answered that the equality in the number of males and females born into the world intimates the intention of God that one woman should be assigned to one man: "for," says Dr. Paley, "if to one man be allowed an exclusive right to five or more women, four or more men must be deprived of the exclusive possession of any; which could never be the order intended. The equality, indeed, is not quite exact. This number of male infants exceeds that of females in the proportion of 19 to 18, or thereabouts; but this excess provides for the greater consumption of males by war, seafaring, and other dangerous or unhealthy occupations. It seems also a significant indication of the divine will, that he at first created only one woman to one man. Had God intended polygamy for the species, it is probable he would have begun with it; especially as by giving to Adam more wives than one, the multiplication of the human race would have proceeded with a quicker progress. Polygamy not only violates the constitution of nature, and the apparent design of the Deity, but produces to the parties themselves, and to the public, the following bad effects: contests and jealousies amongst the wives of the same husband; distracted affections, or the loss of all affection in the husband himself; a voluptuousness in the rich which dissolves the vigour of their intellectual as well as active faculties, producing that indolence and imbecility, both of mind and body, which have long characterized the nations of the East; the abasement of one half of the human species, who, in countries where polygamy obtains, are degraded into instruments of physical pleasure to the other half; neglect of children; and the manifold and sometimes unnatural mischiefs which arise from a scarcity of women. To compensate for these evils, polygamy does not offer a single advantage. In the article of population, which it has been thought to promote, the community gain nothing-(nothing, I mean, compared with a state in which marriage is nearly universal); for the question is not, whether one man will have more children by five or more wives than by one; but whether these five wives would not bear the same or a greater number of children to five separate husbands. And as to the care of children when produced, and the sending of them into the world in situations

in which they may be likely to form and bring up families of their own, upon which the increase and succession of the human species in a great degree depend, this is less provided for and less practicable, where twenty or thirty children are to be supported by the attention and fortunes of one father, than if they were divided into five or six families, to each of which were assigned the industry and inheritance of two parents. Whether simultaneous polygamy was permitted by the law of Moses seems doubtful, Deut. xvii. 16, Deut. xxi. 15; but whether permitted or not, it was certainly practised by the Jewish patriarchs, both before that law and under it. The permission, if there were any, might be like that of divorce, for the hardness of their heart, in condescension to their established indulgences, rather than from the general rectitude or propriety of the thing itself.

"The state of manners in Judea had probably undergone a reformation in this respect before the time of Christ; for in the New Testament we meet with no trace or mention of any such practice being tolerated. For which reason, and because it was likewise forbidden amongst the Greeks and Romans, we cannot expect to find any express law upon the subject in the Christian code. The words of Christ, Matt. xix. 9, may be construed by an easy implication to prohibit polygamy; for if whoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery,' he who marrieth another, without putting away the first, is no less guilty of adultery; because the adultery does not consist in the repudiation of the first wife (for however unjust or cruel that may be, it is not adultery), but entering into a second marriage during the legal existence and obligation of the first. The several passages in St. Paul's writings which speak of marriage, always suppose it to signify the union of one man with one woman, Rom. vii. 2, 3; 1 Cor. vii. 12, 14, 16. The manners of different countries have varied in nothing more than in their domestic constitutions. Less polished and more luxurious nations have either not perceived the bad effects of polygamy, or, if they did perceive them, they who in such countries possessed the power of reforming the laws, have been unwilling to resign their own gratifications. Polygamy is retained at this day among the Turks, and through

either the doctrine of polytheism must be true theology, or this instinct or sense is of such a nature as to have, at different periods of the world, misled all mankind. All savage tribes are at present polytheists and idolaters; but among savages every instinct appears in greater purity and vigour than among people polished by arts and sciences; and instinct never mistakes its objects. The instinct or primary impression of nature which gives rise to self-love, affection between the sexes, &c., has, in all nations, and in every period of time, a precise and determinate object which it inflexibly pursues. How, then, comes it to pass that this particular instinct, which, if real, is surely of as much importance as any other, should have uniformly led those who had no other guide, to pursue improper objects, to fall into the grossest errors, and the most pernicious practices?

