after the Flood, in the simple creed of the Patriarchs. It was preserved with faithful and exclusive veneration of the true God, by those who were in the direct line of the promises; while Terah, and his descendants in the branch of Nahor, blended the worship of idols with that of the Almighty *. Individuals, from time to time, not in the succession of the chosen seed, manifested a respect for God, as Job and Abimelech; and some marks of adherence to just opinions, with respect to the divine nature, and to ordinances sanctioned by divine authority, are occasionally to be observed. Joseph married a daughter of a priest of On, and Moses a daughter of a priest of Midian, which priests probably officiated in the service of the true God. In Egypt, long after the time of Moses, a veneration for a Supreme Being prevailed; since in Thebais in Upper Egypt, Creph, or Cneph, had a temple at Syene, being worshipped as a supreme God, and was represented, as might seem through the malignant influence of Satan, under the figure of a dragon or serpent, with the head of a hawk. * Gen. xxxi. 30. Joshua xxiv. 2. In further proof that the Egyptians, amidst the multitude of their deities, reverenced with peculiar awe one supreme God, it has been observed, that this inscription was to be seen upon the temple of Minerva or Isis, at Sais, "I am all that hath been, is, and shall be, "and my veil no mortal bath yet removed *.” The ancient Jews were of opinion, that the declaration in Deuteronomy," the Lord thy "God is one Lord," implied that God should be worshipped by the Gentiles, as well as by the Jews. It is not imagined, however, that the heathen, at any time possessed a full and complete knowledge of the Almighty. It was in "Judah" that " God was known;" "he shewed his word unto Jacob," "his "statutes and his judgments unto Israel," and he did not deal so with other nations. The people of the East were gradually led by gross apprehensions, to personate the attributes of God, and to invest his creatures with a divine nature. Herodotus relates, that the worshippers of the sacred animals paid their devotion to the God to whom the * Plutarch de Isid. et Osirid. tom. ii, lib. xviii. c. 9. p. 453. Edit. Wyttenbach, Oxon. + Chap. vi. 4. Psalm lxxvi. 1. cxlvii. 19, 20. Acta xiv. 16. Rom. ix. 4. beast belonged. The power and godhead of the Almighty, were indeed at all times made manifest among the heathens, by his government, and by his visible works: the censure was, that "when they knew God, they glo"rified him not as God, but changed the "glory of the uncorruptible God into an $6 image like to corruptible man, and to "birds, and four-footed beasts and creeping "things, worshipping and serving the crea"ture more than the Creator *. By a lamentable perverseness, the visible and sensible part of the material world, and the very elements became objects of worship t Thus, the heavenly bodies, the sun, and the stars which displayed their radiant glory by night, were first adored as having life and form and intelligence. The sun was worshipped in Egypt, under the name of Hammon, and particularly at Heliopolis as an incorporeal being; and as fire became the object of reverence in Persia, so in other countries, every department of nature, every Rom. i. 18-25. + Herod. lib. iv. c. 188. Plato in Cratyl. grove and every stream, was subjected to the fancied dominion of some tutelary deity. The Providence, which extends over the earth, the sea, and the heaven *, was symbolized under various divinities, multiplied with endless diversity under the different forms of superstition, and often denominated by epithets attributed to the heavenly bodies. The original idea was, at length, nearly lost in the extravagant fancies which were concerted and pourtrayed by those who knew not, or respected not the Divine prohibition, against the making of any graven image or sculptured similitude as an object of worship. Hence, notwithstanding enlightened and philosophical minds might entertain some just apprehensions of the Divine nature, yet St. Paul describes the heathen as being without God in the world; the ordinary service of idolatry was calculated to excite only the most delusive and pernicious opinions and practice in the great bulk of the heathen world, 'while men bowed down to their own consecrated imaginations in the works of the hands of man, or associated the memory of departed benefactors with their sentiments of *August, de Civit. Dei, lib. iv. c. 1. * rercrence for the Supreme Being wandering from the original doctrines revealed concerning a first cause. The Egyptian and Phoenician theologies, which gradually sunk into the grossest superstition, and the theology of the Babylonians and Chaldæans, which Lucian represents to have been derived from them, though they seem to have established a worship, repugnant alike to reason and religion, the influence of which spread to the Greeks and Romans, yet could not totally extinguish the remembrance of a Supreme God; and hence, amidst the wildest and most extravagant fictions of antiquity, we occasionally meet with just notions with respect to the perfection of God's attributes. In the mythology of the Greeks, not only are the different deities represented in subjection to Jove, but he himself is described by Homer and Herodotus, by poets and historians, as subservient to, and constrained by an everlasting fate §. With respect to the nature and attributes * Cicero Disput. Tuscul. lib. i. Plutarch de Isid. et Osirid. Lucian de Synecdoche, et de Deâ Syriâ. Lactant. p. 11. Cudworth, Intell. 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