essential to the Deity: but if severe, inexorable, captious, or unequal; the very gods were tyrants; and expiations, atonements, lustrations, and bloody sacrifices, composed the system of religious worship. In the words of the great poet,

"Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust;

Such as the souls of cowards might conceive,

And, form'd like tyrants, tyrants would believe."*

But, 3. The mode of public worship was alone sufficient to betray the mover of the whole machine. The object of what we call religion, being God, considered as the creator and preserver of a species of rational beings, the subject of it must needs be each individual of that species. This is that idea of religion which our common reason approves. But now, in ancient paganism, religion was a very different thing: it had for its subject, not only the natural man, that is, each individual, but likewise the artificial man, society; by and for whom, all the public rites and ceremonies of it were instituted and performed. And while that part of pagan religion, whose subject were individuals, bore an inferior part, and was confessed to be under an unequal providence, the consideration of which brought in the doctrine of a future state for the support of God's government; the other, whose subject was the artificial man, society, taught a more equal providence, administered to the state. The consequence of which was, that religion and government ran into one another; and prodigies and portents were as familiar as civil edicts; and as constantly bore their share in the public administration: for the oracles, without which nothing was projected or executed, always denounced them as rational directions, declarative of divine favour or displeasure; in which particulars, as such, were not at all concerned: so that to accept or to avert the omen; to gratulate the mercy, or deprecate the judgment; the constant method was the revival of old rites, or the institution of new. A reformation of manners, or enforcement of sumptuary laws, never made part of the state's atonement to the gods.

The oddness and notoriety of this fact so forcibly struck Mr Bayle's imagination, that, mistaking this for the whole of paganism, he too hastily concluded, that the worship of false gods in the ancient world did not at all influence morals:† and from thence formed an argument to support his favourite question in behalf of atheism. This was a strange conclusion: for though it be indeed true, that the public part of pagan religion had no influence on morals, it is utterly false that the private part had not: for in the doctrine of a future state, which was the foundation

* Essay on Man.

+ Pensées diverses sur un comete, &c. Et, Réponse aux Questions d'un Provincial. Et, Continuation des Penseés diverses, &c.

of, and inseparable from, this sounder part of pagan religion whose subject was the individual, the merit and demerit, to which rewards and punishments were annexed, was virtue and vice only. This will be proved at large in the fourth section of the present book: though I am ready to allow, that the nature and administration of the public part of pagan religion did lead individuals into many wrong conclusions concerning the efficacy of exterior acts of worship.

But what seems to have occasioned Mr Bayle's mistake, (besides his following the fathers, who in their declamations against paganism have said a great deal to the same purpose, was his not reflecting that ancient history only presents us with one part of the influence of paganism, that which it had on the public as a body: the other, the influence it had on individuals, it passes over in silence, as not its province.

Whoever now considers the genius of paganism in this view, (and unless he considers it in this view he will never be able to judge truly of it,†) can hardly doubt but that the civil magistrate had a great hand in modelling religion. What it was which enabled him to give this extraordinary cast to paganism, is not difficult to discover: it could be nothing but that popular disposition arising from, and the necessary consequence of, those general notions, which by his contrivance and encouragement had overspread the heathen world. 1. That there were local tutelary

* Yet St Austin himself cannot but own that the Mysteries however (of which the reader will hear a great deal in the fourth section of this book) were principally instituted for the promoting of virtue and a good life, even where he is accusing paganism in general for its neglect of moral virtue:

"Nec nobis nescio quos susurros paucissimorum auribus anhelatos et arcana velut religione traditos jactent, quibus vitæ probitas castitasque discatur."-Civ. Dei, 1. ii. cap. 6.

"Iidem ipsi Dæmones-perhibentur in adytis suis, secretisque penetralibus dare quædam bona præcepta de moribus quibusdam velut electis sacratis suis-Proinde malignitas dæmonum nisi alicubi se, quemadmodum scriptum in nostris litteris novimus, transfiguret in angelos lucis, non implet negotium deceptionis. Foris itaque populis celeberrimo strepitu impietas impura circumsonat, et intus paucis castitas simulata vix sonat: præbentur propatula pudendis, et secreta laudandis: decus latet, et dedecus patet," &c. cap. 26.

