POLYTHEISM.

Polytheism is the doctrine of a plurality of gods, or invisible powers superior to man.

“That there exist beings, one or many, powerful above the human race, is a proposition,” says Lord Kames,^[1. Sketches of the History of Man. ] “universally admitted as true in all ages and among all nations. I boldly call it universal, notwithstanding of what is reported of some gross savages; for reports that contradict what is acknowledged to be general among men, require more able vouchers than a few illiterate voyagers. Among many savage tribes there arc no words but for objects of external sense; is it surprising that such people are incapable of expressing their religious perceptions, or any perception of internal sense? The conviction that men have of superior powers, in every country where there are words to express it, is so well vouched, that in fair reasoning it ought to be taken for granted among the few tribes where language is deficient.”

These are judicious observations, of which every man will admit the force who has not some favourite system to build upon die unstable foundation which his lordship overturns. Taking it for granted, then, that our conviction of superior powers has long been universal, the important question is, from what cause it proceeds. The same ingenious author •shows, with great strength of reasoning, that the operations of nature and the government of this world, which to us loudly proclaim the existence of a Deity, are not sufficient to account for the universal belief of superior beings amongst savage tribes. He is therefore of opinion that this universality of conviction can spring only from the image of Deity stamped upon the mind of every human being, the ignorant -equally with the learned. “Nothing less,” he says, “is sufficient; and the original impression which we have of Deity must proceed,” he thinks, “from an internal sense, which may be termed the sense of Deity?

We have elsewhere expressed our opinion of that philosophy which accounts for every phenomenon in human nature by attributing to it a particular instinct; but to this instinct or sense of Deity, considered as complete evidence, many objections, more than usually powerful, force them selves upon us. All nations, except the Jews, were once polytheists and idolaters. If, therefore, his lordship’s hypothesis be admitted, either the doctrine of polytheism must be true theology, or this instinct or sense is of such a nature as, at different periods of the world, to have misled all mankind. All savage tribes are at present polytheists and idolaters; but amongst savages every instinct appears in greater purity and vigour than amongst people polished by arts and sciences; and instinct never mistakes its object. The instinct or primary impression of nature, which gives rise to self-love, affection between the sexes, love of progeny, &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? To no purpose are we told, that the sense of Deity, like the moral sense, makes no capital figure amongst savages. There is reason to believe that the feeling or perception, which is called the moral sense, is not wholly instinctive; but whether it be or not, a single instance cannot be produced in which it multiplies its objects, or makes even a savage express gratitude to a thousand persons for benefits which his prince alone had power to confer.

For these and other reasons which might easily be assigned, we cannot help thinking, 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, it is acknowledged, could not have introduced savages to the knowledge of God; and we have [7:18:331]just seen that a sense of Deity is an hypothesis 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 by oral tradition 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,^[2. See Sketches of the History of Man. ] 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 a 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.

^ ’ Admitting, then, that the knowledge of Deity was originally derived from revelation, and that the first men professed pure theism, it shall be our business in the present article to trace the rise and progress of polytheism and idolatry; and to ascertain, if we can, the real opinions of the pagan world concerning that multitude of gods with which they filled heaven, earth, and hell. In this inquiry, though we shall have occasion to appeal to the writings of Moses, we shall attribute to them no other authority than what is due to records of the earliest ages, more ancient and authentic than any others that are now extant.

Whether we believe, with the author of the book of Genesis, that all men have descended from the same progenitors, or adopt the hypothesis of modern theorists, that there have been successive creations of men, and that the European derives his origin from one pair, the Asiatic from another, the woolly-headed African from a third, and the copper-coloured American from a fourth, polytheism and idolatry will be seen to have arisen from the same causes, and to have advanced nearly in the same order from one degree of impiety to another. On either supposition, it must be taken for granted, that the original progenitors were instructed by their Creator in the truths of genuine theism; and there is no room to doubt that those truths, simple and sublime as they are, 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 that arc purely intellectual. We are so accustomed to sensible objects, 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 a learned writer^[3. Bishop Law, in his Considerations on the Theory, of Religion, ] has supposed 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 not conceivable but that the members of those 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 Dcity a place of abode, if not a human form. To men totally illitcrate, 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, too, 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. The great spirit, therefore, inhabiting the sun, which they would consider as the power of light and heat, was in all probability the first object of idolatrous adoration.

From looking upon the sun as the habitation of their god, they would soon proceed to consider it as his body. Of pure mind entirely separated from matter, men in their circumstances could not long retain the faintest notion; but conscious each of power in himself, and 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 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. Darkness and cold they could not but perceive to be contrary to light and heat; and not having philosophy enough to distinguish between mere privations and positive effects, they would consider darkness and cold as entities equally real with light and heat, and attribute these different and contrary effects to different and contrary powers. Hence the spirit or power of darkness was in all probability the second god in the pagan calendar; and as they considered the power of light as a benevolent principle, the source of all that is good, they must have looked upon the contrary power of darkness as a malevolent spirit, the source of all that is evil.

This we know from authentic history to have been the belief of the Persian Magi, a very ancient sect, who called their good god Yazdun, and also Ormuzd, and the evil god Ahriman. Considering light as the symbol, or perhaps as the body, of Ormuzd, they always worshipped him before [7:18:332]the fire, the source of light, and especially before the sun, the source of the most perfect light; and for the same reason fires were kept continually burning on his altars. That they sometimes addressed prayers to the Evil Principle, we are informed by Plutarch in his Life of Themistocles; but with what particular rites he was worshipped, or where he was supposed to reside, it is not so evident. Certain it is, however, that the worshippers held him in detestation; and when they had occasion to write his name, they always inverted it, to denote the malignity of his nature. The principles of the Magi, though widely distant from pure theism, were much less absurd than those of other idolaters. It does not appear that they ever worshipped their gods through the medium of graven images, or had any other emblems of them than light and darkness. Indeed we are told by Diogenes Laertius and Clemens Alexandrinus, that they condemned all statues and images, allowing fire and water to be the only proper emblems or representatives of their gods: And we learn from Cicero,^[4. . De Legibus, lib. ii. § 10. ] that at their instigation Xerxes was said to have burned all the temples of Greece, because the builders of those edifices impiously presumed to enclose within walls the gods, to whom all things ought to be open and free, and whose proper temple is the whole world. To these authorities we may add that of all the historians, who agree, that when the ereed of the Magi was the religion of the court, the Persian monarchs made war upon images, and upon every emblem of idolatry different from their own.

The Magi, however, were but one sect, and not the largest, of ancient idolaters. The worship of the sun, as the source of light and heat, soon introduced into the calendar of divinities the other heavenly bodies, the moon, the planets, and the fixed stars. Men could not but experience great benefit from those luminaries in the absence of their chief god; and when they had proceeded so far as to admit two divine principles, a good and an evil, it was natural for mifids clouded with such prejudices to consider the moon and the stars as benevolent intelligences, sent to oppose the power of darkness whilst their first and greatest divinity was absent or asleep. It was thus, as they imagined, that he maintained a constant superiority over the Evil Principle. Though to astronomers the moon is. known to be an opaque body of very small dimensions when compared with a planet or a fixed star, yet to the vulgar eye she appears much more magnificent than either. By those early idolaters she was considered as the divinity second in rank and in power; and whilst the sun was worshipped as the king, she was adored as the queen, of heaven.

The earth, considered as the common mother of all things; the ocean, the waters of which are never at rest; the air, the region of storms and tempests; and indeed all the elements, were gradually added to the number of divinities. Not that mankind in this early age had so far degenerated from the principles of their ancestors as to worship brute matter. If such worship was ever practised, which to us is hardly conceivable, it must have been at a later period, when it was confined to the very lowest of the vulgar, in nations otherwise highly civilized. The polytheists of whom we now treat conceived everything in motion to be animated, and animated by an intelligence powerful in proportion to the magnitude of the body moved.

This sect of idolaters, which remains in some parts of the East to this day, was known by the name of Tsabaians, which they pretended to have derived from a son of Seth; and amongst the books in which their sacred doctrines are contained, they have one which they call the Book of Seth. We need hardly observe, that these are senseless and extravagant fables. The epithet Tsabaian is undoubtedly derived from the Hebrew word Tsaba i which signifies an host or army; and this class of polytheists was so called, because they worshipped the host of heaven, or the Tsaba lιesemim, against which Moses so pathetically cautions the people of Israel.^[5. Deut. iv. 19. ]

This species of idolatry is thought to have first prevailed in Chaldaea, and to have been that from which Abraham separated himself, when, at the command of the true God, he “departed from his country, and from his kindred, and from his father’s house.” But as it nowhere appears that the Chaldaeans had fallen into the savage state before they became polytheists and idolaters, and as it is certain that they were not savages at the period of the call of Abraham, their early Tsabaism may be thought inconsistent with the account which we have given of the origin of that species of idolatry. If a great and civilized nation was led to worship the host of heaven, why, it may be asked, should that worship be supposed to have arisen amongst savages? Theories, however plausible, cannot be admitted in opposition to ascertained facts.

