A. M. 1997. A. C. 2007; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3318. A. C. 2093. GEN. CH. x. A ND CH. xi. VER. 10. TO THE END.

horse and foot; and of fleets and galleys with brazen beaks, to transport the forces over a river only, to the number of two thousand. But all that narration of Diodorus and Justin, as it is acknowledged to be taken from Ctesias (whom all the best critics of antiquity look upon as an author deserving no credit) may very justly be accounted false and fabulous. And though it cannot be denied that the invention of shipping, which was not before the flood (for had it been before, more than Noah and his family might have saved themselves from the waters) is a great step towards the improvement of commerce; yet, as the dispersion of mankind made it more difficult to trade with nations who spoke a different language, so the method whereunto we may suppose they entered at

Lower Syria, Cilicia, Pamphylia, Lycia; and besides these, Caria, the Phrygias, Lydia, Mysia, Troas, together with the Propontis, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and all the barbarous nations, as far as the Tanais; with Persia, Susiana, Caspiana, and many other nations that we need not here enumerate. From this last expedition, as soon as he returned, he built a city which he called by his own name, Ninus, not far from the river Euphrates; and being afterwards enamoured with the beauty and valour of a woman of uncertain birth, named Semiramis, the wife of Menon, the prefect of Syria, he took her to wife, and by her advice and direction governed all things with success. For having gathered together an army of seventeen hundred thousand foot, and two hundred and ten thousand horse, and six hundred thousand armed chariots, (numbers incredible in those days,) with these he advanced against Oxyartes, king of Bactria, who met him with an army of four hundred thousand men; but the Bactrians being defeated, and their capital, by the valour and direction of Semiramis, taken, she was thereupon advanced by Ninus to the honour of being made queen, which occasioned her husband Menon, to hang himself. After Ninus had thus settled his affairs in Bactria, his wife Semiramis had a son whom he named Ninyas, and not long after died, leaving the administration of the kingdom in his wife's hands; who, to raise her own glory, built a stately monument for her deceased husband, built the city of Babylon, and other remarkable places; and then, having brought Egypt, Ethiopia, and Lybia, all the way to the temple of Jupiter Hammon, under her jurisdiction, returned into Asia; where she had not been long before, hearing that Staprobates or Staurobates, king of India, governed a rich country, she resolved to take it from him. To this purpose she prepared a great army and fleet; but being told what mighty elephants there were in India, in order to have something like them, she caused three hundred thousand hides of oxen to be dressed and stuffed with straw, under which there was a camel to bear the machine, and a man to guide it, which at a distance made a kind of resemblance of these Her army consisted of three millions of foot, one million of horse, and an hundred thousand chariots; of an hundred thousand of those that fought on camels; of two hundred thousand camels for the baggage, and two thousand galleys with brazen heads, to transport her army over the river Indus. But all this must be false and fabulous; because it is incredible to think, either that her own country should supply, or that the country whereinto she was marching, should be able to sustain such an immense number of men and other creatures as are here related. Besides that it is false in fact, that the kings of Assyria ever governed all Asia, or stretched their conquests over Egypt and Libya.-Millar's History of the Church, c. 1, part 3.

vast creatures.

a This Ctesias was a native of Cnidus, and physician to ArtaXerxes Mnemnon. He wrote a Persian history in three and twenty books, of which there remain only a few fragments preserved by Photius. But very valuable authors, who have seen Ctesias when prefect, give him no commendable character. Plutarch (in Artaxerxes) calls him a fabulous vain man, and a great liar. A. Gellius (Noctes Atticæ, b. 9. c. 4.) reckons him among the fabulous writers; and Aristotle (in his Historia Animalium) says, that he was an author who deserves no credit; as indeed if we will judge either by the incredible things in his story, or by what he says of the Indian or Persian affairs, in his fragments that remain, we shall have reason to conclude that these great men have not given him this character without good grounds.Miller's History, ibid.

first, extended no farther than this:-That the colonies who planted new countries, not only perceiving their own wants, from the conveniences they had left behind them, but finding likewise something useful in their settlements which were before unknown to them or their founders, fetched what they wanted from the parts where they formerly dwelt, and in exchange for that carried what they had discovered in their new plantations thither, and this seems to have given the first rise to traffic and foreign | trade, whose gradual advances we may have occasion to take notice of hereafter. In the mean time, we shall conclude this book and this chapter together, with an account of the religion which at this time obtained in the most famous nations of the world, and observe withal by what means it came to degenerate into idolatry, and other wicked and superstitious practices.

