OF PAGANISM. GENERAL VIEW. DURING the Jewish economy, and for the first three centuries after Christ, such ancient nations as were "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise," were styled Gentiles, or Heathens; the former word derived from the Hebrew Goim, or more probably from the Latin gentes, and the latter from the Greek Eovn, respectively signifying nations. But ever since the conversion of Constantine*, those of the Roman empire who opposed the religion of Christ, and all idolaters to the present day, have been more generally distinguished by the name of Pagans. As the Greeks and Romans looked upon all nations, except their own, as barbarianst, so the Jews called all who were not of their own nation Heathens, or Gentiles; and, from the giving of the Law till the propagation of the Gospel, the Jews and Gentiles divided the world between them. RISE, PROGRESS, AND HISTORY. The Old Testament is the only authentic record of the antediluvian world; and it does not warrant us to say, that idolatry was one of those enormities which determined the great Creator to involve, in one common destruction, almost the whole race of mankind. But soon after the Flood ap • Or, according to others, since the reign of Theodosius the Younger, when the appellation of Pagans was given to the inhabitants of the country towns of Italy—“Pagorum incola Pagani”—who retained their ancient religion. + This insolent appellation, or custom, is to be found among the Moors to this day, who denominate all Europeans Barbarians; and among the Indians, who give the name of Milechihus, or Infidels, to all foreigners.-Jackson's Account of Morocco, and Asiatic Researches, vol. ii. p, 201. peared a portentous idolatry, which gradually overspread the whole earth. Amidst the crowd of imaginary deities, the Real One soon became almost entirely forgotten; irreligion, and false religion, divided the world between them, and wickedness of every kind was authorized by both *. The first monument of idolatry seems to have been that stupendous tower which the united labours of mankind erected in honour of Belus, or the Sun, on the plains of Shinar, about the year A. c. 2247. Chaldea was the original theatre of the most ancient species of idolatry, the worship of the heavenly bodies; a delusion which may be accounted for, in some measure, from their climate, and the serenity of their sky, together with their occupation as shepherds, which kept them abroad, in a wide extent of champaign country, by night as well as by day. This worship of the heavenly bodies and the elements was not only the most ancient, but, in the judgment of many, the least blameable species of idolatry: "For they peradventure erred, seeking God, and desirous to find him t.' But superstition degenerates from bad to worse. The further we remove from the source of polytheism, it evidently becomes the more impure; till, in the accumulated corruptions of many ages, we behold, in respect to Divine knowledge, the ultimate degradation of the human mind. Elementary and planet worship was soon succeeded, among the Egyptians, who were the most ancient civilized nation, by the deifying of their deceased kings, heroes, and others, Nor did their superstition rest here; for it became so stupidly vile and depraved, as to lead them to worship birds, and beasts, and plants; and not only the most noxious beings in nature, but the monsters and chimeras of the most wild Historical or natural truth has been perverted into fable, by ignorance, imagination, flattery, or stupidity; and Mr. Faber, in his late able work on "the Origin of Pagan Idolatry," to which the reader is referred, has shewn, by a learned and copious induction of particulars, that the persons and circumstances connected with the Creation and the Deluge, form the ground-work of the mythology of all the pagan nations. + Wisdom xiii. 6.-"Howheit, neither are they to be pardoned." ver. 8. Nor surely is Dr. Young to be easily pardoned for his introduction of heathenish notions and conceits into his "Night Thoughts," or for this his intolerable hyperbole, when speaking of the luminaries of heaven "So bright, with such a wealth of glory stor❜d, Twere sin in heathens not to have ador'd,"-Last Day, book I. How absurd and profane is it, in a Christian writer, thus to affirm that idolatry, though of the host of heaven, was ever a duty required of the heathen world, and that it was sin in them not to pay that divine homage to the works of the Deity, which should centre only in himself! How different the language of Job, a Chaldean, who lived not under the Jewish economy: see chap. xxxi. ver. 26–28. and distempered imagination. We are told that they had 666 different kinds of sacrifices,-a number surpassing all credibility*. This country, the inventress of statues, the nursery