For these and other reasons, which might easily be assigned, they suppose that the first religious principles must have been derived from a source different as well from internal sense as from the deductions of reason; from a source which the majority of mankind had early forgotten; and which, when it was banished from their minds, left nothing behind it to prevent the very first principle of religion from being perverted by various accidents or causes; or in some extraordinary concurrence of circumstances, from being, perhaps, entirely obliterated. This source of religion every consistent theist must believe to be revelation. Reason could not have introduced savages to the knowledge of God, and we have just seen that a sense of Deity is clogged with insuperable difficulties. Yet it is undeniable that all mankind have believed in superior invisible powers; and, if reason and instinct be set aside, there remains no other origin of this universal belief than primeval revelation, corrupted, indeed, as it passed from father to son in the course of many generations. It is no slight support to this doctrine, that, if there really be a Deity, it is highly presumable that he would reveal himself to the first men; creatures whom he had formed with faculties to adore and to worship him. To other animals the knowledge of the Deity is of no importance; to man it is of the first importance. Were we totally ignorant of a Deity, this world would appear to us a

mere chaos. Under the government of a wise and benevolent Deity, chance is excluded, and every event appears to be the result of established laws. Good men submit to whatever happens without repining: knowing that every event is ordered by Divine Providence, they submit with entire resignation; and such resignation is a sovereign balsam for every misfortune or evil in life.

As to the circumstances which led to polytheism, it has been observed, that, taking it for granted that our original progenitors were instructed by their Creator in the truths of genuine theism, there is no room to doubt but that those truths would be conveyed pure from father to son as long as the race lived in one family, and were not spread over a large extent of country. If any credit be due to the records of antiquity, the primeval inhabitants of this globe lived to so great an age, that they must have increased to a very large number long before the death of the common parent, who would, of course, be the bond of union to the whole society; and whose dictates, especially in what related to the origin of his being, and the existence of his Creator, would be listened to with the utmost respect by every individual of his numerous progeny. Many causes, however would conspire to dissolve this family, after the death of its ancestor, into separate and independent tribes, of which some would be driven by violence, or would voluntarily wander to a distance from the rest. From this dispersion great changes would take place in the opinions of some of the tribes respecting the object of their religious worship. A single family, or a small tribe, banished into a desert wilderness, (such as the whole earth must then have been,) would find employment for all their time in providing the means of subsistence, and in defending themselves from beasts of prey. In such circumstances they would have little leisure for meditation; and, being constantly conversant with objects of sense, they would gradually lose the power of meditating upon the spiritual nature of that Being by whom their ancestors had taught them that all things were created. The first wanderers would, no doubt, retain in tolerable purity their original notions of Deity, and they would certainly endeavour to impress those notions upon their children; but in circumstances infinitely more favourable to speculation than theirs could

have been, the human mind dwells not long upon notions purely intellectual. We are so accustomed to sensible ob jects, and to the ideas of space, extension, and figure, which they are perpetually impressing upon the imagination, that we find it extremely difficult to conceive any being without assigning to him a form and a place. Hence Bishop Law supposes that the earliest generations of men (even those to whom he contends that frequent revelations were vouchsafed) may have been no better than Anthropomorphites, in their conceptions of the Divine Being. Be this as it may, it is easy to conceive that the members of the first colonies would quickly lose many of the arts and much of the science which perhaps prevailed in the parent state; and that, fatigued with the contemplation of intellectual objects, they would relieve their overstrained faculties by attributing to the Deity a place of abode, if not a human form. To men totally illiterate, the place fittest for the habitation of the Deity would undoubtedly appear to be the sun, the most beautiful and glorious object of which they could form any idea; an object from which they could not but be sensible that they received the benefits of light and heat, and which experience must soon have taught them to be in a great measure the source of vegetation. From looking upon the sun as the habitation of their God, they would soon proceed to consider it as his body. Experiencing the effects of power in the sun, they would naturally conceive that luminary to be animated as their bodies were animated; they would feel his influence when above the horizon; they would see him moving from east to west; they would consider him, when set, as gone to take his repose; and those exertions and intermissions of power being analogous to what they experienced in themselves, they would look upon the sun as a real animal. Thus would the Divinity appear to their untutored minds to be a compound being like a man, partly corporeal and partly spiritual; and as soon as they imbibed such notions, though perhaps not before, they may be pronounced to have been absolute idolaters. When men had once got into this train, their gods would multiply upon them with wonderful rapidity. The moon, the planets, the fixed stars, &c. would become objects of veneration. Hence we find Moses cautioning the people of Israel

against worshipping the hosts of heaven, Deut. iv. 19. Other objects, however, from which benefits were received or dangers feared, would likewise be deified: such as demons, departed heroes, &c. See IDOLATRY.