True; but we beg leave to reply, that our account of the origin of polytheism is opposed by no fact, because we have not supposed that the worship of the host of heaven arose amongst savages only. That savages, between whom it is impossible to imagine any intercourse to take place, have universally worshipped, as their first and supreme divinities, the sun, moon, and stars, is a faet evineed by every historian and by every traveller; and we have shown how their rude and uncultivated state naturally leads them to that species of idolatry. But there may have been circumstances peculiar to the Chaldaeans, which led them likewise to the worship of the heavenly host, even in a state of high civilization. We judge of the philosophy of the ancients by that of ourselves, and imagine that the same refined system of metaphysics was cultivated by them as by the followers of Descartes and Locke. But this is a great mistake; for so gross were the notions of early antiquity, that it may be doubted whether there was a single man, uninspired, who had any notion of mind as a being distinct and entirely separated from matter. From several passages in the books of Moses, we learn, that when in the first ages of the world the Supreme Being condescended to manifest his presence to men, he generally exhibited some sensible emblem of his power and glory, and declared his will from the midst of a preternatural fire. It was thus that he appeared to the Jewish lawgiver himself, when he spoke to him from the midst of a bush; it was by a pillar of cloud and fire that he led the Israelites from Egypt to the Land of Promise; and it was in the midst of smoke, and fire, and thunderings, that the law was delivered from Mount Sinai. That such manifestations of the divine presence would occasionally be made to the descendants of Noah who settled in Chaldaea soon after the Deluge, must appear extremely probable to every one who admits the authority of the Hebrew Scriptures; and he who questions that authority has no right to make the objection to which we now reply, because it is only from the book of Genesis that we know the Chaldaeans to have been a civilized people when they fell into idolatry. All histories agree in representing the inhabitants of Chaldaea as at a very early period corrupted by luxury, and sunk in vice. When this happened, we must suppose that the moral governor of the universe would withdraw from them those occasional manifestations of himself; and leave them to, their own inventions. In such circumstances, it was not unnatural for a people addicted to the study of astronomy, who had been taught to believe that the Deity frequently appeared to their ancestors in a flame of fire, to consider the sun as the place of [7:18:333]his permanent residence, if not as his body. But when either opinion was firmly established, polytheism would be its inevitable consequence, and the progress of Tsabaism would, in the most polished nation, be such as we have traced it amongst savage tribes.

From Chaldaea the idolatrous worship of the host of hea- • yen spread itself over all the East, passed into Egypt, and thence found its way into Greece; for Plato affirms,^[6. In Cratijto. ] that “the first inhabitants of Greece seemed to him to have worshipped no other gods but the sun, moon, earth, stars, and heavens, as most barbarous nations,” continues he, “still do.” That Tsabaism, or the worship of the host of heaven, was the first species of idolatry, besides the probability of the thing, and the many allusions to it in sacred Scripture, we have the positive evidence of the most ancient pagan historians of whose writings any part has been transmitted to us. Herodotus,^[7. Lib. i. cap. 131. ] speaking of the religion of the Persians, says that “they worship the snn, moon, and earth, fire, water, and the winds; and this adoration they have all along paid from the beginning.” He testifies the same thing of the savage Africans, of whom he affirms,^[8. Lib. iv. cap. 188. ] that they all worshipped the sun and moon, and no other divinity. Diodorus Siculus, writing of the Egyptians,^[9. Lib. i. ] tells us that “the first men, looking up to the world above them, and terrified and struck with admiration at the nature of the universe, supposed the sun and the moon to be the principal and eternal gods.” And Sanehoniathon the Phoenician, a more ancient writer than any of these, informs us, in the fragment of his history preserved by Eusebius, that “the two first mortals were Aeon and Protogonus, and their children Genos and Genea, who inhabited Phoenicia; and when they were scorched with the heat, they lifted np their hands to the sun, whom they believed to be the lord of heaven, and called him Baalsamen, the same whom the Greeks call Ζευς.”

Hitherto those divinities were worshipped in person, or, as Dr Prideaux expresses it, in their sacella, or sacred tabernacles; for the votaries of each directed their devotions towards the planet which they supposed to be animated by the particular intelligence whom they meant to adore. But these orbs, by their rising and setting, being as much below the horizon as above it, and their grossly ignorant worshippers not supposing it possible that any intelligence, however divine, could exert its influence except in union with some body, statues or pillars were soon thought of as proper emblems of the absent gods. Sanehoniathon, in the fragment already quoted, informs us, that “Hyspouranios and his brother Chisous, Phoenician patriarchs, erected two pillars, the one to fire, and the other to air or wind, and worshipped those pillars, pouring out to them libations of the blood of the wild beasts hunted down in the chase.” As these early monuments of idolatry were called βαιτυλια, a word evidently derived from the Hebrew Bethel, the probability is, that they were altars of loose stones, such as that which was built by Jacob,^[10. Genesis, chap, xxxv. ] and from him received the same name. As his was consecrated to the true God, theirs were consecrated to the host of heaven; and the form of consecration seems to have been nothing more than the anointing of the stone or pillar with oil,^[11. Hence the proverb of a superstitious man, ιraιτa λιSov λινra^ν νrςtrxvνι , he kisses or adores every anointed stone; which Arnobius calls lιιbricataifi lapidan, et ex olivi nngιιiιιe sordidatum. Stillingfleet’s Origlna Sacra. ] in the name of the divinity whom it was intended to represent. When this ceremony was performed, the ignorant idolaters, who fancied that their gods could not hear them except when they were visible, supposed that the intelligences by which the sun and planets were animated took possession, in some inexplicable manner, of the consecrated pillars, and were as well pleased with the prayers and praises offered up before those pillars, as with the devo tions which were addressed towards the luminaries themselves. Hence Sanehoniathon calls them animated or living stones, λ ∣ 6ους εμΛ-υχους, from the portion of the divine spirit which was believed to reside in them; and as they were dedicated to the host of heaven, they were generally erected upon the tops of mountains, or, in countries which, like Egypt, were low and level, they were elevated to a great height by the labour of men.

It has been supposed that this practice of raising the pillars on high places proceeded from a desire to make the objects of worship conspicuous and magnificent. But we are strongly inclined to believe, that the erectors of βαιτυ-λικ had something further in view, and that they thought of nothing less than to bring the sacred stone or pillar as near as possible to the god whom it represented. But whatever there be in this, we know that the practice itself prevailed universally throughout the East; and that there was nothing which the Jewish legislator more strictly enjoined his people to destroy, than the altars, statues, and pillars erected for idolatrous worship upon mountains and high places. “Ye shall utterly destroy,” says he, “all the high places wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree. And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break down their pillars, and burn their groves with fire.”^[12. Deut, xii 23. ]

The mention of groves by the Hebrew lawgiver brings to our recollection another species of idolatry, which was perhaps the second in order, as men deviating from the principles of pure theism became more and more entangled in the labyrinths of error. The Chaldaeans, Egyptians, and all the eastern nations who believed in a superintending providence, imagined that the government of this world, the care of particular nations, and even the superintendence of groves, rivers, and mountains, in each nation, was committed by the gods to a class of spirits superior to the soul of man, but inferior to those heavenly intelligences which animated the sun, the moon, and the planets. These spirits were by the Greeks called δαιμονες, daemons, and by the Romans genii. Timaeus the Loerian, who flourished before Plato, speaking of the punishment of wicked men, says,^[13. Be Anima Mundi, inter scriptores a T. Gale editos. ] all these things has Nemesis decreed to be executed in the second period, by the ministry of vindictive terrestrial daemons, who are overseers of human affairs; to which daemons the Supreme God, the ruler over all, has committed the government and administration of this world, which is made up of gods, men, and animals.

Concerning the origin of these intermediate beings, scholars and philosophers have framed various hypotheses. The belief of their existence may have been derived from five different sources.