Now, besides the common notion of a God, which men might either learn from tradition, or collect by their own reflection; the very history of the deluge, which had not so long ago befallen the world, could not but instruct and confirm the generations we are now treating of, in several articles of their religion. If they had the account of this remarkable judgment transmitted to them in all its circumstances, they could not but entertain these conceptions of God. That he takes cognizance of the things which are done here on earth; that he is a lover of virtue, and a severe punisher of vice; that he is infinite in power, by commanding the winds and rains, seas and elements, to execute his will; that he is likewise infinite in mercy, in forewarning the wicked of their ruin (as he did the old world) several years before its execution; and that therefore a being of such a nature and disposition was to be served, and worshipped, and feared, and obeyed. So that the sum of religion, in the ages subsequent to the flood, even to the promulgation of the law, must have consisted in the belief of a God, and his sacred attributes; in the devout worship of him, by the oblation of prayers and praises, and such sacrifices as he himself had instituted; and in the observance of those eternal rules of righteousness, of justice and mercy, of sobriety and temperance, &c., which, if not expressly delivered to the sons of Noah, were nevertheless deducible from the nature of things, and the relations wherein mankind stood toward one another.

And now, if we look into the principal nations which were at this time existing, we shall find, that the Persians, above all other people, were remarkable for having amongst them a true account of the creation of the world, and its destruction by water; which they strictly adhered to, and made the foundation of their religion; nor have we any reason to think but that they were for some time, very zealous professors of it, though by degrees, they came to corrupt it, by introducing novelties and fancies of their own into both their faith and practice: we shall find that many of the ancient Arabians preserved the true worship of God for several ages, whereof Job, who perhaps lived in the days now under considerwas likewise ation, was a memorable instance; as Jethro, the priest of Midian, in the days of Moses: we shall find, that the Canaanites of old were of the same religion with Abraham; for though he travelled up

Hyde's Relig. Vet. Persarum, c. 3

* Shuckford's Connection, vol. 1. b. 5.

S

26

is

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appearance of idolatry was in the days of Serug: "Be-
cause as Enoch," say they, "was the seventh from Adam,
in whose time the general impiety before the flood is said
to have begun; so Serug, being in like manner the seventh
from Noah, lived at a proper distance for such a cor-
ruption of religious worship to be introduced and grow."
but this is a reason too trifling to be taken notice of.
"Nor can I see,' 95 9
says our learned Selden, "how they
can be able to maintain their opinions, who determine
so peremptorily concerning a matter of so distant and
uncertain a nature."

A. M. 1997. A. C. 2007; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3318. A. C. 2093. GEN. CH. x. AND CH. xi. VER. 10. TO THE END. and down many years in their country, yet was he | of idolatry not a great deal lower than the time of the respected by the inhabitants of it as a person in great dispersion. favour with God; and Melchisedek, the king of Salem, The generality of Christian fathers, as well as orienwho was the priest of the most high God,' and conse-tal writers, are positive in their assertions, that the first quently of the same religion, received him with this address, Blessed be Abraham, servant of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth:' we shall find from Abimelech's prayer, upon his receiving intimation that Sarah was Abraham's wife, that among the Philistines there were some true worshippers of the God of heaven, 'Lord, wilt thou slay a righteous nation? said he unto me, she is my sister; and she, even she herself, said, he my brother in the integrity of my heart and innocency of my hands have I done this:' we shall find, that the Egyptians allowed no mortal creature to be a god; professed to worship nothing but their god Cneph, 3 whom But whatever the date of idolatry might be, it is certhey affirmed to be without beginning and without end;tain that it had its first birth, not in Egypt, as some have and though in the mythologic times, they represented maintained, but in Chaldea, as the most reverend author this deity by the figure of a serpent with the head of an of the Treatise of Idolatry has evinced; "and that hawk, in the middle of a circle, yet they affirmed at the because in the days of Abraham we find all other nations same time, that the god whom they thus represented was and countries adhering to the true account of the creation the creator of all things,—a being incorruptible and and deluge, and worshipping the God of heaven accordeternal, with several other attributes becoming the Divine ing to what had been revealed to them; whereas the Chalnature. In short, we shall find that all the nations then deans had so far departed from his worship, and were known in the world, not only worshipped the same God, so zealous in their errors and corruptions, that upon whom they called the Maker and Creator of the universe, Abraham's family refusing to join with them, they but worshipped him likewise in the same form and man-expelled them their country, and "cast them out from ner; that they had all the like sacrifices, either expiatory, to make atonement for their sins; precatory, to obtain favours from Almighty God; propitiatory, to avert his judgments; or eucharistical, to return thanks for his extraordinary mercies; and that all these sacrifices were every where offered upon altars, with some previous purifications, and other ceremonies to be observed by the offerer: so that religion in every nation, for some time after the flood, both in principle and practice, was the same, till some busy and pragma-roofs all night, to make their observations, they fell in tical heads being minded to make some improvements (as they thought), added their own speculations to it, and so both destroyed its uniformity, and introduced its corruption.