What is here said of the genius of paganism well accounts for a circumstance in ancient history, which very much embarrasses the modern critics. They cannot conceive how it happened that the best ancient historians, who understood so well what belonged to the nature of a composition, and how to give every sort of work its due form, and were besides free from all vulgar superstition, should abound so much in descriptions of religious rites and ceremonies; and in relations of omens, prodigies, and portents. Many an idle hypothesis hath been framed to give a solution of this difficulty; and many a tedious work compiled to justify these ancient historians upon mere modern ideas. But now a plain and easy answer may be given to it. This part of pagan religion was so interwoven with the transactions of state, that it became essential to civil history. And how much soever it may be supposed to have deformed ancient history, yet the critic and philosopher gain by what disgusts the delicacy of the politician; the Greek and Roman history being the repository of all that concerns the public part of pagan religion.

deities, who had taken upon themselves, or were intrusted with, the care and protection of particular nations and people; (of which more hereafter). 2. That those great benefactors of mankind, who had reduced the scattered tribes and clans into civil society, were become gods. 3. and lastly, That their systems of laws and civil institutes were planned and digested by the direction of the legislator's patron-deity.*

On the whole then, the foregoing considerations of the preservation of religion in general; the origin of the pagan gods; their attributes; and the mode of public worship;-will, I am persuaded, incline the reader to think that, for the universality of religious belief, the world was chiefly indebted to the civil magistrate; how much soever the illegitimate or unnatural constitution of particular states, or the defective views of particular lawgivers, contributed to deprave the true religion of nature; or, if you will, the patriarchal. The learned St Austin, who excelled in the knowledge of antiquity, seems to have been determined by this way of thinking, when he gives it, as the result of his inquiries; that the civil magistrate had a large share in pagan superstition. His words are these,f-"Which indeed seems to have been done on no other account, but as it was the business of princes, out of their wisdom and civil prudence, to deceive the people in their religion-princes, under the name of religion, persuaded the people to believe those things true, which they themselves knew to be idle fables. By this means, for their own ease in government, tying them the more closely to civil society."

But if now it should be objected, that it was natural for the people, left to themselves, to run into those superstitions, we may readily grant it without prejudice to the argument: for they are always such notions as are apt to be entertained and cherished by vulgar minds, whose current the wise magistrate is accustomed to turn to his advantage. For to think him capable of new-modelling the human mind, by making men religious whom he did not find so, is, as will be shown hereafter, a senseless whimsy, entertained by the atheist to account for the origin of religion. And, when it is seen that all these various modes of superstition concurred to promote the magistrate's purpose, it can hardly be doubted but he gave them that general direction. The particular parts of gentile religion, which further strengthen and confirm this reasoning, are not here to be insisted on. Their original will be clearly seen, when we come to show the several methods which the magistrate employed for this great pur

* See the beginning of the next section.

+-Quod utique non aliam ob causam factum videtur, nisi quia hominum principum velut prudentium et sapientium negotium fuit populum in religionibus fallere-Homines principes ea, quæ vana esse noverint, religionis nomine populis tanquam vera suadebant: Hoc modo eos civili societati velut arctius alligantes, quo subditos possiderent.—De Civit. Dei, 1. iv. c. 32.

pose. What these methods were, the course of the argument now leads us to consider.

SECT. II.

IT hath been shown in general, from the EFFECT, that lawgivers and founders of civil policy did indeed support and propagate religion. We shall now endeavour to explain the CAUSES of that effect, in a particular enumeration of the arts they employed to that purpose.

I. The FIRST step the legislator took, was to pretend a mission and revelation from some god, by whose command and direction he had framed the policy he would establish. Thus Amasis and Mneves, lawgivers of the Egyptians (from whence this custom spread over Greece and Asia) pretended to receive their laws from Mercury; Zoroaster the lawgiver of the Bactrians, and Zamolxis lawgiver of the Getes, from Vesta; Zathraustes the lawgiver of the Arimaspi, from a good spirit or genius; and all these most industriously and professedly propagated the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments. Rhadamanthus and Minos, lawgivers of Crete, and Lycaon of Arcadia, pretended to an intercourse with Jupiter; Triptolemus lawgiver of the Athenians, affected to be inspired by Ceres; Pythagoras and Zaleucus, who made laws for the Crotoniates and Locrians, ascribed their institutions to Minerva; Lycurgus of Sparta, professed to act by the direction of Apollo; and Romulus and Numa of Rome put themselves under the guidance of Consus, and the goddess Egeria.* In a word, there is hardly an old lawgiver on record, but what thus pretended to revelation, and the divine assistance. But had we the lost books of legislators written by Hermippus, Theophrastus, and Apollodorus,† we should have had a much fuller list of these inspired statesmen, and doubtless many further lights on the subject. The same method was practised by the founders of the great outlying empires, as Sir William Temple calls them. Thus the first of the Chinese monarchs was called Fagfour or Fanfur, the son of Heaven, as we are told by the Jesuits, from his pretensions to that relation. The royal commentaries of Peru inform us, that the founders of that empire were Mango Copac, and his wife and sister Coya Mama, who proclaimed themselves the son and daughter of the Sun, sent from their father to reduce mankind from their savage and bestial life, to one of order and society. Tuisco, the founder of the German nations, pretended to be sent upon the same message, as appears from his name, which signifies the interpre

*Diod. Sic. I. i. et v. Ephorus apud Strabonem, 1. x.-teste veteri scriptore apud Suidam in [Auxáw]-Arist. apud Schol. Pind. ad Olymp. x.