Firstly, it seems to have been impossible for the limited capacities of those men, who could not form a notion of a God divested of a body and a place, to conceive how the. influence and ageney of such a being could every instant extend to every point of the universe. Hence, as we have seen, they placed the heavenly regions under the government of a multitude of heavenly gods, the sun, the moon, and the stars. But as the nearest of those divinities was at an immense distance from the earth, and as the intelligence animating the earth itself had sufficient employment in regulating the general affairs of the whole globe, a notion insinuated itself into the untutored mind, that these superior governors of universal nature found it necessary, or at least expedient, to employ subordinate intelligences or daemons, as ministers to execute their behests in the various parts of their widely extended dominions.
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Secondly, such an universal and uninterrupted course of action as was deemed necessary to administer the affairs of the universe, would be judged altogether inconsistent with that state of indolence which, especially in the East, was held an indispensable ingredient in perfect felicity. It was this notion, absurd as it is, which made Epicurus deny the providence, whilst he admitted the existence, of gods. And if it had such an effect upon a philosopher who in the most enlightened ages had many followers, we need not surely wonder if it made untaught idolaters imagine that the governor or governors of the universe had devolved a great part of their trouble on deputies and ministers.

Thirdly, when men came to reflect on the infinite distance between themselves and the gods, they would naturally form a wish that there might somewhere exist a class of intermediate intelligences, whom they might employ as mediators and intercessors with their far-distant divinities. But what men earnestly wish for, they very readily believe. Hence the supposed distance of their gods would, amongst untutored barbarians, prove a fruitful source of intermediate intelligences, more pure and more elevated than human souls.

Fourthly, these three opinions may be denominated popular; but that which we are now to state, wherever it may have prevailed, was the offspring of philosophy. On this earth we perceive, a scale of beings rising gradually above each other in perfection, from mere brute matter through the various species of fossils, vegetables, insects, fishes, birds, and beasts, up to man. But the distance between man and God is infinite, and capable of admitting numberless orders of intelligences, all superior to the human soul, and each rising gradually above the other till they reach that point, wherever it may be, at which creation stops. Part of this immense chasm the philosophers perceived to be actually filled by the heavenly bodies; for in philosophical polytheism there was one invisible God, supreme over all these; but still there was left an immense vacuity between the human species and the moon, which was known to be the lowest of the heavenly host; and this they imagined must certainly be occupied by invisible inhabitants of different orders and dispositions, which they called good and evil daemons.

Fifthly, there is yet another source from which the universal belief of good and evil daemons may be derived, with perhaps greater probability than from any or all of these. If the Mosaic account of the creation of the world, the peopling of the earth, and the dispersion of mankind, be admitted as true (and a more consistent account has not as yet been given or devised), some knowledge of good and evil angels must necessarily have been transmitted from father to son by the channel of oral tradition. But this tradition would be corrupted at the same time, and in the same manner, with others of greater importance. When the true God was so far mistaken as to be considered, not as the sole governor of the universe, but only as the self-existent power of light and good, the devil would be elevated from the rank of a rebellious created spirit to that of the independent power of darkness and evil; the angels of light would be transformed into good daemons, and those of darkness into daemons that are evil. This account of the origin of daemonology receives no small support from Plato, who derives one branch of it wholly from tradition. “With respect to those daemons,” says he,^[14. Τιmaus. ] “who inhabit the space between the earth and the moon, to understand and declare their generation is a task too arduous for my slender abilities. In this case we must credit the report of men of other times, who, according to their own account, were the descendants of the gods, and had, by some means or other, gained exact intelligence of that mystery from their ancestors. We must not question the veracity of the children of the gods, even though they should transgress the bounds of probability, and produce no evidence to support their assertions. We must, I say, notwithstanding, give them credit, because they profess to give a detail of facts with which they are intimately acquainted, and the laws of our country oblige us to believe them.”

Though these daemons were generally invisible, they were not supposed to be pure disembodied spirits. Proclus, in his commentary upon Plato’s Timaeus, tells us, “that every daemon superior to human souls consisted of an intellectual mind and an ethereal vehicle.” Indeed it is very little probable, that those who gave a body and a place to the Supreme God, should have thought that the inferior orders of his ministers were spirits entirely separated from matter. Plato himself divides the class of daemons into three orders; and whilst he holds their souls to be particles or emanations from the divine essence, he affirms that the bodies of each order of daemons are composed of that particular element in which they for the most part reside. “Those of the first and highest order are composed of pure ether; those of the second order consist of grosser air; and daemons of the third or lowest rank have vehicles extracted from the element of water. Daemons of the first and second orders are invisible to mankind. The aquatic daemons, being invested with vehicles of grosser materials, are sometimes visible and sometimes invisible. When they do appear, though faintly observable by the human eye, they strike the beholder with terror and astonishment.” Daemons of this last order were supposed to have passions and affections similar to those of men; and though all nature was full of them, they were believed to have local attachments to mountains, rivers, and groves, where their appearances were most frequent. The reason of these attachments seems to be obvious. Polytheism took its rise in countries scorched by a burning sun; and daemons by their composition being necessarily subject in some degree to the influence of heat and cold, it was natural to suppose that they, like men, would delight in the shady grove and in the purling stream. Hence the earliest altars of paganism were generally built in the midst of groves, or on the banks of rivers; because it was believed that in such places were assembled multitudes of those intelligences, whose office it was to regulate the affairs of men, and to carry the prayers and oblations of the devout to the far-distant residence of the celestial gods. Hence too are to be derived the mountain and river gods, with the dryads and hamadryads, the satyrs, nymphs, and fauns, which held a place in the creed of ancient paganism, and make so conspicuous a figure in the Greek and Roman poets.

These different orders of intelligences, which, though worshipped as gods or demigods, were yet believed to partake of human passions and appetites, led the way to the deification of departed heroes, and other eminent benefactors of the human race. By the philosophers all souls were believed to be emanations from the divinity; but “gratitude and admiration, the warmest and most active affections of our nature, concurred to enlarge the object of religious worship, and to make man regard the inventors of arts and the founders of society as having in them more than a common ray of the divinity. So that god-like benefits, bespeaking as it were a god-like mind, the deceased parent of a people was easily advanced into the rank of a daemon. When the religious bias was in so good a train, natural affection would have its share in promoting this new mode of adoration. Piety to parents would naturally take the lead, as it was supported by gratitude and admiration, the primum mobile of the whole system; and, in those early ages, the [7:18:335] natural father of the tribe often happened to be the political father of the people, and the founder of the state. Fondness for the offspring would next have its turn; and a disconsolate father, at the head of a people, would contrive to soothe his grief for the untimely death of a favourite child, and to gratify his pride under the want of succession, by paying divine honours to its memory.”^[15. Warburton’s Divine Legation of Moses. ] “For a father afflicted with untimely mourning, when he had made an image of his child recently taken away, now honoured him as a god, who was then a dead man, and delivered to those that were under him ceremonies and sacrifices.”^[16. Wisdom of Solomon, xiγ. 15. ] That this was the origin and progress of the worship of departed souls, we have the authority of the famous fragment of Sanchoniathon, already quoted, where the various motives for this species of idolatry are recounted in express words. “After many generations,” says he, “came Chrysor ; and he invented many things useful to civil life, for which, after his decease, he was worshipped as a god. Then flourished Ouranos and his sister Ge, who deified and offered sacrifices to their father Hypsistos, when he had been torn in pieces by wild beasts. Afterwards Kronos consecrated Muth his son, and was himself consecrated by his subjects.”

In the reign of Kronos there flourished a personage of great reputation for wisdom, who by the Egyptians was denominated Thoth, by the Phoenicians Taautos, and by the Greeks Hermes. According to Plutarch, he was a profound politician, and chief counsellor of Osiris, then the king, and afterwards the principal divinity, of Egypt; and we are told by Philo Byblius, the translator of Sanchoniathon, “that it was this Thoth or Hermes who first took the matters of religious worship out of the hands of unskilful men, and brought them into due method and order.” His object was to make religion serviceable to the interests of the state. With this view he appointed Osiris and other departed princes to be joined with the stars and worshipped as gods; and being by Kronos made king of Egypt, he was, after his death, worshipped himself as a god by the Egyptians. To this honour, if what is recorded of him be true, he had indeed a better title than most princes; for he is said to have been the inventor of letters, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and hieroglyphics, and was therefore one of the greatest benefactors of the human race which any age or country has ever produced.

