of Perfia; otherwife, if we may judge from their natural propenfity to idolatry, they would have fallen again into the fame ftate that they were in before they were carried away into Babylon..

When Judea was afterwards conquered by the Greeks, they at the fame time introduced their learning and language into this country. Before this time there were no divifions or fects among the Jews, but fuch as followed the true prophets or the false, and fuch as worshipped the God of Heaven, or the idolatrous gods of the neighbouring nations. With the Grecian language and learning entered their philofophy; and from this was formed the two great fects of Pharifees and Sadducees: the Pharifees, as far as the law of Mofes, that was now, from the frequent explanations which the priests had given it, but the shadow of what it was originally, would permit them, in all their opinions, followed the philofophy of Plato: the Sadducees, that of Epicurus. The first profeffed the ftricteft rules of virtue and vice, the hopes and fears of rewards and punishments in another world, and the existence of angels and fpirits feparate from bodies: but the Sadducees believed little or nothing of any of these, further than to cover themselves from the hatred and perfecution of the other fect, which was the most popular. In this ftate was the Jewish nation when John the Baptift began to preach among them, and when the Meffias appeared upon earth. They had a form of godlinefs, although they de

nied the power thereof. Indeed, after the introduction of the Grecian philofophy among them, and the forming of the fects of the Pharifees and of the Sadducees, we find no more traces of their ancient idolatry. They blended this philofophy with fome parts of the Mofaical inftitution, and at least kept up some form of the worship of the God of Heaven. They waited for the coming of the Meffias, and for the fulfilling of the prophecies of their old prophets; but when he came among them, because he did not come in Afiatic pomp, to put their nation upon the fame footing that it was in during the reigns of David and Solomon, which they fuppofed would have been the cafe, they rejected him, as their fathers had done all the rest of the prophets, although the prophecy of Ifaiah was thereby ftrictly fulfilled.

BUT before we proceed to examine that pure system of morality and worship of the Supreme Being, which was taught mankind by Jesus Christ, let us turn our attention again, for a moment, upon the different nations and people of the world which have already been defcribed, upon the inhuman and fuperftitious forms of worship which they offered up to their idol gods, or to the host of Heaven, and upon the variety of manners and characters of thofe people, and we fhall find, notwithstanding all those seeming contradictions, that uncorrupted nature teaches every where the fame Chap. 53. and 54.

3.

leffons

leffons of justice and of honefty, which the human race owe to each other; and that mankind have always been unanimous in the opinion, that they owed an adoration and worship to fome fuperior being or beings. It is true we frequently find their ideas of thofe matters much confused, particularly in their worship of a divinity, from the warmth and irregularities of their paffions, or from the artful infinuations of cunning and defigning men, who have frequently endeavoured to corrupt the people, to confufe their understandings, and to make even their religious principles fubfervient to their wicked and ambitious defigns. History likewise furnishes us with some examples, where the pure voice of nature has predominated, difperfed that chaos of fuperftition and idolatry in which the greatest part of the world were heretofore enveloped, and taught her faithful fons that there was a God, who was the creator and protector of all created beings; that there was an immortal part united to their mortal bodies, which would exift to all eternity, and which would be happy or miserable, according to the works which they did upon earth: But I cannot find one example,' where any human being was made acquainted with the attributes of the Supreme Being, from the light of nature only. Socrates, Plato, and Pliny, as I have already observed, were fenfible that this could not be done, and so were some of their followers, and felt much for the degenerate and unhappy fituation of their fellow-creatures.

in Canaan, were not fo as he has related them, those people would undoubtedly have contradicted them, for their own honour, as well as for the benefit of mankind. In all probability, if the world lafts three thousand years more, the hiftories which are wrote in our days, will appear, from our manner of writing, as fabulous to the inhabitants which will then be upon the earth, as the history of Mofes does to many at present.

That all the books, and other writings, which were wrote in the early ages of the world, were wrote in verfe, is generally admitted. The ancients employed poetry for the instruction of mankind in religion and morals, as well as to inspire them with heroic fentiments. The Edda, and all the pieces which remain of the ancient mythology of the north, are in verfe; the Druids affumed the fame holy offices; they directed the modes of divine worship; taught the moral duties; fung the praises of valour, and the charms of liberty, all in the allegorical and enchanting strains of poetry. But, in the east, the poet enveloped his inventions more in mysterious allegory, and divine mythology, and rather endeavoured to raise the mind to heavenly contemplations, than to inftruct it in the common affairs of life. Aristotle fays, that the Agathyrfi had all their laws in verfe; and Tacitus tells us, that the Germans had no annals, or records, but what were wrote in this manner. The Grecian oracles were likewife delivered in verfe; and Pliny relates it as a thing well known, that Phærecides

rity of their morals, but alfo in their examples of piety and virtue.

Confucius and Mango Copac, who feem to have had the clearest ideas of civil government, and who formed the civil inftitutions of two empires, which are worthy the imitation of more enlightened nations, appear to have had very imperfect ideas of the Deity and of a future ftate; and left the inhabitants of their refpective countries in a ftate of idolatry, and in the groffeft ignorance respecting these matters; although the Peruvians were, and the Chineses actually are, very well informed in every thing that regards civil fociety.

The inhabitants of Mexico and of North Ame rica were in a ftate of barbarity, ignorance, and inhumanity, equal to that wherein the people of Africa are to this day; and although they were called human beings, their ideas were fo totally. abforbed in a chaos of fuperftition and brutality, that, except from their form, we might fuppofe them to have been an order of beings of an infe

rior nature.

Odin feems rather to have been the caufe of plunging the people of the northern nations into the most abominable fcenes of idolatry and inhumanity, than to have in the leaft contributed to their reformation or civilization. He appears to have been one of those infamous hypocritical priests who, taking advantage of the fimplicity and well-meaning difpofition of their fellow-creatures, employ all their art and cunning to draw them infenfibly

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