Bubastes, the sun by that of Ammon, Horus, and Osiris*.

The most favourable opinions, therefore, that we are warranted in forming as to the Egyptians will amount to this, and no more that, as the people were infinitely deeper plunged in idolatry, so the priests or philosophers † were in no respect purer from error than the rest of the ancient world. Indeed, it might reasonably excite our wonder to find the Egyptian learning in such high estimation, did we not know from experience, how often antiquity passes for excellence, and mystery for wisdom. The nation of which we are speaking, seems to have earliest attained that degree of civilization ‡, which first produces a regular scheme of polity, and is afterwards farther improved by its effects: so that the account left us by the ancient

* Diog. Laert. ubi supra. Jablonski Panth. Egypt, + Diogenes Laertius speaks of the whole nation pro miscuously as idolatrous. Prooem. 1. 10. Juvenal seems to have written his 15th Satire, to show that the Egyptians, who were usually held in such high veneration, were really among the most barbarous of nations.

+ Diod. Sic. p. 64, Rhod.

historians of the Egyptian laws and customs is in many respects calculated to excite our applause. When, therefore, some of the early Greeks left their rude and uncivilized countrymen, to whom the barrenness of their soil scarcely afforded a subsistence, and found in Egypt a land abounding in fertility, and a regular government and laws, the contrast naturally filled them with admiration; and the useful inventions which they carried back as trophies of their travels, perpetuated the memory and fame of the country from which they were originally derived, even to a period when the Egyptians were no more to be compared with the Greeks themselves, than their Anubis with the Grecian Jupiter. The rude principles of geometry, astronomy, and the mathematics, existed among them, but were afterwards improved by the ingenuity of the Greeks; for we find it was Eudoxus who first explained the motions of the heavenly bodies, by the application of mathematical science, and that Thales

Homer, Lycurgus, Solon, Thales, Melampus, Pythagoras, &c. Much is to be learnt on this subject from Woodward's posthumous Treatise on the Learning of the Egyptians, Archæolog, vol. iv,

was the first whose astronomical knowledge enabled him to predict an eclipse *.

It may be farther remarked, that if there were any good reason to believe that what are called the doctrines of natural religion could have been learnt by Moses in Egypt, which is not the case; there are other decided objections against attributing his theology to any such origin. Had he borrowed his doctrine from those priests, would he not have imitated the priests in withholding the purer belief from the vulgar? What right have we to conclude that he who had seen the pretended mysteries concealed by hieroglyphics, and reserved with the most scrupulous care from

* Brucker, Hist. ant. Phil. "If Pythagoras sacrificed a hetacomb upon finding out the 47th proposition of Eu clid, and Thales an ox on having discovered how to inscribe a rectangled triangle in a circle, after having stu died mathematics in Egypt, the parent of geometry; what opinion does it give us of the knowledge of their masters in that science! Thales having shown them how to measure the heights of their pyramids by their shadow, is a proof of their little progress in trigonometry." Wood on the Genius and Writings of Homer. This writer will not allow that Egypt could have furnished even Homer's mythology.

the general eye, would suddenly and at once seize on the propriety of declaring them to the people at large? Why should we imagine, that he who had witnessed only the general practice of idolatry, and left this the universal worship of his supposed instructress Egypt, would immediately proscribe it under pain of death in his own nation? Had Moses received his ideas from the education given him by the priests, it is far more probable, that he would have imbibed and acted upon the same notions, as to the expediency of keeping the people in utter ignorance, than that he should have struck out a plan diametrically opposite to the whole practice, not of his instructors only, but of all the ancient philosophers, who agreed in little else than in the necessity of perpetuating the vulgar superstitions.

In addition to these considerations, if Moses derived his theology from Egypt, and thought himself at liberty to alter it according to his own views of utility, it is impossible to explain his having omitted to sanction his law by inculcating the belief

of the soul's immortality*. Though the precise tenets of the Egyptians upon this subject have not been transmitted to us, it seems very evident that they taught the existence of the soul after the dissolution of the body, though veiling it, probably, under the fable of a metempsychosis †. Now, this doctrine is equally useful to the philosophic theist, and to the practical statesman; useful to the theist, as removing the only plausible objection against the moral government of God in the world; and to the statesman, as holding out a stronger terror to the wicked, than any punishment he is able to threaten; and affording an universal incitement to virtue, which it is totally out of his power to reward. This advantage was well understood by the ancients, as was formerly observed; and Zaleucus and Plato both inculcated the belief, the one in his real, the other in his imaginary republic. But whatever may have been the opinion of the Hebrews

Warburton, Div. Leg. b. iv. s. 6.

+ I qualify the assertion, though commonly believed, because some have questioned Herodotus's account, who is express on the subject. Euterpe, s. 123. Vide Cudworth, i. 313.