That the gods of Greece and Rome were derived from Egypt and Phoenicia, is so universally known, that it is needless to multiply quotations in order to prove that the progress of polytheism amongst the Greeks and Romans was the same with that which we have traced in more ancient nations. The following account, given by Hesiod, of the deification of departed heroes, is so just, and in our opinion so beautiful, that we cannot refrain from introducing it in this place.

The gods who dwell on high Olympus’ hill, First fram’d a golden race of men, who liv’d Under old Saturn’s calm auspicious sway. Like gods they liv’d, their hearts devoid of care, Beyond the reach of pain and piercing woes; Th’ infirmities of age nor felt nor fear’d.

Their nerves with youthful vigour strung, their days In jocund mirth they past, remote from ills.

Now when this godlike race was lodg’d in earth, By Jove’s high will to demigods they rose, And airy daemons, who benign on earth Converse, the guides and guardians of mankind. In darkness veil’d, they range earth’s utmost bound, Dispensing wealth to mortals. This reward From bounteous Jove awaits illustrious deeds.^[17. E⅛y<⅛> w *H l αiξw∣>, lib. i. verse 100, &c. ]

The deification of departed heroes and of statesmen was that which in all probability introduced the universal belief of national and tutelar gods, as well as the practice of worshipping those gods through the medium of statues cut into a human figure. When the founder of a state, or any other public benefactor, was elevated to the rank of a god, as he was believed still to retain human passions and affections, it was extremely natural to suppose that he would regard with a favourable eye that nation for which he had done so much upon earth; that he would oppose its enemies, and protect the laws and institutions which he himself had given it. By indulging the same train of sentiment, each city, and even every family of consequence, found Lares and Penates amongst their departed ancestors, to whom they paid the warmest adoration, and under whose protection they believed their private affairs to be placed. As those national and household gods were believed to be in their deified state clothed with airy bodies, so those bodies were supposed to retain the form which their grosser bodies had upon earth. The image of a departed friend might perhaps be formed by the hand of sorrowful affection, before the statue or the shrine of a deity was thought of; but when that friend or benefactor became the object of religious adoration, it was natural for his votaries to enliven their devotion by a view of his similitude. Maximus Tyrius tells us,^[18. Dissert. 38. ] that “there is no race of men, whether barbarian or Grecian, living on the sea-coast or on the continent, wandering in deserts or living in cities, which has not consecrated some kind of symbol or other in honour of the gods.” This is certainly true; but there is no good evidence that the first symbols of the gods were statues of men and women. Whilst the sun and other heavenly bodies continued to be the sole objects of religious worship, the symbols consecrated to them were pillars of a conical or pyramidal figure; and if such pillars are ever called graven images by Moses and other ancient writers, it was probably on account of the allegorical figures and characters, or hieroglyphical writing, with which they were inscribed.

Hitherto we have considered the souls of departed heroes as holding the rank only of daemons or demigods; but they generally rose in the scale of divinities, until they dethroned the heavenly bodies, and became themselves the dii majorum gentium. This revolution was effected by the combined operation of the prince and the priest; and the first step taken towards it seems to have been the complimenting of their heroes and public benefactors with the name of that being which was most esteemed and worshipped. “Thus a king for his beneficence was called the sun, and a queen for her beauty the moon. Diodorus relates, that Sol first reigned in Egypt, called so from the luminary of that name in the heavens. This will help us to understand an odd passage in the fragment of Sanchoniathon, where it is said that Kronos had seven sons by Rhea, the youngest of whom was a god as soon as born. The meaning probably is, that this youngest son was called after some luminary in the heavens to which they paid divine honours; and these honours came in process of time to be transferred to the terrestrial namesake. The same historian had before told us, that the sons of Genos, mortals like their father, were called by the names of the elements, light, fire, and flame, of which they had discovered the use.”

“As this adulation advanced into an established worship, they turned the compliment the other way, and called the planet or luminary after the hero, the better to accustom the people, even in the act of planet-worship, to this new adoration. Diodorus, in the passage already quoted, having told us, that by the first inhabitants of Egypt the sun and moon were supposed to be the principal and eternal gods, adds, that the former was called Osiris, and the [7:18:336] latter Isis. This was indeed the general practice; for we learn from Macrobius, that the Ammonites called the sun Moloch; the Syrians, Adad; the Arabs, Dionysus; the Assyrians, Belus; the Phoenicians, Saturn: the Carthaginians, Hercules; and the Palmyrians, Elagabalus. Again, by the Phrygians the moon was called Cybele, or the mother of the gods; by the Athenians, Minerva; by the Cyprians, Venus; by the Cretans, Diana; by the Sicilians, Proserpine; by others, Hecate, Bellona, Vesta, Urania, Lucina, &c. Philo Byblius explains this practice. ‘ It is remarkable,’ says he, i that the ancient idolaters imposed on the elements, and on those parts of nature which they esteemed gods, the names of their kings; for the natural gods which they acknowledged were only the sun, moon, planets, elements, and the like; they being now in the humour of having gods of both classes, the mortal and the immortal.’

“As a further proof that hero-worship was thus superinduced upon the planetary, it is worthy of observation, that the first statues consecrated to the greater hero-gods, or those who were supposed to be supreme, were not of a human form, but conical or pyramidal, like those which, in the earliest ages of idolatry, were dedicated to the sun and planets. Thus the scholiast on the Vespae of Aristophanes tells ns, that the statues of Apollo and Bacchus were conic pillars or obelisks; and Pausanias, that the statue of Jupiter Meilichius represented a pyramid; that of the Argive Juno did the same, as appears from a verse of Phoronis quoted by Clemens Alexandrinus;^[19. Strom, lib. i. ] ' and indeed the practice was universal, as well amongst the early barbarians as amongst the Greeks. But it is well known that the ancients represented the rays of light by pillars of a conical or pyramidal form; and therefore it follows, that when they erected such pillars as representatives of their hero-gods, these latter had succeeded to the titles, rights, and honours of the natural and celestial divinities.”^[20. Warburton’s Divine Legation, book iii. sect. 6. ]

But though it seems to be certain that hero-worship was thus engrafted on the planetary, and that some of those heroes in process of time supplanted the planets themselves, this was such a revolution in theology as could not have been suddenly effected by the united influence of the prince and the priest. We doubt not the fact that Sol was believed to have reigned in Egypt, and was afterwards worshipped under the name Osiris; but it was surely impossible to persuade any nation, however stupid or prone to idolatry, that a man, whom they remembered discharging the duties of their sovereign and legislator, was the identical sun whom they beheld in the heavens. Osiris, if there was in Egypt a king of that name, may have been deified immediately after his death, and honoured with that worship which was paid to good daemons; but he must have been dead for ages before any attempt was made to persuade the nation that he was the Supreme God. Even then great address would be requisite to render such an attempt successfill. The prince or priest who entered upon it would probably begin with declaring, on the authority of an oracle, that the divine intelligence which animates and governs the sun had descended to earth and animated the person of the renowned legislator; and that, after their laws were framed, and the other purposes served, for which the descent was made, the same intelligence had returned to its original residence and employment amongst the celestials. The possibility of this double transmigration from heaven to earth and from earth to heaven, would without difficulty be admitted in an age when the pre-existence of souls was the universal belief. Having proceeded thus far in the apotheosis of dead men, the next step taken in order to render it in some degree probable that the early founders of states, and inventors of arts, were divine inteíligences clothed with human bodies, was to attribute to one such benefactor of mankind the actions of many of the same name. Vossius, who employed much time and great erudition on the subject, has proved, that before the era of the Trojan wars, most kings who were very powerful, or highly renowned for their skill in legislation, were called Jove; and when the actions of all these were attributed to one Jove of Crete, it would be easy for the crafty priest, supported by all the power and influence of the state, to persuade an ignorant and barbarous people, that he whose wisdom and heroic exploits so far surpassed those of ordinary men must have been the Supreme God in human form.

This short sketch of the progress of polytheism and idolatry will enable the reader to account for many circumstances recorded of the pagan gods of antiquity, which at first view seem very surprising, and which at length brought the whole system into contempt amongst the philosophers of Athens and Rome. The circumstances to which we allude are the immoral characters of those divinities, and the abominable rites with which they were worshipped. Jupi- ι ter, Apollo, Mars, and the whole rabble of them, are described by the poets as ravishers of women and notorious adulterers. Hermes or Mercury was a thief, and the god of thieves. Venus was a prostitute, and Bacchus a drunkard. The malice and revenge of Juno were implacable; and so little regard was any of them supposed to pay to the laws of honour and rectitude, that it was a common practice of the Romans, when besieging a town, to evoke the tutelar deity, and to tempt him by a reward to betray his friends and votaries.^[21. T. Livii, Jib. V. c. 21; and Macrob. Satuτ. lib. iii c. 9. ] In a word, they were, in the language of the poet,

Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, Whose attributes were rage, revenge, and lust.

