A person suffering acute torture from a broken limb, might naturally enough call upon Esculapius for relief; a woman labouring with the pains of parturition, might implore the assistance of Lucina; but would it, I ask, be natural or possible, for either of them, fervently to address their supplications to such metaphysical beings as were described only by the mysterious epithets of αυτόφυες, ἀγένητον, ἀνὼλεθρον, ἀυθυπόστατον, &c.—to abstract entities, and unintelligible essences? Of this defect, indeed, the philosophers seem to have been fully sensible, and accordingly made a secret of their discoveries, which, setting forth the absurdity of worshipping the popular gods, yet failed to supply their place by any other Being who could have become an object of religion, and of the common faith. For such it seems was the subject, and such the reason, of secrecy in the famous Eleusinian mysteries.*

But, in the Christian revelation, the representations given of the Deity are equally distant from the paltry and inconsistant notions of vulgar paganism, and from the useless and unintelligible conceits of metaphysical speculators; whilst it has reduced whatever was excellent in either of these diverging and contrary systems, religion and philosophy, to a point of union. This is no magisterial dogma resting upon mere assertion, but a simple fact admitting of an easy proof. The philosophers, rejecting the popular super

a See WABURTON's Divine Legation, 2nd vol. passim.

Note (23.)

stitions, embraced the doctrine of the Unity as being more conformable, than that of Polytheism was, to the deductions of reason; Christians do the same. The vulgar were directed by natural piety to an object of faith and of religious worship; now, to such the Christian system presents,-what the philosophers had failed to shew them, and indeed had scarcely sought to discover,-an object, to whom worship and prayer may with propriety be addressed, and in whom the natural aspirations, and untutored offerings, of indigent and pious mortals, find a PROVIDENCE in that paternal character which alone can influence the heart.

These sublime but practical doctrines are the very abstract of all that was true and pure in speculative theology; with all that was useful and rational in the rude religions of nature. They are the mirror, which, presenting to the eye of the philosopher the Alpha and Omega of existence "in whom we live, and move, and have our being," reveals also, in the same image, a providence watching like a shepherd over all; one in whose mysterious nature the visions of philosophy are realized, while in his manifest character and attributes the gross conceptions of the vulgar are purified and chastened, not utterly rejected and destroyed; and thus, by a perfect anamorphosis of empty theories and hideous creeds, blended together, corrected, and reformed, in the Christian system, the Deity is represented as the object of worship, and of practical obedience, as well as the subject of our most exalted and difficult contemplation; and prayer is made

the homage, not of the heart alone, but of the understanding also.

Who then can hesitate between our God, and the rabble of pagan divinities? For, as to the systems of the philosophers, although they were considerably more rational than the popular religions, they must be utterly excluded from our present consideration. The philosophers toiled long and earnestly, but ineffectually even in this ill-concerted and mistaken pursuit, to discover the Deity under almost every other character than that in which it concerned them to know Him. With perhaps but a single exception, they neglected the proper inquiry by which there was the remotest possibility, that, by any efforts of reason, they would ever reach any portion whatever of that knowledge, the fulness of which is from above, and which was necessary to the perfection of human nature. Of Socrates, indeed, it has been said, that he "called philosophy from heaven, and introduced her among the public haunts, and into the domestic retirements ofmen;" i. e. from airy speculations, he turned his thoughts to the consideration of such subjects as were applicable to the purposes of life; and, having engaged especially in the study of morals, he was led by a natural transition from the details, to the principles of that science, to inquire into (what alone can determine or enforce the duties of morality) the relation which the Deity bears to ourselves. But we may well conjecture what was his success, in this attempt to penetrate the secrets

a P. 7-8, also 144-145, ante.

of the Almighty, who designed that the pale lamp of reason should only render visible those mists, which have since vanished before the promised light of revelation, that effulgent blaze of a meridian sun, which, before our Saviour's advent, had but dawned upon the mind. This wise and admirable heathen was fully aware of the nature of his great and total failure, in a point wherein such difficulties existed, but where the existence of any difficulty whatsoever was a variation from the ordinary course of nature: and he seems not to have been mistaken in the inference which he drew therefrom. Although every species of paganism was absolutely absurd, yet, the utter renunciation of religion was, in his opinion, not less monstrous than the admission of it in its worst form. One of his doctrines therefore was, that, "in whatever country men should happen to live, they should worship the national deities;" and, immediately before his death, he himself ordered the sacrifice of a cock to Esculapius, in conformity with this opinion :-not that he believed in the common mythology of heathenism; for, on the contrary, another doctrine which he is said to have maintained was, "that a Divine Teacher would certainly be sent" to shew the world (what was yet undiscovered) the proper object of worship, and to instruct mankind in the true religion.

I now re-commence the argument from another point.

In a former treatise, the question concerning the

a P. 130-136, ante.

existence of a moral sense was stated, and examined. I there endeavoured to ascertain the kind of arguments, by which the existence of a natural tendency may be demonstrated. Now, the notion of an atonement and sacrifice seems to have as fair a claim, as any of the moral or animal instincts have, to be considered natural. For the truth of this assertion, confident appeal may be made to all history, ancient and modern, to the narrations of travellers,-to the latest, and to all future accounts, of the remote regions into which missionaries have penetrated. Offerings and oblations were the capital observances enjoined in the Jewish ritual. Of all the religious exercises and ceremonies of which mention is made in the narrative of Moses, they appear to have been the first in existence, as well as the chief in importance, and to have arisen naturally from human feelings, independent of, and prior to, their positive institution. The extent and barbarity to which the system of heathen sacrifice was carried, were as shocking to humanity, and (maugre all the ingenious sophistries of paradoxical authors) were as immeasurably absurd in the eye of reason and of common sense, as the facts themselves are unquestionable.

a P. 8-12, also 26, ante.

The "vir magnus acerrimus" of controversy and polemics, in the 6th volume of his "Divine Legation," gives a ridiculous romance of the origin of sacrifice in reason! But it were superfluous to expatiate upon his passionate but frivolous asseverations, that his theory, and his alone, is true. The late Archbishop of Dublin has sufficiently exposed the folly of that preposterous supposition,