. Polybius also complains that in his time the belief of a future state was rejected both by the great men and the bulk of the people, and he ascribes to this disbelief the great corruption of manners: though even Polybius, while he blames the great men among the Greeks for encouraging the people to disbelieve and despise future punishments, represents them as only useful fictions. How much the disbelief of future retributions prevailed at Rome is evident from one of Cæsar's orations on the Cataline conspiracy; and Cato's reply, in which he said, "Cæsar looked upon those things to be fables which are related concerning the Inferi, where bad men, far from the mansions of the "virtuous, are confined to abodes, dreary, abominable, " and full of horrors." Long after the time of Cæsar the like contempt of an awful futurity was entertained: for Pliny the naturalist labours hard to expose the absurdity of ascribing accountable immortality to the soul, and says" that these are childless and senseless "fictions of mortals, who are ambitious of a never-end"ing existence." "Puerilium ista deliramentorum, "avidæque nunquam desinere mortalitatis commenta "sunt." (g)

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That a contempt and disbelief of future punishments weakened the fear of God, is obvious: and as to the love of God, that noble principle which is evidently fitted to produce the most elevated degrees of moral uprightness, and a happiness corresponding to our (g) Hist. Nat. lib. vii. cap. 55.

sublimest desires, the heathens were utter strangers to it. And with regard to their conduct towards one another, it must not be forgotten that none of them recognised the exalted principle of loving enemies. I am aware that some have affirmed that this principle was taught in the Grecian schools, and have referred to the Gorgias of Plato in proof of their assertion. But, if we attend duly to the whole conversation of Socrates there related, we shall find that, instead of teaching the forgiveness of injuries, the love of enemies, and the duty of "doing good to them that hate us," he inculcates the indulgence of the most refined, and, according to his own statement, the most baleful malice towards those who have injured us. The substance of his reasoning is this: "You allow that moral excellence "is the greatest good. You allow also that the "punishment of offences is one mean of reforming the "authors of them. If then our enemy has injured us, "the greatest good we can bestow upon him is to bring "him to a court of justice, and inflict the vengeance "of the law. Then by no means punish your enemy "for having injured you, for so you defeat your own "purpose of revenge. Leave him to the whole, un"controlled, uncounteracted, influence of his moral "depravity, because that is the greatest evil which "can be endured."

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It appears then, that the heathen world, and especially the Greeks and Romans, of whom we know most because they were most refined, were in a state of gross darkness and ignorance with respect to the knowledge of God, of themselves, and of those moral relations

and obligations in which they stood to the Supreme Being, and to one another. Their incentives to virtue were few and weak: their motives to avoid vice inefficacious and founded on a wrong basis. Nor was this the case with regard to the populace merely: their Legislators, Poets, and Philosophers, held the most erroneous opinions; or promulgated right sentiments, when they had discovered them, upon wrong principles. Thus, with regard to LEGISLATORS, it is well known that from political views they established and encouraged the worship of those who had once been men, and took them into the number of their gods. Consistently with this, Cotta observes, that in most cities it was usual, in order to encourage men to hazard their lives for the commonwealth, to take those who had been eminent for their fortitude into the number of their gods. This indeed is expressly prescribed by Cicero, in his second book of laws (cap. viii.) where he requires that those should be worshipped whom their merits had called into heaven. It is also a general observation, which applies to the whole civil theology of the pagans, that of the Romans as well as of the other heathen nations, that the public worship which was instituted by their more celebrated legislators, and prescribed and established by the laws of their several cities and countries, was paid to a multiplicity of deities. They were therefore encouraged, or rather compelled, to be polytheists, by law.

It has, I am aware, been urged by some, that the legislators who established the pagan mysteries designed thereby to overthrow the vulgar polytheism. But, in