This was the natural consequence of their origin. Having once animated human bodies, and being supposed still to retain human passions and appetites, they were believed, in their state of deification, to feel the same sensual desires which they had felt upon earth, and to pursue the same means for their gratification. As the men could not well attempt to surpass the gods in purity and virtue, they were easily persuaded by artful and profligate priests, that the most acceptable worship which could be rendered to any particular deity was to imitate the example of that deity, and to indulge in the practices over which he presided. Hence the worship of Bacchus was performed during the night by men and women mixing in the dark after intemperate eating and drinking. Hence, too, it was the practice in Cyprus and some other countries to sacrifice to Venus the virginity of young women some days before their marriage, in order, as was pretended, to secure their chastity ever afterwards; and, if Herodotus may be credited, every woman amongst the Babylonians was obliged once in her life to prostitute herself in the temple of the goddess Mylitte or Venus, that she might thenceforward be proof against all temptation.

The progress of polytheism, as far as we have traced it, has been regular; and the enormous error of forsaking the worship of the true God being once admitted, every subsequent step appears to be natural. It would be no difficult task to prove that it has likewise been universal. Sir William Jones, the learned president of the Asiatic Society, discovered such a striking resemblance between the gods of ancient Greece and those of the pagans of Hindustan,^[22. Asiatic Researches,, vol. i. ] as puts it beyond a doubt that those divinities had the same origin. The Ga-nesa[7:18:337] of the Hindus he has clearly proved to be the Jamis of the Greeks and Romans. As the latter was represented with two and sometimes with four faces, as emblems of prudence and circumspection, the former is painted with an elephant’s head, the well known symbol amongst the Indians of sagacious discernment. The Saturn of Greece and Rome appears to have been the same personage with the Menu or Satyavrataof Hindustan, whose patronymic isVai-vaswata, or child of the sun ; a name which sufficiently marks his origin. Amongst the Romans there were many Jupiters, one of whom appears from Ennius to have been nothing more than the firmament personified.

Aspice hoc sublime candens, quem invocant omnes Jovem.

But this Jupiter had the same attributes with the Indian god of the visible heavens, called Indra or the king, and Dives-petir, or the lord of the sky, whose consort is Sachi, and whose weapon is vajra or the thunderbolt. Indra is the regent of winds and showers; and though the East is peculiarly under his care, yet his Olympus is the north-pole, allegorically represented as a mountain of gold and gems. With all his power he is considered as a subordinate deity, and far inferior to the Indian triad Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahadeva or Siva, who are three forms of one and the same godhead. The president having traced the resemblance between the idolatry of Rome and India through many other gods, observes, that “we must not be surprised at finding, on a close examination, that the characters of all the pagan deities melt into each other, and at last into one or two; for it seems a well-founded opinion, that the whole crowd of gods and goddesses in ancient Rome, and likewise in Hindustan, mean only the powers of nature, and principally those of the sun, expressed in a variety of ways, and by a multitude of fanciful names.”

Nor is it only in Greece, Rome, Egypt, and India, that the progress of idolatry has been from planetary to hero-worship. From every account which modern travellers have given us of the religion of savage nations, it appears that those nations adore, as their first and greatest gods, the sun, moon, and stars; and that such of them as have any other divinities have proceeded in the same road with the celebrated nations of antiquity, from the worship of the heavenly bodies to that of celestial daemons, and from celestial daemons to the deification of dead men. It appears, likewise, that they universally believe their hero-gods and demigods to retain the passions, appetites, and propensities of men.

That the Scandinavians and our Saxon ancestors had the same notions of the gods with the other pagans whose opinions we have stated, is evident from their calling the days of the week by the names of their divinities, and from the forms of the statues by which those divinities were represented. The idol of the Sun, from which Sunday is derived, amongst the Latins dies Solis, was placed in a temple, where he was adored and sacrificed to; for they believed that the sun did co-operate with this idol. He was represented like a man half naked, with his face like the sun, holding a burning wheel with both hands on his breast, signifying his course round the world; and by its fiery gleams, the light and heat with which he warms and nourishes all things.

The idol of the Moon, from which comes our Monday, or dies Lunae, anciently Moonday, appears strangely singular, being habited in a short coat like a man. Her holding a moon expresses what she is; but the reason of her short coat and long-cared cap is lost in oblivion.

Tuisco, the most ancient and peculiar god of the Germans, represented in his garment of skin, according to their ancient manner of clothing, was, next to the Sun and

Moon, the idol of highest rank in the calendar of northern paganism. To him the third day in the week was dedicated; and hence has been derived the name Tuesday, anciently Tuisday, called in Latin dies Martis, though it must be confessed that Mars does not so much resemble this divinity as he does Odin or Woden.

Odin or Woden was a valiant prince amongst the Saxons, His image was prayed to for victory over their enemies; which, if they obtained, they usually sacrificed to him the prisoners taken in battle. Our Wednesday, anciently Wo-densday, is derived from his name. The northern histories represent him as the father of Thor, by Friga his wife.

Thor was placed in a large hall, sitting on a bed canopied over, with a crown of gold on his head, surmounted by twelve stars, and holding a sceptre in his right hand. To him was attributed power over both heaven and earth; and, as he was pleased or displeased, he could send thunder, tempests, plagues, earthquakes, or fair and seasonable weather, and cause fertility. From him our Thursday derives its name, anciently Thorsday, and amongst the Romans dies Jovis, as this idol may be substituted for Jupiter.

Friga represented both sexes, holding a drawn sword in the right hand and a bow in the left; denoting that women as well as men should fight in time of need. She was generally taken for a goddess; and was reputed the giver of peace and plenty, as well as the cause of love and amity. Her day of worship was called by the Saxons Frigedeag, now Friday, or dies Veneris; but the habit and weapons of this figure have a resemblance to those of Diana rather than Venus.

Seater, or Crodo, stood upon the prickly back of a perch. He was thin-visaged and long-haired, with a long beard, bare-headed and bare-footed, carrying in his right hand a pail of water, wherein are fruit and flowers, and holding up a wheel in his left, his coat being tied with a long girdle. His standing on the sharp fins of this fish signified to the Saxons, that by worshipping him they should pass through all dangers unhurt; by his girdle flying both ways was shown the Saxons’ freedom; and by the pail with fruit and flowers was denoted that he would nourish the earth. From him, or from the Roman deity Saturn, comes Saturday.

Such were the principal gods of the northern nations. But these people had at the same time inferior deities, who were supposed to have been translated into heaven for their heroic deeds, and whose greatest happiness consisted in drinking ale out of the skulls of their enemies in the Hall of Odin. But the limits prescribed to the present article do not permit ns to pursue this subject; nor is it necessary that we should do so. The attentive reader of the article Mythology, of the histories given in this work of the various divinities of paganism, and of the different nations by whom those divinities were worshipped, will perceive that the progress of polytheism and idolatry has been uniform over the whole earth.

