when they were defirous of getting a favourable anfwer from him. The fame, according to Herodotus, was practised in the worship of Ifis, an Egyptian deity, and of Bellona among the Romans. Also in the festivals of Cybele, called the mother of the gods, the priests, who were caftrated, made hideous noifes and howlings, and cut themselves till the blood gushed out. The worship of this goddess was introduced from the East to Rome. At a feftival in Sparta boys were whipped with fo much. severity, on an altar of Diana (the priestess attending to fee that it was done in a proper manner) that they often died in confequence of it. When this was the cafe, and the boys had borne the torture with fufficient fortitude, they had the honour of a public funeral, as having died in the fervice of their country. This custom was inftituted by Lycurgus, the great Spartan lawgiver, in exchange for the facrifice of a man every year at the fame altar, the oracle having only declared that the altar of that goddefs must be fprinkled with human blood. There was alfo an altar of Bacchus in Arcadia, on which many young women were beaten with rods till they died. The rites of heathen religions now or lately exifting,,

F

exifting, are as cruel as thofe of any of the ancients. In Indoftan it is frequent, and deemed particularly meritorious, for widows to be burned alive with the bodies of their husbands, and their Faquirs voluntarily undergo fuch tortures as it is painful to read of. They will often continue fo long in the most constrained postures, that their limbs are incapable of any motion; so that they remain fo until they die, their wants fupplied, and their prayers requested, by great numbers of perfons. Sometimes, having strong iron hooks thrust through the skin of their backs, they get themselves to be drawn up, and whirled round in the air, with the greatest violence, by means of a machine constructed for the purpose. The Mexicans, accustomed to the bloody facrifice of their prisoners, "failed not," fays Clavigero, "to fhed abundance of their own blood. "It makes one fhudder to read of the aufte"rities which on fome occafions they exer"cifed on themselves, either as an atonement

for their fins, or a preparation for their "more folemn feftivals. They mangled their

flesh as if they had been infenfible to pain, ❝ and let out their blood in the greatest pro**fufion. This was practifed every day. by

"" fome

*fome of their priests. They pierced themfelves with the fharp fpines of aloes, and "thruft them through feveral parts of their "bodies, making the holes larger on every re

petition of the operation. They had also "fevere watchings and faftings in their religious rites."

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At the faft of Tlafcalans, which lafted one hundred and fixty days, "the chief priest, at"tended by about two hundred perfons, ascend"ed a high mountain, and when they de"scended, they had a number of little knives, "and a great quaintity of small rods delivered "to them. The first day they bored holes

''

through their tongues, through which they "drew the rods, and notwithstanding the "exceffive pain, and lofs of blood occa"fioned by it, they were obliged to fing "aloud hymns to their gods. This cruel "operation was repeated every twenty days. "When eighty days of this fast of the priests "was elapfed, a general faft of the people, " from which the heads of the republic were "not exempted, began, and was continued "an equally long time."

heathen religions, and thofe which occurred the most frequently, encouraged, and indeed required, the extreme of fenfual indulgence; and fometimes that of the most unnatural kind. It is not easy to fay by what particular train of thinking they were led to conclude that fuch practices as thefe could be pleafing to the gods, but fome of those deities that were to be appeafed by human facrifices were fuppofed to be no lefs pleafed to fee their worshippers indulge themselves in whatever could gratify their appetites; and their groves, and the temples themselves, were scenes of open prostitution.

It is well known that, in general, the heathens afcribed to their gods the paffions and actions of men, and too many of the oriental princes, and those the most celebrated for their warlike and other exploits, gave into the extreme of both cruelty and luft. It is poffible, however, that the indecent fymbols of their worship, which might be originally defigned to reprefent what is, no doubt, the most remarkable circumftance in the conftitution of nature, viz. its reproductive power, or that of generation, might lead to thofe acts of lewdnefs with which the heathen worship abounded.

8

abounded. And, incredible as it may appear to us, figures which cannot be named with decency, were expofed and carried about in thefe facred proceffions, hymns were fung to them, and religious worship paid to them. This was done by the Egyptians, and most other ancient nations, especially the Greeks, who borrowed the custom from them*.

To recite the particulars of the indecencies. of the heathen worship would be difgufting, and the account could hardly be given in language proper for a public affembly; but as fomething of this kind is become neceffary, in order to give a juft idea of the state of facts which have been ftrongly difguifed by unbelievers, and to fhew the great fuperiority of revealed religion to that which almost all mankind naturally fell into, I must be excufed if, for the fake of those who may have been mif

* Lucian, a heathen writer, says that, in the portico of the temple at Hierapolis, which stood on an hill, there was a tower three hundred cubits high, built in that indecent form, to the top of which a man ascended twice a year, where he continued seven days, that he night with more advantage converfe with the gods above. In the worship of the people of Indoftan, figures even more fhocking to modefty than those of the ancient western pations are now made use of.