of idolatry and fables, as well as of the arts and sciences, having carried image worship, and its subsequent errors, to a greater excess than any other nation, and having corrupted all others with a barbarous polytheism, was therefore made the scene of those miracles, by which the God of Israel triumphed over idolatry in its strongest citadel. The still more unnatural, the sanguinary and inexorable, superstition of the republic of Carthage, was formed on that of its parent state, the Phoenicians, "who sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the idols of Canaan." Greece was partly peopled from Egypt; and the Egyptian colonies brought over with them, and introduced into Europe, the gross and childish superstitions of the country from whence they came; and hence, from the fountain, we may form some judgment of the stream. The poet Hesiod, who flourished about A.C. 944, was the first who reduced the Grecian idolatry to any appearance of a system; and it would appear that the deities amounted, even in his time, to no fewer than 30,000!+ Among these he includes Heaven, Earth, Ocean, Morning, Day, Night, Rivers, Winds, Love, Desire, Gracefulness, &c. &c. in one rank or other, as deities; but most of them are deified men, to whom was assigned a local jurisdiction. Romulus and Numa were the founders of the Roman superstition, which, like the manners of the first Romans, was at first remarkably simple; but became corrupted in time by a complication of foreign deities and their various rites. The Twelve Tables had indeed forbidden the introduction of new divinities and foreign rites; and for two centuries the Decemviral laws kept up this salutary restraint; but afterwards the general principle of the religion of Rome was the same as that of her policy; for she incorporated foreign rites and deities with her own, in the same manner as she enrolled the conquered nations in the number of her subjects and citizens. It was a relaxation of her morals that opened the sluices to this inundation of Polytheism, which in the progress of her empire made her the common receptacle of all the impostures In this number were human sacrifices; and the victims of their cruelty were supposed, from the colour of their hair, to have been foreigners, and likely the Israelites, during their residence in Egypt. + 2 Kings iii. 27; Psalm cvi. 38. See Diod. Siculus, Bibl. Hist. lib. xx. "Ultra 30,000 a Varrone recensentur."-Alex. ab Alexandro, lib. 6. cap. 4. and superstitions of the provinces. And the dangerous effects of this promiscuous intercourse were often such as to occasion the interference of the senate: yet, notwithstanding repeated prohibitions, we find the Egyptian and Asiatic rites continually practised at Rome, and, at last, all religions her denizens. The first inhabitants of Gaul and Britain, being of Celtic race, followed the Druidical superstitions; while the ancient Germans, Scandinavians, &c. being of Gothic race, professed that system of polytheism afterwards delivered in the Edda, which contains an authentic epitome of Runic mythology, and is a valuable relict of northern genius, and at the same time one of the most portentous monuments of ancient superstition *. "The pagan religion," says Dr. Winder, "degenerated into greater absurdity the further it proceeded; and it prevailed in all its height of absurdity, when the pagan nations were polished to the height. Though they set out with the talents of reason, and had solid foundations of information to build upon, it in fact proved, that, with all their strengthened faculties and growing powers of reason, the edifice of religion rose in the most absurd deformities and disproportions, and gradually went on in the most irrational, disproportioned, incongruous systems, of which the most easy dictates of reason would have demonstrated the absurdity. They were contrary to all just calculations in moral mathematics +." And if we turn to other countries, and more modern times, we shall find the religion of Pagans equally irrational, profane, ridiculous, and absurd ;—we shall discover nothing that can ensure its votaries comfort in this world, or happiness in the next;-nothing credible and consistent; but strange groupes of strange beings, 66 Abortive, monstrous, and unkindly mix'd, Some of the most remarkable events in the history of Paganism, are:-Its rise and first appearance in Chaldea, soon after the Flood; its establishment in Egypt, long before the time of Moses; its introduction into Greece, and flourishing state there, before the era of the war of Troy; its establishment in Rome under Romulus, Numa, Tarquin, &c.; its revival and restoration in Italy, by Augustus; and in Greece, See the "Edda," a Semundo, Copen. 1787, and M. Mallet's "Northern Antiquities." "History of Knowledge," vol. ii. p. 336. |