There is, however, one species of idolatry more wonderful than anything that has yet been mentioned, and of which our readers will certainly expect some account. It is the worship of brutes, reptiles, and vegetables, amongst the Egyptians. To the Greeks and Romans, as well as to us, that superstition appeared so monstrous, that to enumerate every hypothesis, ancient and modern, by which philosophers have endeavoured to account for it, would swell this article beyond all proportion. Animal-worship prevailed at so early a period in Egypt, that the philosophers of antiquity whose writings have descended to us, had little or no advantage over the moderns in pursuing their researches into its origin; and, amongst the modern hypotheses, those of Mosheim and Warburton appear to be as plausible as any that we have seen.^[23. There is, however, another hypothesis which is worthy of some attention, if it were only for the learning and ingenuity of its author. The celebrated Cudworth infers, from the writings of Philo and other Platonists of the Alexandrian school, that the an cient Egyptians held the Platonic doctrine of ideas existing from eternity, and constituting, in one of the persons of the godhead, the intelligible and archetypal world. Philo, he observes, did not himself consider those ideas as so many distinct substances and animals, much less as gods; but he mentions others who deified the whole of this intelligible system, as well as its several parts. Hence, when they paid their devotions to the sensible sun, they pretended only to worship the divine idea or archetype of that luminary; and therefore our learned author conceives that the ancient Egyptians, in falling down to bulls, and cows, and crocodiles, meant at first to worship only the divine and eternal ideas of those animals. He allows, indeed, that as fevz could entertain any thoughts at all of those eternal ideas, there were scarcely any who could persuade themselves that the intelligible system had so much reality in it as the sensible things of nature ; and hence he thinks the devotion which was originally paid to the divine ideas had afterwards no higher object than the animals and vegetables of which those ideas were the eternal patterns. This hypothesis, however, is more ingenious than satisfactory. There is no evidence that the mysterious doctrine of Plato concerning ideas had anywhere been thought of for ages after animal-worship was established in Egypt. Of the state of Egyptian theology at that early period, Philo, and the other philosophers of the Alexandrian school, had no better means of forming a judgment than we have; and they laboured under many Greek prejudices, which must have prevented them from judging with impartiality. It must be confessed, however, that a pretty close approximation is here made to what seems to us to be the true explanation of the origin of animal, worship. The earliest form of idolatry was Tsabaism, or the worship of the host of heaven. Of this there can be no doubt whatever. But the observation of the sun, moon, and stars preceded the adoration of the heavenly host. Astronomy was the most early cultivated of all the sciences, and traces of the ancient classification still remain to attest the circumstances of its origin. The celestial bodies being first observed in pastoral countries, their groups were, from fancied resemblances to the figures of certain known animals, marked out and distinguished by the names of those animals; and, when they became objects of idolatrous worship, it was under the denominations which had thus been applied to them. In process of time, however, when Tsabaism, from a sublime idolatry, descended to a vulgar and degrading superstition, the sign was mistaken for the thing signified; the emblem was confounded with its archetype; and the animals themselves became the objects of that worship originally intended for the celestial signs or heavenly host, represented and classed in the manner already described. Such appears to us to bave been the true origin of animal-worship, at least in Egypt, where almost every sign, emblem, or symbol, has either an astronomical or mythological import; and there can be no doubt that the superstition which excited the ridicule of the Roman satirist was a gross corruption of the earliest form of idolatry known in the world. ] The former of these learned [7:18:338]writers attributes it wholly to the policy of the prince and the craft of the priest. The latter contends, with much earnestness and ingenuity, that it resulted from the use of hieroglyphical writing. We are strongly inclined to believe that both these causes contributed to the production of so portentous an effect; and that the use of hiero glyphics as sacred symbols, after they were laid aside in civil life, completed that wonderful superstition which the craft of the priest and the policy of the prince had undoubtedly begun.

We learn from Herodotus,^[24. Lib. ii. cap. 65. ] that in his time the number of useful animals in Egypt was so small as to be hardly sufficient for tillage and the other purposes of civil life; whilst serpents and other noxious animals, such as the crocodile, wolf, bear, and hippopotamus, abounded in that country. From this fact Mosheim very naturally concludes,^[25. Cudworth’s Intellectual System, cap. iv. No. 158. ] that the founders of society and government in Egypt would by every art endeavour to increase the number of useful animals as the number of inhabitants increased; and that with this view they would make it criminal to kill or even to hurt sheep, cows, oxen, or goats, whilst they would wage perpetual war against the noxious animals and beasts of prey. Such animals as were assisting to them in carrying on this warfare would be justly considered as in a high degree useful to society. Hence the most grievous punishments were decreed against killing, or so much as wounding, the ichneumon and ibis; because the former was looked upon as the instinctive enemy of the crocodile, and the latter of every species of serpents. The learned writer, however, observes, that in Egypt, as in other countries, people would be tempted to sacrifice the good of the public to the gratification of their own appetites, and sometimes even to the indulgence of a momentary caprice. He thinks it was found necessary to strengthen the authority of the laws enacted for the preservation of useful animals by the sanctions of religion; and he says, that with this view the priests declared that certain animals were under the immediate protection of certain gods, that some of those animals had a divine virtue residing in them, and that they could not be killed without the most sacrilegious wickedness, and incurring the highest indignation of the gods. When once the idolatrous Egyptians were persuaded that certain animals were sacred to the immortal gods, and had a divine virtue residing in them, they could not avoid viewing those animals with some degree of veneration; and the priests, taking advantage of the superstition of the people, appointed for each species of sacred animals appropriate rites and ceremonies, which were quickly followed with building shrines and temples, and approaching them with oblations and sacrifices, and other rites of divine adoration.

To corroborate this hypothesis, he observes that, besides the animals sacred over all Egypt, each province and each city had its particular animal to which the inhabitants paid their devotions. This arose from the universal practice amongst idolaters of consecrating to themselves Lares and Penates; and as the animals which were worshipped over the whole kingdom were considered as sacred to the Dii majorum gentium, so the animals the worship of which was confined to particular cities or provinces, were sacred to the Lares of those cities and provinces. Hence there was in Upper Egypt a city called Lycopolis, because its inhabitants worshipped the wolf; whilst the inhabitants of Thebes, or Heliopolis, paid their devotions to the eagle, which was probably looked upon as sacred to the Sun. Our author, however, holds it as a fact which will admit of no dispute, that there was not one noxious animal or beast of prey worshipped by the Egyptians till after the conquest of their country by the Persians. That the earliest gods of Egypt were all benevolent beings, he appeals to the testimony of Diodorus Siculus; but he quotes Herodotus and Plutarch as agreeing that the latter Egyptians worshipped an evil principle under the name of Typhon. This Typhon was the inveterate enemy of Osiris, just as Ahriman was of Ormuzd; and therefore he thinks it in the highest degree probable that the Egyptians derived their belief of two self-existent principles, a good and an evil, from their Per sian conquerors, amongst whom that opinion had prevailed from the earliest ages.

From whatever source their belief was derived, Typhon was certainly worshipped in Egypt, not with a view of obtaining from him any good, for there was nothing good in his nature, but in hopes of keeping him quiet, and averting much evil. As certain animals had long been sacred to all the benevolent deities, it was natural for a people so besotted with superstition as the Egyptians to consecrate emblems of the same kind to their god Typhon. Hence arose the worship of serpents, crocodiles, bears, and other noxious animals and beasts of prey. It may, indeed, seem at first sight very inconsistent to deify such animals, after they had been in the practice for ages of worshipping others for being their destroyers; but it is to be remembered, that long before the deification of crocodiles, &c. the real origin [7:18:339]of animal-worship was totally forgotten by the people, if they were ever acquainted with it. The crafty priest who wishes to introduce a gainful superstition, must at first employ some plausible reason to delude the multitude; but after the superstition has been long and firmly established, it is obviously his business to keep its origin out of sight.

Such is Mosheim’s account of the origin and progress of that species of idolatry which was peculiar to Egypt; and with respect to the rise of animal-worship, it appears perfectly satisfactory. But the Egyptians worshipped several species of vegetables; and it surely could be no part of the policy of wise legislators to preserve them from destruction, as vegetables are useful only as they contribute to animal subsistence. We are, therefore, obliged to call in the aid of Warburton’s hypothesis to account for this branch of Egyptian superstition.

That learned and ingenious author having proved,^[26. Divine Legation, book iv. sect. 4. ] with great clearness and strength of argument, that hieroglyphical writing preceded the invention of alphabetical characters, and having traced that kind of writing from such rude pictures as those which were in use amongst the Mexicans, through all the different species of curiological, tropical, and symbolical hieroglyphics (see the article Hieroglyphics), shows, by many quotations from ancient authors, that the Egyptian priests wrapped up their theology in the symbolical hieroglyphics, after alphabetical characters had banished from the transactions of civil life a mode of communicating information necessarily obscure. These symbols were the figures of animals and of vegetables, denoting, from some supposed or imaginary analogy, certain attributes of their divinities; and when the vulgar, forgetting this analogy, ceased to understand them as a species of writing, and were yet taught to consider them as sacred, they could not well view them in any other light than as emblems of the divinities whom they adored. But if rude sculptures upon stone could be emblematical of the divinities, it was surely notunnatural to infer, that the living animals and vegetables which those sculptures represented must be emblems of the same divinities more striking and more sacred. Hence, the learned author thinks, arose that wonderful superstition peculiar to the Egyptians, which led them to worship not only animals and vegetables, but also a thousand chimeras of their own creation, such as figures with human bodies, and the heads or feet of brutes, or with the bodies ofbrutes and the heads and feet of men.

