to be more worthy of the name of rational crea tures, than those famous nations, who would arrogate to themselves the exclufive privilege of knowledge and reason, and yet continued to debase human nature, by worshipping idols made from wood and stone.

From what has been before recited, from the Edda, it will appear that, according to the opinion of the Celts, nature is in a continued scene of labour and exercise, and that, confequently, her vigour will be by little and little exhausted, and her decline will every day appear more fenfible. At laft the seasons will be changed, and a long and extraordinary winter will be the laft marks of her decline. The moral world will not be less troubled than the phyfical one: nature, in her last agonies, will plead no longer with mankind, but will leave their hearts a prey to their cruel and inhuman pasfions then all the powerful enemies, whom the Gods with much difficulty kept in chains, will break their chains, and immediately plunge the whole universe into confufion. In vain fhall the Gods, fupported by the whole army of heroes, endeavour to stop the progrefs of those powerful monsters ;-they will deftroy them, it is true, but they will fall with them, although fighting in the bofom of that Great Divinity, who created all things, and who will furvive to all eternity. After this the whole univerfe will be deftroyed, or rather purified, by fire, as another will immediately appear more agreeable, and more fruitful.

This, in a few words, is the doctrine of the Edda, divested of all its allegory and ornaments; and I need not inform my readers, that it is very like the description of the last judgment, and of the end of the world, which we find in the New Testament.-We fee here, as it were in a mist, what Jefus Chrift and St. John have fince more clearly explained to us. Moreover, when we read the opinions of many of the great ancient philofophers, who were modeft, and fuffered themfelves to be guided by the lights which nature held out to them, we find therein the pure ancient Celtic religion entire, although it was established long before those philofophers had existence; namely, the belief of one great and eternal Divinity, who was the foul, and creator of all things; and that, from this Divinity, there iffued out an inferior order of beings, when the world was created, who were appointed to govern it under his orders, and with it were to undergo the fame revolutions, in the day which was fixed for renewing it: that the fire hid in the bowels of the earth will firft confume all its humidity, and afterwards destroy it entirely. The time will come, fays Seneca *, when the world, ready to be renewed, will be burnt up; when the opposite powers shall destroy each other, by ftriving to gain a fuperiority; when the stars fhall run counter to each other, and the whole universe, in this confusion, shall be burnt with fire. Zeno is of the fame opinion; but he adds likewise, agreeable to

* Seneca Confol. ad Marciam. c. ult.

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theatre of the world; a people who are faid to have been the chofen of the Great God of heaven and earth, because their ancestors ferved him in purity and holinefs; and a people of whom we have the most ancient, and the most extraordinary, history of any at prefent exifting. I am well aware that great objections will be made to the ancient Jewish hiftory, by many of our modern philofophers, as containing much allegory and fiction, fome things which appear to be very abfurd in themselves, and many more which are contrary to the laws of God and nature; and from thence they would attempt to deny the greatest part of the facts, which Mofes, and the other writers of that history, have afferted. Before I proceed in my original plan, I fhall beg leave, with great deference to fuperior judgment, to offer my opinion, in a curfory way, upon this matter, to attempt to remove the objections before-mentioned, and to prove that they do not at all tend to impeach the veracity of Mofes, and of the other Jewish writers.

It is true, that many parts of the Old Teftament, and particularly the books of Mofes, are wrote in fuch an allegorical and figurative manner, that, at first fight, they will appear more like fables, than like matters of fact.-But when we confider that all the writings of those days were wrote in an allegorical and figurative style, and in verfe, and that a great part, if not the whole, of the Old Testament, was wrote in the fame manner, I fee no reason why we fhould bear harder upon

this hiftory, than upon other writings which were cotemporary therewith, and of which we believe the principal facts, although not all the imaginary flights of the poets. There are very few people who will deny that there was fuch a place as Troy, that it was befieged for fome time by the chiefs of the little Grecian ftates, and that it has afforded the fubject-matter for one of the best epic poems that has ever appeared in the world but I am apprehenfive, that it will be difficult to find any person who believes, that every part of that war was conducted and managed exactly as Homer has defcribed it. Why then fhould we think that Mofes, and the rest of the Jewish writers, because they followed in fome measure the figurative manner of writing, which was then practifed, and which undoubtedly they thought to be the best calculated for the people to whom they wrote, fhould have filled their history with false facts? Or why fhould we be more backward to believe, that the Jewish heroes, with a handful of men, and, as they say, affifted by the Supreme God, fhould gain compleat victories over fuch an abandoned and effeminate people as the Canaanites, than that the fame should have been done, by the Spaniards, in the conqueft of America? Moreover, the greatest part of the Jewish hiftory was publicly known while the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans, were great and learned nations; and, if thofe mighty acts which Mofes declared to have been done by him, in Egypt, and

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pofed that, by making fome terrible facrifices, they fhould be able to turn off his vengeance; without reflecting that fuch facrifices very often augmented their crimes, and plunged them into the moft infamcus and deteftable scenes of horror. Others again have fuppofed that, through the interceffion of fome inferior divinities, which were held forth to them, by the vivacity of their imagination only, they should be able to appease the wrath of the Great and offended God.-Hence the idolatry of the fouthern nations of Europe and Asia. And we find some of their principal philofophers, notwithstanding all their learning, deaf to the voice of nature, and ferving the most despicable of their divinities. But, in all ages, and in all parts of the world, we find that fome artful and defigning men, pretending to be fent, or infpired, by the Supreme Being, to declare his will among mankind, have gained an abfolute dominion and au thority over their fellow-creatures; from the ve-neration which the latter had for the Great Father of all things, from being convinced of the utility of fuch a divine meffage, and from the neceffity which they felt themselves under to know his will, and thereby to adore him more perfectly than they were capable of doing it from the light of nature only. I fhall hereafter compare the doctrines and examples of fome of the principal of those prophets and teachers, with those of Jesus Christ and his Apoftles, and point out the villany and design of the former; but at present, agree

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