ritual so simple: they looked to the sun' in its glory, they observed the moon and the stars walking in their brightness: they felt the benefits which through their influence were derived to men. They perhaps first considered them as the peculiar residence, or the chief ministers, or the most worthy representatives, of the divinity; and in honouring and worshipping them, possibly conceived they were honouring the majesty, and fulfilling the will of their Creator: but they soon forgot the Creator whom they could not see, and gave his glory to the creature, whose existence was obvious to the sense and captivating to the imagination. They seem to have conceived these luminaries to be moved and animated by distinct and independent spirits, and therefore fit objects of immediate worship. To represent them in their absence, they erected pillars and statues on the tops of hills and mountains, or on pyramids and high buildings, raised for the purpose ;3 as if they could thus approach nearer the presence of their divinities. They set apart priests, and appointed times and sacrifices suited to the luminary they adored hence the rising and the setting sun, the different seasons of the year, the new and full moon, the quarters of the heavens, the constellations and conjunctions of the stars, acquired a peculiar sacredness, and were conceived to possess a peculiar influence. It now became the interests of the priests to persuade men, that the pillars and statues set up as representatives of the host of heaven, partook themselves of the same spirit, and communicated the same influence, as the sacred objects which they represented. Thus degraded man bowed down to the senseless image which he had himself set up, and forgot that there was a lie in his right hand. (Isa. xliv. 20.) From similar principles, other men adopted different objects of worship; light and air, wind and fire, seemed to them active spirits, by whose beneficent energy all the operations of nature were conducted and controlled. Water and earth formed the universal parents, from which all things derived their origin and to which they were still indebted for their sustenance. Thus these also became the objects, first of gratitude and admiration, next of awe and reverence. They also had their temples and emblematic images, their priests, and worshippers. But the folly of idolatry did not stop here. Not satisfied with adoring the host of heaven and the elements of nature, as the beneficent instruments of blessing, human weakness

1 Vide Job xxxi. 26, 27. Deut. iv. 19. Wisdom of Sol. xiii. 2, 3. Maimonides de Idololatria, the five first chapters. Diod. Sicul. lib. i. cap. i. Euseb. Præpar. Evang. lib. i. cap. ix. Herodotus, Clio, cap. cxxxi. Plato in Cratylus, p. 397.— Vide also Banier's Mythology, book iii. ch. iii. Leland's Advantage of Revelation, part i. ch. iii. And Bryant's Analys. of Mythology, who affirms that the gods of Greece were originally one god, the sun, vol. i. 305.

2 Cicero de Natura Deorum, lib. ii. cap. xv. to xxiii.

3 Maimonides More Nevochim, pars iii. cap. xxix. p. 423. Winder's History of Knowledge, vol. i. cap. xii. sect. 3.

4 Maimonides ut supra. Herod. Clio, cap. xiii.: and as to the use of mountains by the Persians. Ibid.,

5 Wisdom, xiii. 2. Herod. Clio, cap. cxxx. cap. xxviii. Hutchinson, vol. 1. pp. 24, 25.

Cicero de Natura Deorum, lib. i. cap. x.

Cicero de Natura Deorum, lib. ii.

4

led man, first to tremble with horror, and then to bow down with a base and grovelling superstition to objects of an opposite nature, to every thing which seemed gloomy and malignant. The mixture of good and evil in the world suggested the idea of an evil principle independent of and at war with the good, which it was necessary to sooth and conciliate. Darkness, storm, and pestilence, the fates, the furies, and a multitude of similar objects, were honoured with a heart-debasing homage, by their terrified and trembling votaries. Nor was this yet the worst ; gratitude to the inventor of useful arts, to the wise legislator, to the brave defender of his country, combined with the vanity of kings, the pride of conquerors, and even private affection and fond regret for the parent, the child, the consort, the friend, led men first to erect monuments to the memory of the dead, and then to worship them as divine. They sometimes transferred to these their fellow-creatures, the names of the luminaries and elements of nature, whose utility and beneficence they conceived were thus best represented. Hence, in process of time, arose a3 communication of attributes and honours, of priests and worshippers; and, to close the degrading catalogue of idolatrous absurdities, and verify St. Paul's assertion, that professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,-Egypt, the chief seat of antient wisdom and policy, of arts and letters, introduced objects of worship, still more grovelling and base than any which had preceded. În some instances, the policy of its kings led them to encourage the preservation of those animals, whose labours they employed in cultivating the earth, or whose useful activity they saw exerted in destroying the venomous reptiles and destructive animals by which they were infested. For this purpose, they sanctified them as emblematic of some divinity, or even worshipped them as in themselves divine; while, on the other hand, the Egyptian priests, with an affectation of mysterious wisdom, expressed the attributes of God, the operations of the elements, the motions and influences of the heavenly bodies, the rising and falling of the Nile, and its effects, by symbolic representations derived from the known and familiar properties of animals and even vegetables. Hence these became, first, representations of their divinities, and afterwards the direct objects of divine reverence. Thus man was taught to bow down to birds and beasts and creeping things, to plants and herbs, to stocks and stones. Nothing was too base for grovelling superstition to adore; the heavens, the earth, the air, the sea, each hill, each river, each wood, was peopled with imaginary deities; every nation, every city,