These two hypotheses combined have been thought to account sufficiently for the idolatry of Egypt, monstrous as it was. We are persuaded that, with respect to the origin of animal-worship, Mosheim is in the right;^[27. To prove that it was merely to preserve and increase the breed of useful animals in Egypt, that the prince and the priest first taught the people to consider such animals as sacred, he argues thus: “Haec ita esse, non ex eo tantum liquet, quod paulo ante observavi, nullas bestias universo Aegyptiorum populo sacras fuisse, praeter eas, quae manifestam regioni utilitatem comparent; sed inde quoque apparet, quod longe major ratio habita fuit lamellarum inter animalia, quam marium. Boves diis immolare licebat, vaccas nullo modo. Canes foeminae contumulabantur, non item mares.” ] and it was a very easy step indeed for people in so good training to proceed upon the crutches of hieroglyphics to the worship of plants, and those chimeras which, as they never had a real existence in nature, could not have been thought of as emblems of the divinity, had they not been used in that symbolical writing which Warburton so ingeniously attempts to explain.

To this account of the origin of animal-worship we are fullyaware that some objections may occur. Animal-worship, it has been said, was not peculiar to Egypt. The Hindus, it is well known, havé a religions veneration for the cow and the alligator; but there is no evidence that in India the number of useful animals was ever so small as to make the interference of the prince and the priest necessary for their preservation; neither does it appear that the Hindus adopted from any other people the worship of a self-existent principle of evil.

To this, however, it may be answered, that there is every reason to believe that animal-worship was introduced into India by a colony of Egyptians at a very remote period. That between these two nations there was an early intercourse, is universally allowed. And although the learned president of the Asiatic Society has laboured to prove, that the Egyptians derived all that wisdom for which they were Aimed, as well as the rudiments of their religious system, from the natives of Hindustan, he does not appear to us to have laboured with success. To examine his arguments at length would swell this article beyond its due proportion; and we have noticed some of them elsewhere (see the article Philology). At present we shall only observe, that Sesostris undoubtedly made an inroad into India, and conquered part of the country, whilst we nowhere read of the Hindus having at any time conquered the kingdom of Egypt. Now, though the victors have sometimes adopted the religion of the vanquished, the contrary has happened so much more frequently, and is in itself a process so much more natural, that this single circumstance affords a very strong presumption that the Egyptian monarch would rather impose his gods upon the Hindus than adopt theirs and carry them back with him to Egypt. Animal-worship might likewise be introduced into Hindustan by those vast colonies of Egyptians . who took refuge in that country from the tyranny and oppression of the shepherd kings. That such colonies did settle on some occasion or other in India, seems undeniable, from monuments still remaining in that country, with forms which could hardly have occurred to a native of Asia, though they are very natural as the workmanship of Africans.

We may admit that the Hindus have never adopted from the Persians or Egyptians the worship of an independent principle of evil, and yet dispose of the other part of the objection with very little difficulty. It will be seen by and by, that the Brahmins believe a kind of triad of hypostases in the divine nature, of which one is viewed as the Destroyer, and known by several names, such as Siva and Iswara. When animal-worship was introduced into Hindustan, it was not unnatural to consider the alligator as emblematical of Iswara; and hence in all probability it is that the Hindus believe that a man cannot depart more happily from this world than by falling into the Ganges, and being devoured by one of those sacred animals. Upon the whole, the animal-worship of the Hindus, instead of militating against our account of this monstrous superstition as it prevailed in Egypt, seems to lend no small support to that account, as there was unquestionably an early intercourse between the two nations, and as colonies of Egyptians settled in India.

Having thus traced the rise and progress of polytheism and idolatry as they prevailed in the most celebrated nations of antiquity, we now proceed to inquire into the real opinions of those nations concerning the nature of the gods whom they adored. And here it is evident from the writings of Homer, Hesiod, and the other poets, who were the principal theologians amongst the Greeks and Romans, that though heaven, earth, hell, and all the elements, were filled with divinities, there was yet one who, whether called Jove, Osiris, Ormuzd, or by any other title, was considered as supreme over all the rest. “Whence each of the gods [7:18:340]was generated,” says Herodotus,^[28. Lib. ii. c. 51. ] “or whether they have all existed from eternity, and what are their forms, is a thing that was not known till very lately; for Hesiod and Homer were, as I suppose, not above four hundred years my seniors; and these were they who introduced the theogony amongst the Greeks, and gave the gods their several names.” Now Hesiod,^[29. Vers. 104-112. ] towards the beginning of his Theogony, expressly invokes his muse to celebrate in suitable numbers the generation of the immortal gods who had sprung from the earth, the dark night, the starry heavens, and the salt sea. He calls upon her likewise to say, “in what manner the gods, the earth, the rivers, ocean, stars, and firmament, were generated, and what divine intelligences had sprung from them of benevolent dispositions towards mankind.” From this invocation, it is evident that the poet did not consider the gods of Greece as self-existent beings. Neither could he look upon them as creatures; for of creation the ancient Greeks had no conception (see the article Metaphysics) ; but he considered them as emanations coeval with the earth and heavens, from some superior principles; and by the divine intelligences sprung from them, there cannot be a doubt but that he understood benevolent daemons. The first principles of all things, according to the same Hesiod, were Chaos, and Tartarus, and Love, of which only the last being active, must undoubtedly have been conceived by this father of Grecian polytheism to be the greatest and only self-existing god. This, we say, must undoubtedly have been Hesiod’s belief, unless by Tartarus we here understand a self-existent principle of evil; and in that case his creed will be the same with that of the ancient Persians, who, as we have seen, believed in the selfexistence of Ahriman as well as of Ormuzd.

Hesiod is supposed to have taken his theology from Orpheus; and it is evident that his doctrine concerning the generation of the gods is the same with that taught in certain verses^[30. Argonautica, p. 17, edit. Steph. ] usually attributed to Orpheus, in which Love and Chaos are thus brought together. “We will first sing,” says the poet, “a pleasant and delightful song concerning the ancient Chaos, how the heavens, earth, and seas were formed out of it; as also concerning that all-wise Love, the oldest and self-perfect principle, which actively produced all these things, separating one from another.” In the original passage, Love is said to be not only τrοXvμητις, of much wisdom or sagacity, and therefore a real intelligent substance; but also to be πgεσβuτατος and αυτοτελής, the oldest and self-perfect, and therefore a being of superior order to the other divinities, who were generated together with the elements over which they were conceived to preside.

With the theology of Homer our readers of all descriptions are so well acquainted, that we need not swell the article with quotations to prove that the father of epic poetry held Jove to be the father of gods and men. But the doctrine of the poets was the creed of the vulgar Greeks and Romans; and therefore we may conclude that those nations, though they worshipped gods and lords innumerable, admitted but one, or at the most two, self-existent principles, the one good and the other evil.^[31. Plutarch is commonly supposed, and we think justly, to have been a believer in two self-existent principles, a good and an evil. His own opinion, whatever it was, he declares (de Iside et Osiridé) to have been most ancient and universal, and derived from theolo-gers and lawgivers, by poets and philosophers. “Though the original author of it be unknown, yet,” says he, “it has been so firmly believed everywhere, that traces of it are to be found in the sacrifices and mysteries both of the barbarians and the Greeks. There is a confused mixture of good and evil in everything, and nothing is produced by nature pure. Wherefore it is not one only dispenser of things, who, as it were, out of several vessels, distributes these several liquors of good and evil, mingUng them together, and dashing them as he pleases; but there are two distinct and contrary powers or principles in the world, one of them always leading, as it were, to the right hand, but the other tugging the contrary way. For if nothing can be made without a cause, and that which is good cannot be the cause of evil, there must needs be a distinct principle in nature for the production of evil as well as good.” That this is palpable Manicheism appears to us so very evident as to admit of no dispute. It appeared in the same light to the learned Cudworth; but that author labours to prove that Plntarch mistook the sense of Pythagoras, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, and Plato, when he attributed to them the same opinions which were held by himself. Mosheim, on the other hand, has placed it beyond a doubt, that whatever was Plutarch’s belief respecting the origin of evil, and the existence of two independent principles, it was taken implicitly from the writings of Plato. But the chancellor of Göttingen, actuated by the same motives with Cudworth, wishes to persuade his readers that by Plato and Plutarch nothing active was understood by their evil principle, but only that tendency to confusion which was then deemed inseparable from matter. But that something more was meant seems undeniable. For immediately after the words which we have quoted, Plutarch proceeds to affirm that the wisest men declare ίιου; uνmι ìus xaíamo ivτιτιχνnit, “that there are two gods, as it were, of contrary trades or crafts,” of which one is the author of all good and the other of all e vil. See Mosheim’s ,edition of Cudworth’s Intellectual System, lib. i. cap. 4, § 13. ] It does not indeed appear that in the system of vulgar paganism the subordinate gods were accountable to their chief for any part of their conduct, except when they transgressed the limits of the provinces assigned them. Venus might conduct the amours of heaven and of earth in whatever manner she pleased; Minerva might communicate or withhold wisdom from any individual with or without reason; and we find, that in Homer’s battles the gods were permitted to separate into parties, and to support the Greeks or Trojans, according as they favoured the one or the other nation. Jove indeed sometimes called them to order; but his interference was thought partial, and an instance of tyrannical force rather than of just authority. The vulgar Greeks, therefore, although they admitted but one, or at most two, self-existent principles, did not consider the inferior divinities as mediators between them and the supreme, but as gods to whom their worship was on certain occasions to be ulti-timately directed.