5

When this corruption of religion was first introduced, is not so easy a matter to determine, because neither sacred nor profane history have taken any notice of it. Those, who account idolatry one of the sins of the antediluvian world, suppose that Ham being married into the wicked race of Lamech, retained a strong inclination for such a false worship; and that, after he was cursed by his father Noah, and separated from the posterity of Shem, he soon set it up. Those who imagine that the tower of Babel was a monument intended for the honour of the sun, which had dried up the waters from off the face of the earth, must suppose that the worship of that planet began when the remembrance of the deluge was fresh in men's minds; but those who are of opinion that the difference of men's dialects, and the difference of their sentiments concerning God might not improperly commence together, must date the first institution

the face of their gods."

The Chaldeans indeed, by reason of the plain and even situation of their country, which gave them a larger prospect of the heavenly bodies than those who inhabited mountainous places, had a great conveniency for astronomical observations, and accordingly were the first people who took any great pains to improve them. And as they were the first astrologers," so learned men have observed, that lying on the ground, or else on flat

love with the lights of heaven, which in the clear firmament of those countries, appeared so often and with so much lustre; and perceiving the constant and regular order of their motions and revolutions, they thence began to imagine that they were animated with some superior souls, and therefore deserved their adoration; and as the sun excelled all the rest, so the generality of learned men have with good reason imagined, that this bright luminary was the first idol in the world.

Among the Egyptians, " Syphis king of Memphis was the first who began to speculate upon such subjects. He examined what influence the sun and moon had upon the terrestrial globe; how they nourished and gave life and vigour to all things; and thereupon, forgetting what his ancestors had taught him, namely, that in the beginning God created the heavens, as well as the earth,' the sun and moon, as well as the creatures of this lower world, he concluded that they were two great and mighty deities, and accordingly commanded them to be worshipped.

A. M. 1997. A. C. 2007; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3318. A. C. 2093. GEN. CH. x. AND CH. xi. VER. 10. TO THE END.

They saw those celestial bodies running their courses, as they thought, day and night, over all the world, and reviving and invigorating all the parts and products of the earth; and though they kept themselves so far right, as not to mistake them for the true God, yet they imagined them to be his most glorious ministers; and not taking care to keep strictly to what their forefathers had taught them, they were led away by their own imaginations, to appoint an idolatrous worship for beings that had been created, and by nature were not gods.

the most hateful, such as serpents, dragons, crocodiles, &c., and descended at last so low, as to pay a religious regard to things inanimate, herbs and plants, and the most stinking vegetables.

5

How men came to part with the religion of their ancestors for such trash, and to change the glory of the incorruptible God into the image of corruptible man, and birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things,' the apostle who remonstrates against the indignity, has in some measure supplied us with a reason, when he tells that this state of things, so gross and strange soever it was, was introduced under the pretences of wisdom, or by men professing to be wise.

It was the wise amongst them that formed the design; and, addressing the multitude with a grave appearance, prevailed (as we may conceive) by some such form of arguing as this, 6 "We are all aware, ye sons of Noah, that religion is our chief concern, and therefore it well becomes us to improve and advance it as much as possible. We have indeed received appointments from God for the worship which he requires; but if these appointments may be altered for his greater glory, there is no doubt but that it will be a commendable piety so to alter them. Now our father Noah has instructed us in a religion which in truth is too simple, and too unaffecting. It directs us to the worship of God abstractly from all sense, and under a confused notion, under the formality of attributes, as power, goodness, justice, wisdom, eter

