In a nation at

us, yet his inclination is the other way. least, the bulk of whom will be supposed to be inclined to superstition, it is better according to his reasoning, and more friendly to virtue, to promote the worship of a number of imaginary deities, than of the One living and true God. Thus "the fool saith in his heart, there is no God."*

Idolatry being an attempt to rob God of his own works, as the Creator and Governor of the world, and of that moral right which he has to the allegiance, worship, and obedience of his rational creatures, (the necessary consequence of his being acknowledged as the Universal Sovereign,) of all crimes it presents the most hardened and blasphemous front, carrying the war to the very throne of God. The punishment which in this world God inflicted upon the ancient heathens (and we find that the infliction still continues upon idolaters) is described in language the most pointed and awful. gave them up to a reprobate mind, &c.

God

What but a reprobate mind could either furnish the characters of such gods as Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, Venus, &c. &c.; or dispose men to adore them? Jupiter was styled "the King of Gods and Men." The account of his adulteries, incests, and rapes, occupies a considerable part of the songs of Homer, Ovid, &c., and the mythology of the poets constituted the bible of the Greeks and Romans. And though Jupiter must be allowed to have reached the furthest part of profligacy, many of the others made near approaches to the height of his crimes. Every worshipper of such Gods is without excuse; for nothing but a

• Fuller's Gospel its own Witness, p. p. 21, 22, 23, 24.

mind at enmity with God, and with the most obvious principles of reason and common sense, could either consecrate or adore such deities. Even the poets themselves sometimes discover, by their satirical representations, that they were perfectly sensible of the futility of that superstition, to the consecration of which their fables had so greatly contributed. The satirists often, by the most pointed irony, show the contempt they had for the fables which supported the religion of their country.† But all of them were regular and devout worshippers of those gods, in whom they no more believed, than the Christian reader. What a load of moral infamy does this circumstance leave, on the first geniuses that ever adorned the paths of polite literature! The philosophers were, every one of them, chargeable with the same deliberate guilt. They were fully sensible of the absurdity of the public rites and worship of their country; and yet they employed the whole weight of their authority, as well as their example to support them.

The atrocious crimes which have, in every Pagan country, been openly and avowedly committed, and which stamp a ferocity, a savageness delighting in blood, as well as a lasciviousness, upon the public character, customs, and laws of those countries, may be considered in two points of view. They were the necessary consequences of the impurity of their deities. Every sincere worshipper must aspire to imitate the moral character of the god he worships. "How then could the worshippers of Jupiter and Venus be chaste, the worshippers of Bac

See Horace's Satires, Book 1, Sat. vIII.

Juvenal, but above all, Lucian; see the Dialogues of the latter.

chus be sober, or the worshippers of Mars be gentle and relenting? When the votaries of such deities felt the impulse of any irregular passion, or appetite, powerfully stimulating them to its gratification, their religion added a new incentive, instead of presenting an obstacle to the indulgence." Were the great gods of our country celebrated for such actions, and shall such puny mortals as we, pretend to be more chaste, more soher, or more gentle than the gods whom we worship? Unpardonable insolence! These were also the consequences of Divine anger, on account of their abominable idolatry. By giving them up to the illusions of a mind that had chosen darkness rather than light, and by withdrawing every salutary influence, God suffered them to prove the vileness of their religion, by the vileness of their conduct. this subject, it will only be necessary to take a brief view of the enormous crimes, which grew up with idolatry, and which, in every age and country, have been found to be associated with it, and to be generally mingled with its religious rites.

On

Egypt was the cradle of superstition, and it was there that brute-worship was invented, and carried to a point of absurdity, from which natural religion must retire in disgust. The Egyptians worshipped apes, dogs, cats, crocodiles, goats, and sheep. Even leeks and onions were among the number of their gods. This stupid idolatry is severely ridiculed by Juvenal; and even to the Greeks and Romans it appeared too absurd for their imitation. The Egyptians are said to have had six hundred and sixty-six kinds of sacrifices, and of this number human sacrifices were one. Their national ingratitude to the posterity and relations of Joseph, who had by his prescience and wise counsel, saved their nation from destruction;

their returns of oppression and cruelty for his high servi ces; their sanguinary edicts for the destruction of the male children of the Hebrews, sufficiently proclaim their manners to have been ferocious, and their laws tyrannical and unjust. Juvenal charges them with eating human flesh. In this strong-hold of idolatry, the power of the True God exhibited the most splendid triumph over their fictitious deities, broke the strength of their empire, and sunk their proud monarch, his army and his gods, in the Red Sea.

The states of Greece derived part of their population, and much of their superstition from Egypt, and in the time of Hesiod, 944 A. C. their gods amounted to nearly thirty thousand. Of their worship, human sacrifices sometimes constituted a part. Parents, on some occasions, offered up their own children to their gods. The Greeks, who, with respect to literature and the fine arts, had received the last polish, were often in their manners so barbarous, and in their hearts so ruthless, as to sacrifice captives or slaves, at the tombs of their generals or masters; as is still done by the negroes of Africa. Homer, in the twenty third book of the Iliad, describes the inhuman Achilles, sacrificing twelve valiant Trojan captives, at the tomb of his friend Patroclus.

"Children who were deformed, or of a bad constitution were murdered. This inhuman custom was common all over Greece; so much so, that it was reckoned so singular a thing among the Thebans, that the law forbade any Theban to expose his infant, under pain of death. This practice, with that of procuring abortion, was encouraged by Plato and Aristotle.

Satire xv.

"The unnatural love of boys was so common in Greece, that in many places it was sanctioned by the public laws, of which Aristotle gives the reason: viz. to prevent their having too many children. Maximus Tyrius celebrates it as a most singularly heroic act of Agesilaus, that being in love with a beautiful barbarian boy, he indulged his affection no further than by looking at him, and admiring him. Epictetus also praises Socrates in this manner: Go to Socrates, and see him lying by Alcibiades, yet slighting his youth and beauty. Consider what a victory he was conscious of obtaining! What an Olympic prize! So that, by heaven, one might salute kim, Hail incredibly great, universal victor!' What an implication does such language contain of the manners of those times!"*

Great praises are bestowed by Plutarch on the customs and manners of the Lacedemonians. Yet the same writer acknowledges, that theft was encouraged in their children by a law, to "sharpen their wits, to render them crafty and subtle, and to train them up in all sorts of wiles and cunning, watchfulness and circumspection, whereby they were more apt to serve them in their wars, which was upon the matter the whole profession of this Commonwealth. And if at any time they were taken in the act of stealing, they were most certainly punished with rods, and the penance of fasting; not because they esteemed the stealth criminal, but because they wanted skill and cunning in the management and conduct of it."t Hence as might be expected, and as Herodotus observes, their actions were generally con

• Gospel its own witness, p. 90.

+ Plutarch's Morals, vol. 1, p. 96.