1 Vide Vossius de Idololatria, lib. i. cap. v. Vossius however imputes, as appears to me, a much greater antiquity to this species of idolatry, than the testimony of history warrants. Vide the authorities quoted in note 1. p. 333.

2 Cicero de Natura Deorum, lib. ii. cap. xxiv. Leland's Advantage of Revelation, part i. ch. iv.

3 Warb. Div. Leg. b. ii. sect. vi.

4 Vide Selden de Diis Syris. Prologomena, cap. iii. p. 53.; and Bryant's Analys. of Mythology, vol. i. p. 331. &c. Warburton's Divine Legat. b. iv. sec. iv. vol. iii. p. 197. Cicero de Natura Deorum, lib. i. sect. xxxvi. Cudworth's Intellectual System, ch. iv. sect. xviii.

every family, had its peculiar guardian gods. The name and reverence of the Supreme Father of the universe was banished from the earth; or, if remembered at all, men scrupled not to associate with him their basest idols; and deeming him too exalted and remote to regard human affairs, they looked to these idols as the immediate authors of evil and of good; they judged of their power by comparing the degrees of prosperity their worshippers enjoyed. Was one nation or family more successful than another, their guardian gods were adopted by their rivals; and every day extended more widely this intercommunity of folly and of blasphemy."

II. The heavenly bodies, we have seen, were the first objects of idolatrous worship; and Mesopotamia and Chaldæa were the countries where it chiefly prevailed after the deluge. Before Jehovah vouchsafed to reveal himself to them, both Terah and his son Abraham were idolaters (Josh. xxiv. 2.), as also was Laban, the father-in-law of Jacob (Gen. xxxi. 19. 30.); though he appears to have had some idea of the true God, from his mentioning the name of Jehovah on several occasions. (Gen. xxiv. 31. 50, 51.) Previously to Jacob and his sons going into Egypt, idolatry prevailed in Canaan and while their posterity were resident in that country, it appears from Josh. xxiv. 14. and Ezek. xx. 7, S. that they worshipped the deities of Egypt, of which the river Nile was one of the principal. And as the Egyptians annually sacrificed a girl, or, as some writers state, both a boy and a girl to this river, in gratitude for the benefits they received from it, the plague, by which its waters were converted into blood, might have been designed by God as a punishment for such cruelty, and also as a display of retributive justice against the Egyptians for the murderous decree, which enacted that all the male children of the Israelites should be drowned in that river, the waters of which, so necessary to their support and life, were now rendered not only insalubrious, but deadly, by being turned into blood, and rendered fetid and corrupt. The contempt, thus poured upon the object of their adoration must have had a direct tendency to correct their idolatrous notions, and lead them to acknowledge the power and authority of the true God. 2

On the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, although Moses by the command and instruction of Jehovah had given them such a religion as no other nation possessed, and notwithstanding all his laws were directed to preserve them from idolatry; yet, so wayward were the Israelites, that almost immediately after their deliverance from bondage, we find them worshipping idols. (Exod. xxxii. 1. Psal. cvi. 19, 20. Acts vii. 41-43.) Soon after their entrance into the land of Canaan, they adopted various deities that were worshipped by the Canaanites, and other neighbouring nations (Judges ii. 13. viii. 33.); for which base ingratitude they were severely punished.

pp. 183-190.