The creed of the philosophers seems to have been different. Such of them as were theists, and believed in the administration of Providence, admitted of but one god, to whom worship was ultimately due; and they adored the subordinate divinities as his children and ministers, by whom the course of Providence was carried on. With respect to the origin of those divinities, Plato is very explicit, where he tells us,^[32. Timceus, ] that “when all the gods, both those who move visibly round the heavens, and those who appear to us as often as they please, were generated, that God, who made the whole universe, spoke to them after this manner: Ye gods of gods, of whom I myself am father, attend.” Cicero teaches the very same doctrine with Plato concerning the gods;^[33. Tiuc. Quest, lib. i. c, 29, and De Nat. Dcorum, passim. ] and Maximus Tyrius, who seems to have understood the genius of polytheism as thoroughly as any man, gives us the following clear account of that system as received by the philosophers. “I will now more plainly declare my sense by this similitude: Imagine a great and powerful kingdom or principality, in which all agree freely and with one consent to direct their actions according to the will and command of one supreme king, the oldest and the best; and then suppose the bounds and limits of this empire not to be the river Halys, nor the Hellespont, nor the Meotian Lake, nor the shores of the ocean; but the heavens above and the earth beneath. Here, then, let that great king sit immoveable, prescribing to all his subjects laws, in the observance of which consists their safety and [7:18:341]happiness. The partakers of his empire being many, both visible and invisible, are gods; some of them that are nearest and immediately attending on him, are in the highest regal dignity, feasting as it were at the same table; others, again, are their ministers and attendants; and a third sort are inferior to them both: And thus you see how the order and chain of this government descends down by steps and degrees from the Supreme God to the earth and men.” In this passage we have a plain acknowledgement of one Supreme God, the sovereign of the universe, and of three inferior orders of gods, who were his ministers in the government of the world; and it is worthy of observation, that the same writer calls these intelligences όεους, Dεou τrαιδας και <pιλoυς, gods, the sons and friends of gods. He likewise affirms, that all ranks of men, and all nations on earth, whether barbarous or civilized, held the same opinions respecting one Supreme Numen, and the generation of the other gods.

“If,” says he, “there were a meeting called of all these several professions, a painter, a statuary, a poet, and a philosopher, and all of them were required to declare their sense concerning the god ; do you think that the painter would say one thing, the statuary another, the poet a third, and the philosopher a fourth? No; nor the Scythian neither, nor the Greek, nor the Hyperborean. In other things we find men speaking very discordantly, all men as it were differing from all. But amidst this war, and contention, and discord, you may find everywhere, throughout the whole world, one uniform law and opinion, that there is one God, the KING AND father of all, and many gods, the sons of God, who reign with God. These things both the Greek and the barbarian affirm, both the inhabitants of the continent and of the sea-coast, both the wise and the unwise.”^[34. Dissert, i. ]

This account of philosophical polytheism receives no small support from the Asiatic Researches of Sir William Jones. “It must always be remembered,” says that accomplished scholar, “that the learned Indians, as they are instructed by their own books, acknowledge only one Supreme Being, whom they call Brahm, or the Great One, in the neuter gender. They believe his essence to be infinitely removed from the comprehension of any mind but his own; and they suppose him to manifest his power by the operation of his divine spirit, whom they name Vishnu, the pervader, and Nerayan, or moving on the waters, both in the masculine gender; whence he is often denominated the first male. When they consider the divine power as exerted in creating or giving existence to that which existed hot before, they call the deity Brahma ; when they view him in the light of destroyer, or rather changer of forms, they give him a thousand names, of which Siva, Iswara, and Mahadeva are the most common; and when they consider him as the preserver of created things, they give him the name of Vishnu. As the soul of the world, or the pervading mind, so finely described by Virgil, we see Jove represented by several Roman poets; and with great sublimity by Lucan in the well-known speech of Cato concerning the Ammonian oracle, ‘ Jupiter is wherever we look, wherever we move.’ This is precisely the Indian idea of Vishnu; for since the power of preserving created things by a superintending providence belongs eminently to the godhead, they hold that power to exist transcendently in the preserving member of the triad, whom they suppose to be everywhere always, not in substance, but in spirit and energy.” This supreme god Brahm, in his triple form, is therefore the only self-existent divinity acknowledged by the philosophical Hindus. The other divinities are all looked upon either as his creatures or his children, and of course are worshipped only with inferior adoration.

It was upon this principle of the generation of the gods, and of their acting as ministers to the Supreme Numen, that all the philosophers of Greece, who were not atheists, worshipped many divinities, though they either openly condemned or secretly despised the traditions of the poets respecting the amours and villanies of Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, and the rest of the tribe. It was the same principle sincerely admitted, and not an ill-timed jest, as has been absurdly supposed, that made Socrates, after he had swallowed the poison, request his friend to offer a votive cock for him to Aesculapius.

But a theogony was not peculiar to the Greeks, Romans, and the Hindus; it formed part of every system of polytheism. Even the Egyptians themselves, the grossest of all idolaters, believed in one self-existing God, from whom all their other divinities descended by generation. This appears probable from the writings of Horus Apollo, Jamblicus, Porphyry, and many other ancient authors; but if the inscription on the gates of the temple of Neith, in Sais, as we have it from Plutarch and Proclus, be genuine, it will admit of no doubt. This famous inscription, according to the last of these writers, was to this purpose: “I am whatever is, whatever shall be, and whatever has been. My veil no man has removed. The offspring which I brought forth was the Sun.”^[35. Tα βντa, κa,ι ru ι<rtμινa, κaι ra γιγβνοτa, lγω tlμι. Ten iuον χιτώνα ivis s άitiχαλυψιν. 'θν lγω χαρτών, νιλια; lvινtτ<>. The antiquity of this inscription is admitted by Cudworth, denied by Mosheim, and doubted by Jablonski. The reader who wishes to know their arguments may consult Mosheim’s edition of the Intellectual System, and Jablonski’s Pantheon Aegyptìorum. ]

The Persian Magi, as we have seen, believed in two self-existent principles, a good and an evil. But if Diogenes Laertius deserves to be credited, they held that fire, earth, and water, which they called gods, were generated of these two. It was observed in the beginning of this article, that the first object of idolatrous worship was probably the sun, and that this species of idolatry took its rise in Chaldaea or Persia. But when it became the practice of eastern monarchs to conceal themselves wholly from their people, the custom, as implying dignity, was supposed to prevail in heaven as well as on earth; and Zoroaster, the reformer of the Persian theology, taught,^[36. Plutarch, de Iside et Osiride. ] that “Ormuzd was as far removed from the sun as the sun is removed from the earth.” According to this modification of Magianism, the sun was one of the generated gods, and held the office of prime minister or vicegerent to the invisible fountain of light and good. Still, however, a self-existent principle of evil was admitted; but though he could not be destroyed or annihilated by any power, it was believed that he would at last be completely vanquished by Ormuzd and his ministers, and rendered thenceforward incapable of producing any further mischief.

From this short view of polytheism, as we find it delineated by the best writers of antiquity, we think ourselves warranted to conclude that the whole pagan world believed in but one, or at most two, self-existent 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, seemed 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[7:18:342] 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,^[37. Varro apud D. Augustinum de Civitate Dei. ] which it was not convenient for the vulgar to know; and some things which, though false, it was yet expedient that they should believe.” The polytheism and idolatry of the vulgar, therefore, were their misfortune rather than their fault. But the philosophers were wholly “without excuse;^[38. Romans, i. 20, 21, 22, 25. ] 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.” (h. h. h. h.)