† Athen. 1. xiv. D. Laertius,

ter,* that is, of the gods. Thor and Odin, the lawgivers of the Western Goths, laid claim likewise to inspiration and even to divinity. The revelations of Mahomet are too well known to be insisted on. But the race of these inspired lawgivers seems to have ended in Genghizcan, the founder of the Mogul empire.‡

Such was the universal custom of the ancient world, to make gods and prophets of their first kings and lawgivers. Hence it is, that Plato makes legislation to have come from God, and not from man:§ and that the constant epithets to kings in Homer, are ΔΙΟΓΕΝΕΙΣ born of the gods, and ΔΙΟΤΡΕΦΕΙΣ bred or tutored by the gods.

From this general pretence to revelation we may collect the sentiments of the ancient lawgivers concerning the use of religion to society. For we must always have in mind what Diodorus Siculus so truly observes, That they did this, not only to beget a veneration to their laws, but likewise to establish the opinion of the superintendency of the gods over human affairs. One may venture to go farther, and say, that to establish this superintendency was their principal and direct aim in all their pretensions to inspiration.

The reader may observe, that Diodorus does not so much as suspect

* Vide Sheringham, de Anglorum Gentis Origine, p. 86.

Olim quidam magicæ artis imbuti, Thor videlicet et Othinus,-obtentis simplicium animis, divinitatis sibi fastigium arrogare cœperunt.-Adeo namque fallaciæ eorum effectus percrebuit, ut in ipsis cæteri quandam numinum potentiam venerantes, eosque deos, vel deorum complices autumantes veneficiorum auctoribus solennia vota dependerent, et errori sacrilego respectum sacris debitum exhiberent.-Saxo-Gram. 1. vi. Histor. p. 93. Francof. 1576. fol.

Ils ont attribué des revelations à Genghizcan; et pour porter la veneration des peuples aussi loin qu'elle pouvoit aller, ils lui ont donné de la divinité. Ceux qui s'interessoient à son elevation eurent même l'insolence de le faire passer pour fils de Dieu. Sa mère plus modeste, dit seulement qu'il étoit FILS DU SOLEIL-M. Petit de la Croix, le pere, Histoire du Genghizcan, cap. 1.

§ Θεὸς ἤ τις ανθρώπων ὑμῖν, ὦ ξένοι, εἴληφε τὴν αἰτίαν τῆς τῶν νόμων διαθέσεως; ΚΑ. Θεὸς, ὦ ξένε, θεὸς, ὡς γε τὸ δικαιότατον εἰπεῖν.—De Leg. lib. i. lin. 1.

[[ θυμὸς δὲ μέγας ἐστὶ διοτρεφέος βασιλῆος. Il. Β'. ver. 196. which title of διατρεφέος is not given, says Eustathius on the place, to signify that such a one is descended from Jupiter, but that he receives his honour and authority from him. Εφερμηνεύει διατί ΔΙΟΓΕΝΕΙΣ καὶ ΔΙΟΤΡΕΦΕΙΣ τοὺς βασιλεῖς λέγει, οὐχ ὅτι ἐκ Διὸς τὸ γένος ἵλκουσι, ἀλλ ̓ ὅτι ΕΞ ΕΚΕΙΝΟΥ ΑΥΤΟΙΣ Η ΤΙΜΗ.

* Μετὰ γὰρ τὴν παλαιὰν τοῦ κατ' Αἴγυπτον βίου κατάστασιν, τὴν μυθολογουμένην γεγονέναι ἐπί τε τῶν θεῶν καὶ τῶν ἡρώων, πεῖσαι φασὶ πρῶτον ἀγράπτοις νόμοις χρήσασθαι τὰ πλήθη βίουν τὸ Μνεύην, ἄνδρα καὶ τῇ ψυχῇ μέγαν καὶ τῷ βίῳ κοινότατον τῶν μνημονευομένων, προσποιηθῆναι δὲ αὐτῷ τὸν Ἑρμῆν διδωκέναι τούτους, ὡς μεγάλων ἀγαθῶν αἰτίους ἐσομένους καθάπερ παρ' Έλλησι ποιῆσαι φασὶν ἐν μὲν τῇ Κρήτη Μίνωα, παρὰ δὲ Λακεδαιμονίοις Λυκοῦργον· τὸν μὲν παρὰ Διὸς, τὸν δὲ παρ' ̓Απόλλωνος φήσαντα τούτους εἰληφέναι· καὶ παρ' ἑτέροις δὲ πλείοσιν ἔθνεσι παραδίδοται τοῦτο τὸ γένος τῆς ἐπινοίας ὑπάρξαι, καὶ πολλῶν ἀγαθῶν αἴτιον γενέσθαι τοῖς πεισθεῖσιν—

—εἴτε καὶ πρὸς τὴν ὑπεροχὴν καὶ δύναμιν τῶν εὑρεῖν λεγομένων, τοὺς νόμους ἀποβλέψαντα τὸν ὄχλον, μᾶλλον ὑπακούσεσθαι διαλαβόντας.—Lib. i. p. 59, edit. Steph.