What kind of idolatry was current among the Canaanites, Moses sufficiently intimates in the caution he gives the Israelites, just going to take possession of it, namely, that when they lifted up their eyes to heaven, and saw the sun and moon, and stars, even all the hosts of heaven,' they should not, as the inhabitants of the country were, be driven to worship and to serve them. And that this was the customary worship among the Arabians, the justification which Job makes of himself is a sufficient proof; If I beheld the sun, when it shined, or the moon, walking in brightness, and mine heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand,' that is, if with devotion of soul, or profession of outward respect, I have worshipped those heavenly bodies, which by their height, motion, and lustre, attract the eye and ravish the senses, this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge; for then I should have denied the God that is above." And therefore the account which the Greek historian gives us of the origin of this kind of idola-nity, and the like; an idea foreign to our affections, as try is more than probable, namely, that the most ancient inhabitants of the earth, (meaning those who lived not long after the flood, and particularly the Egyptians,) contemplating on the world above them, and being astonished with high admiration at the nature of the universe, believed that they were eternal gods, and that the two principal of them were the sun and the moon, the former of which they called Osiris, and the latter Isis:" since, of later years, upon the discovery of America, though many different idols were found in different places, yet as for the sun, it was the universal deity both in Mexico and Peru.

4

well as our comprehensions; whereas in all reason we ought to worship God more pompously and more extensively, and not only to adore his personal and essential attributes, but likewise all the emanations of them, and all those creatures by which they are eminently represented. Nor can this be any derogation from his honour; since his honour is certainly more amply expressed when in this manner we acknowledge that not only himself, but all his creatures likewise are adorable. We ought therefore (if we will be wise) to worship the host of heaven, because they are eminent representations of his glory and eternity. We ought to worship the elements, because they represent his benignity and omnipresence. We ought to worship princes, because they sustain a divine character, and are the representatives of his power upon earth. We ought to worship men famous in their generation, even when they are dead, because their virtues are the distinguishing gifts and communications of God; nay, we ought to worship the ox and the sheep, and whatever creatures are most beneficial, because they are the symbols of his love and goodness; and with no less reason, the serpent, the crocodile, and other animals that are noxious, because they are symbols of his awful anger.

But whatever the first idol might be, it soon multiplied into such a prodigious number as to fill both heaven and earth with its progeny; insomuch, that there are not three parts of the creation but what in one nation or other had their worshippers. They worshipped universal nature, the soul of the world, angels, devils, and the souls of men departed, either separate and alone, or in union with some star or other body. They worshipped the heavens, and in them both luminaries and constellations; the atmosphere, and in it the meteors and fowls of the air; the earth, and in it beasts, birds, insects, plants, groves, and hills, together with divers fossils and terrestrial fire. They worshipped the water, and in it the sea and rivers, This seems to be a fair opening of the project, and by and in them fishes, serpents, and insects, together some such cunning harangue as this we may suppose it was with such creatures as live in either element. They that the first contrivers of idolatry drew in the ignorant worshipped men both living and dead; and in them the and admiring multitude. And indeed, considering the faculties and endowments of the soul, as well as the seve-natural habitude of vulgar minds, and the strong ral accidents and conditions of life. Nay, they worshipped the images of men; the images of animals, even

inclinations they have in matters of an abstruse consideration, to help themselves by sensible objects, it seems not so difficult a task to have drawn them in.

A. M. 1997. A. C. 2007; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3318. A. C. 2093. GEN. CH. x. AND CH. xi. VER. 10. TO THE END.

useful arts and sciences, were reverenced while they lived, and after death canonized. The prevailing notion of the soul's immortality, made them imagine that the spirits of such excellent persons either immediately ascended up into heaven, and settled there in some orb or other, or that they hovered in the air, whence, by solemn invocations, and by making some statue or image resemblant of them, they might be prevailed with to come down and inhabit it.