From the accounts given us by the best writers of antiquity, it seems that though the polytheists believed heaven, earth, and hell, were all filled with divinities, yet there was One who was considered as supreme over all the rest, or, at most, that there were but two selfexistent gods, from whom they conceived all the other divinities to have descended in a manner analogous to human generation. It appears, however, that the vulgar Pagans considered each divinity as supreme, and unaccountable within his own province, and therefore entitled to worship, which rested ultimately in himself. The philosophers, on the other hand, seem to have viewed the inferior gods as accountable for every part of their conduct to him who was their sire and sovereign, and to have paid to them only that inferior kind of devotion which the church of Rome pays to departed saints. The vulgar Pagans were sunk in the grossest ignorance, from which statesmen, priests, and poets exerted their utmost influence to keep them from emerging; for it was a maxim, which, however absurd, was universally received, "that there were many things true in religion which it was not convenient for the vulgar to know; and some things which, though false, it was expedient that they should believe." It was no wonder, therefore, that the vulgar should be idolaters and polytheists. The philosophers, however, were still worse; they were wholly "without excuse, because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God; neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves wise, they became fools, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is God, blessed for ever." Rom. i. 20, 21, 22, 25. See list of books under article IDOLATRY; Prideaux's Con. v. i. pp. 177,179; Kaimes's Sketches of the History of Man; Bishop Law's Theory of Religion, pp. 58, 65 to 68, 94, 296; article Polytheism in Enc. Brit.; Farmer on the Worship of Human Spirits.

POMORIANS, a Russian sect, who believe that Antichrist is already come,

reigns unseen in the world, and has put an end in the church to everything that is holy. They require those who join them to be rebaptized.

PONTIFF, or HIGH PRIEST, a person who has the superintendence and direction of divine worship, as the offering of sacrifices and other religious solemnities. The Romans had a college of pontiffs, and over these a sovereign pontiff, instituted by Numa, whose function it was to prescribe the ceremonies each god was to be worshipped withal, compose the rituals, direct the vestals, and for a good while to perform the business of augury, till, on some superstitious occasion, he was prohibited intermeddling therewith. The Jews, too, had their pontiffs; and among the Romanists the pope is styled the sovereign pontiff.

PONTIFICATE is used for the state or dignity of a pontiff, or high priest; but more particularly, in modern writers, for the reign of a pope.

POOR PILGRIMS, an order that started up in the year 1500. They came out of Italy into Germany bare-footed and bare-headed, feeding all the week, except on Sundays, upon herbs and roots sprinkled with salt. They stayed not above twenty-four hours in a place. They went by couples, begging from door to door. This penance they undertook voluntarily-some for three, others for five or seven years, as they pleased, and then returned home to their callings. POPE, the title of the supreme pontiff, or head of the Romish church. It is derived from a Greek word, signifying father, and was, at an early period, given to all bishops, as appears from the ancient ecclesiastical writers, and is still given to every priest in Russia. But about the end of the eleventh century Gregory VIII., in a council held at Rome, ordered that the title should be applied exclusively to the bishop of Rome. What was thus arrogantly claimed has long been conceded, and is now enjoyed without dispute, and without envy. He is commonly addressed as Most Holy Father.

POPE, electors of.-The first five centuries the people and clergy together, and sometimes the clergy alone, with consent of the people, chose the pope by plurality of voices; until after the death of Pope Simplicius, in 483. Odoacer, king of the Herules and Italy, made a law, that none should be chosen without first

acquainting the prince whom they had a mind to choose. This law was abolished about twenty years after, in the fourth council of Rome, under Pope Symmachus, by the consent of King Theodoric, in 502. But that prince turning Arian, afterwards reassumed the right, and did himself name Pope Felix IV. The Gothic princes followed his example, only allowing the clergy to choose; but he was not to ascend the chair till confirmed by them. Justinian, who overturned the empire of the Goths, and also his successors, retained the same privilege, and demanded money of the pope elect to confirm his election. But Constantinus Pogonatus freed them from this imposition in 681. Nevertheless the emperors did still keep a share in the election; so that the popes were not consecrated without their consent. Until the French emperor, Louis le Debonnaire in 824, and his successors, Lotharius I. and Louis II., in 864, restored the popes to their former liberty. In the tenth age, the marquis of Etruria and count de Tuscanella, with the grandees of Rome, chose and deposed popes as they pleased, as did the Emperor Otho the Great, and his son and grandson in that same age. St. Henry, duke of Bavaria, their successor, restored the popes to their privileges again in 1014, leaving the election to the clergy and people of Rome; but his son and grandson, Henry III. and IV. reassumed the power of choosing or deposing the popes, which occasioned wars between them and the emperors about the investitures, the emperors setting up anti-popes, which occasioned a schism in the church of Rome. But after the time of Innocent II., and that the controversy between Peter de Leon, called Anaclete, and Victor IV. was extinguished, the cardinals and principal of the clergy of Rome, chose Pope Celestine II. by their own authority in 1143, and the rest of the clergy having parted with their pretensions, Honorius III., in 1216, or, according to others, Gregory X., in 1274, ordered that the election should be made in the conclave, since which time the cardinals have still kept possession.

POPE, mode of election.-Nine or ten days after the funeral of the deceased pope, the cardinals enter the conclave, which is generally held in the Vatican, in a long gallery, where cells of boards are erected, covered with purple cloth,