the improvement of useful arts, and of other sciences, particularly of government, than to the investigation of truths concerning the first philofophy. We read, with a juft admiration, the accounts that are come down to us, fhort and imperfect as they are, of the wifdom and policy of antient nations, of the eastern empires, and particularly in Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, of the Egyptian government. All the arts and sciences were carried far among them, feveral much further than we are able to imitate; and if we judge of their improvements in other fciences, as we may fairly do, by thofe which they made in aftronomy, we shall find reafon to be of opinion, that these funk instead of rifing in the hands of the Greeks, notwithstanding their boafts, and thofe of Plato particularly, that they improved all they learned; as we fee that the knowledge of the true folar fyftem was loft foon after the days of Pythagoras, and made way for the falfe one of Ptolemy. But when we confider the state of natural theology among the fame nations, and at the fame time, we admire no longer; we remain astonished, that men who excelled in every other branch of knowledge, fhould embrace fo many abfurd errors in this, and deduce from their philofophy a fyftem of religion that rendered them a proverb, even among polytheifts and idolaters. To give a full account of this, would be to give an hiftory of the progrefs of the first philofophy. I fhall touch the principal heads as fhortly as I can; and indeed the greatest scholars when they pretend to do much more, to enter into a detail of particulars, and to treat this fubject minutely, involve themfelyes and their readers in webs of hypothefes, one generally as improbable as another, and none of them of any real ufe. They fhew much learning, as it is called, and often much fubtilty, and this is all they fhew that deferves any commendation, if even this deferves it. I refer you therefore therefore to them, if you are defirous to fee'mote particulars than you will find here, concerning the rile and early progrefs of Pagan theology and worship. Among people immerfed in ignorance and superftition, there arofe in antient days, as there have done fince, fome men of more genius than the common herd, and that were placed in fituations and circumftances, which gave them perhaps opportunities of receiving inftruction from others, or at least better means of obferving nature themselves, and more leifure for the investigation of truth, and for the improvement of knowledge. Thefe men were the first miffionaries, and I fuppofe the beft, that have been seen in the world. They affembled little families, clans or hords, into larger and more civilized communities: they invented many ufeful arts of life: they establifhed order and good government, and they taught men the great leffon of promoting the happiness of individuals, by promoting that of the public, and of preferving liberty by fubjection to law. Thefe legiflators, however, had been bred în the fuperftitious opinions and practices of their families and countries, and for that reafon one may incline to think, that they preferved a tang of this superstition in their legislative capacity; fince it is much more rare to fee men fhake off entirely long habits of error, than to fee them rife out of mere ignorance to certain degrees of knowledge. On this fuppofition, it would be obvious to account for the fuperftitious opinions and practices which they propagated and rendered venerable in all the governments they eftablished. But a reflection prefents itself immediately, which lets us into a fecret, and perhaps a truër motive that they had to hold this conduct. They might be neither bigots to old fuperftitions, nor to thofe that they fuperinduced themselves. They could not believe that they had a correfpondence, which they knew they had not, with gods or dæ mons mons, even if they believed the exiftence of fuch imaginary beings, and yet they all pretended to this great prerogative. The Egyptian wifdom, their religious and civil inftitutions, were taught by Mercury and their first legiflators and philofophers affumed the name, or had it given them on this account. Zoroaf ter and Zamolxis, one among the Bactrians, and the other among the Scythians, had revelations from Vefta. Minos had them from Jupiter himself, and Charondas from Saturn. Numa converfed familiarly with Egeria, and Pythagoras with Minerva. I need mention no more, for I will not offend by adding Mofes to this catalogue. Now fince thefe men impofed revelations they knew to be falfe, we may conclude, they were not much in earnest about several of the doctrines they taught, and of the inftitutions they made, not even about a doctrine which moft, and I believe all of them, were extremely folicitous to inculcate, I mean the doctrine of future rewards and punishments. They endeavoured to profit of the general difpofition, to apprehend fuperior powers, in fome of whom fuperftition had accustomed men to imagine a feverity of justice, and even an inclination to afflict and torment; and they knew enough of the human heart, to know that men would be flattered with immortality in any shape, and though the confequence of it might be their own damnation. Religion in the hands of thefe philofophical legiflators, who fucceeded to the authority of fathers of families, was a proper expedient to enforce obedience to political regimen and neither the doctrines of it, nor the rites and ceremonies and manners of worship, could be too grofs for those who had believed and practifed many other fuperftitions in the days of still greater fimplicity and ignorance, and whilft they were under paternal government. I can eafily perfuade myself, for I think it not only poffible but probable, that many many of the reformers had discovered the existence of one Supreme Being, which cannot long efcape the knowledge of thofe who obferve the whole face of nature. But this knowledge, and the confequences they fhould be able to deduce from it, might not seem to them fufficiently adapted to the character of the people with whom they had to do: a people led by their fenfes, and by the first appearances of things, with little ufe of reason, and little exercise of reflection, which might have rendered them capable of rifing from fenfible to intelligible objects. Natural theology, pure and unmixed, it might be thought, would fpeak in vain to a multitude, in whom appetites and prepoffeffions, affections and paffions, raised by fenfible objects, were ftrong, and the force of reafon fmall. It was neceffary, therefore, in the opinion of these miffionaries of good policy and good manners, and, in order to promote them both, of religion likewife, to fuit their doctrines to fuch grofs conceptions, and to raife fuch affections and paffions by human images and by objects that made strong impreffions on fenfe, as might be oppofed with fuccefs to fuch as were raised by human images, and by fenfible objects too, and were deftructive of order, and pernicious to fociety. That true felf-love and focial are the fame, as you have expreffed a maxim, I have always thought most undeniably evident; or that the author of nature has fo constituted the human fyftem, that they coincide in it, may be easily demonftrated to any one who is able to compare a very few clear and determinate ideas. But it will not follow, that he to whom this demonstration is made, nor even he who makes it, fhall regulate his conduct according to it, nor reduce to practice what is true in fpeculation, We are fo made, that a lefs immediate good will determine the generality of mankind, in oppofition to to one that is much greater, even according to our own measure of things, but more remote and an agreeable momentary fenfation will be preferred to any lafting and real advantage, which reafon alone can hold out to us, and reflection alone can make us perceive. Philofophy may teach us to do voluntarily, as I have read that Ariftotle fays, it does what others are constrained to do by force. But the many were not philofophers: and therefore the few might think very plaufibly, that fear was neceffary to make them act as fuch. The influence of reason is flow and calm, that of the paffions fudden and violent. Reason therefore might fuggeft the art that served to turn the paffions on her fide. Though I think, that they who inftituted religions in the Pagan world were not convinced of the truth of their own doctrines, and that their fole view was to add, by this political expedient, divine to human authority, and the fanction of revelation to the dictates of right reafon, yet am I perfuaded, that many of them believed the exiftence of one Supreme Being, the fountain of all exiftence, as I faid juft now. They believed farther, the anecdotes of antiquity make it plain that they did, the existence of many inferior beings generated, not ungenerated gods and dæmons. They erected, as it were, a divine monarchy on the ruins of a divine ariftocracy; and in this refpect, as well as many others, they refined, whilft they improved in knowledge, out of the abfurdities of original fuperftition, into one that was a little lefs abfurd, and that came nearer truth or disguised error under more plaufible appearances. But all these refinements, at leaft as foon as the diftinction of a public and a fecret doctrine was made, whenever that was made became parts of their hidden doctrine, which was communicated to the initiated alone. Their outward doctrine differed not from that of the vulgar, it was the fame or rather the fuperftition |