Those who worshipped universal nature, or the system of the material world, perceived first, that there was excellency in the several parts of it, and then (to make up the grandeur and perfection of the idea) they joined them altogether in one Divine Being. Those who laboured under a weakness and narrowness of imagination, distributed nature into its several parts, and worshipped that portion of it which was accounted of most general use and benefit. Usefulness was the common motive, but it was not the only motive which inclined the world Whether the idolatry of image worship was first begun to idolatry: for upon farther inquiry, we shall find, that in Chaldea or in Egypt, we have no grounds from whatever ravished with its transcendent beauty, what- history to determine: but wherever it had its origin, the ever affrightened with its malignant power, whatever design of making statues and images at first was astonished with its uncommon greatness, whatever, in certainly such as 3 the author of the book of Wisdom short, was beautiful, hurtful, or majestic, became a deity, has represented it, namely, to commemorate an absent or as well as what was profitable for its use. The sun, deceased friend, or to do honour to some great man or men soon perceived, had all these powers and properties sovereign prince; which (whether so intended or no at united in it: its beauty was glorious to behold, its motion first) the ignorance and superstition of the people turned, wonderful to consider, its heat occasioned different in time, into an object of religious adoration; "the effects, barrenness in some places, and fruitfulness in singular diligence of the artificer," as our author expresothers; and the immense globe of its light appeared ses it, "helping to set forward the ignorant to more highly exalted, and riding in triumph, as it were, round superstition: For he, peradventure, willing to please the world. The moon, they saw, supplied the absence one in authority, forced all his skill to make the resemof the sun by night; gave a friendly light to the earth, blance of the best fashion; and so the multitude, allured and, besides the great variety of its phases, had a won-by the grace of the work, took him now for a god, who, derful influence over the sea and other humid bodies. a little before, was but honoured as a man.” The stars they admired for their height and magnitude, We cannot but observe, however, with what elegance and the order of their positions, and celerity of their motions, fine satire it is that the Scripture sets off the stupidity and thence were persuaded either that some celestial and gross infatuation both of the artificer and adorer. vigour or other resided in them, or that the souls of The carpenter heweth down cedars, and taketh the their heroes and great men, were translated into them cypress, and the oak. He stretcheth out his rule, he when they died; and upon these, and such like presump-marketh it out with a line, he fitteth it with planes, he tions, they accounted all celestial bodies to be deities. The force of fire, the serenity of air, the usefulness of water, as well as the terror and dreadfulness of thunder and lightning, gave rise to the consecration of the meteors and elements. The sea, swelling with its proud surface, and roaring with its mighty billows, was such an awful sight, and the earth bedecked with all its plants, flowers, and fruits, such a lovely one, as might well affect a pagan's veneration; when for the like motives, namely, their beneficial, hurtful, delightful, or astonishing properties, beasts, birds, fishes, insects, and even vegetables themselves, came to be adored."

The pride and pomp of the great, and the low and abject spirits of the mean, occasioned first the flattery, and then the worship of kings and princes as gods upon earth. Men famous for their adventures and exploits, the founders of nations or cities, or the inventors of

1 Tennison on Idolatry.

2 Herbert's Ancient Religion of the Gentiles. a The extent of idol worship, and the similarity of the system of idolatry in all the countries in which it has been practised, are truly amazing. From these circumstances, some learned writers have been led to trace it up to the plains of Shinar, and to maintain that it issued from thence, and accompanied the progress of the human race over the globe. Whatever truth there may be in this opinion, the history of mankind amply proves, that man, without the light of revelation, is prone to idolatry, and to give to the creature, or to the deifications of his own mind, the worship which is due to God. This proneness had widely shown itself so early as the time of Abraham, when it was necessary to separate that patriarch and his posterity, to preserve the knowledge of the living and true God.-See on the Nature and History of Idolatry, Dewar's Moral Philosophy, vol. 2. ch. vi.

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marketh it out with the compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man.—He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part thereof he eateth flesh; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied; yea, he warmeth himself, and saith, Aha! I am warm, I have seen the fire; and the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image. He falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me, for thou art my god; never considering in his heart, nor having knowledge or understanding to say, I have burnt part of it in the fire; yea, also I have baked bread upon the coals thereof: I have roasted flesh, and eaten it; and shall I make the residue thereof an abomination ? Shall I fall down to the stock of a tree? He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?'

That rational creatures should be capable of so wretched a degeneracy as this amounts to, may justly provoke our wonder and amazement: and yet we may remember, that these people (who may possibly be the object of our scorn and contempt) had the boasted light of nature to be their guide in matters of religion: nay, they had some advantages that we apparently want: they lived much nearer the beginning of the world; had the terrors of the Lord in the late judgment of the deluge, fresh in their minds; had the articles of their religion comprised in a small compass; and (what is no bad friend to reason and sober recollection) lived in more simplicity, and

Ch. xiv. 15, &c.

A. M. 1997. A. C. 2007; OR, ACCORDING TO HALES, A. M. 3318. A. C. 2093. GEN. CH. x. AND CH. xi. VER. 10. TO THE END.