1 Dr. Graves's Lectures on the Pentateuch, vol. i. 9 Antient Universal History, vol. i. p. 178. (fol. edit.) Dr. A. Clarke on Exod vii. 22.

Shortly after the death of Joshua, the government became so unsettled, that every man did that which seemed right in his own eyes. The prophet Azariah describes the infelicity of these times, when he says, They were without the true God, without a teaching priest, and without the law (2 Chron. xv. 3.): and as anarchy prevailed, so did idolatry, which first crept into the tribe of Ephraim in the house of Micah, and thence soon spread itself amongst the Danites. Micah is said to have had a house of gods, to have made an ephod and teraphim, and to have consecrated one of his sons as the priest of his family. (Judg. xvii. 5.) In this he appears (as the Jews afterwards did) to have blended the worship of God and the worship of idols together; for throughout the whole story both Micah and his mother seem to retain a reverence for Jehovah: it is said that she dedicated the silver to the Lord. (Ver. 3.) And so far did they show a regard to the law of God, that a priest was consecrated to serve in this newly erected chapel, and an ephod provided in imitation of the priestly vestments used at the tabernacle in Shiloh; but still this teraphim seems to be an intermediate image, in the likeness of which God was worshipped by them, and consequently their worship was idolatrous.

This growing evil soon spread amongst the Danites, who robbed Micah of his gods. Here it took deep root, having escaped the reformation of the judges, although they were all of them very zealous for Jehovah; which might be occasioned either from Dan's lying at the extremity of the kingdom, or because scarcely any of the judges ruled over all the people, but only over such tribes as they had freed from captivity and no doubt the prevalency of idolatry here, was one great reason why Jeroboam afterwards made choice of Dan as a depository of one of his golden calves. Nor were the other tribes free from this infection, during this dissolution of the government, for it is said, They forsook the Lord and served Baal and Ashtaroth, and the other gods of the people round about them. (Judg. ii. 11—13.)

Under the government of Samuel, Saul, and David, the worship of God seems to have been purer than in former times: there was indeed a corruption and irregularity very visible in their manners, but fewer complaints of idolatry were made than at other times. Solomon is the first king, who, out of complaisance to the strange women he had married, caused temples to be erected in honour of their gods, and did so far impiously comply with them himself, as to offer incense to these false deities (1 Kings xi. 5-8.): so fatal an evil is lust to the best understandings, which besots every one it overcomes, and reigns over them with uncontrolled power! Solomon, it is true, did not arrive at that pitch of audacity which some of his successors afterwards did, nor did he entirely forsake the Lord, but seemed to encourage the worship at the temple; but his giving the smallest countenance in the breach of the divine law among a people so prone to idolatry, could not but be attended with the worst consequences, especially being done by a prince, who enjoyed such an

eminent degree of knowledge and understanding, and whom God had exalted to the highest pitch of grandeur and magnificence: but God soon made him understand, how fatal his apostacy would prove to him and his posterity; and accordingly, upon his death, the glory of his kingdom was speedily eclipsed by the revolt of the ten tribes and the division of his kingdom.

This civil defection was attended with a spiritual one, for Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who succeeded him in the government of the ten tribes which had revolted (and who himself had probably been initiated in the idolatrous worship of the neighbouring nations, when he took refuge from Solomon's jealousy at the court of Shishak), soon introduced the worship of two golden calves, the one at Dan and the other at Bethel, which he assured them were the gods which had brought them out of Egypt, whence he had himself but lately come. He made choice of Bethel, because it had long been esteemed as a place sacred for the real appearance of God in antient times to Jacob, and might therefore induce the people to a readier belief of the residence of the same Deity now; and Dan (as already observed) being at the extremity of the kingdom, was the place whither that part of the country resorted on account of Micah's teraphim. But though Jeroboam thus instituted idolatry more from some reasons of state than from any concern for religion, yet God did not fail to testify his abhorrence of such wicked practices by a miraculous judgment on him. While he was personating the high-priest at Bethel, and burning incense at the feast he had instituted, the altar rent at the word of the prophet, whom God sent out of Judah; and while he stretched out his hand for revenge upon the man of God, it dried up, so as he could not pull it in again. (1 Kings xiii. 4, 5.) Now did he, who had but just before threatened the prophet, humbly supplicate a cure from the hand that gave the wound, and a new miracle was immediately wrought for his relief. But this only restored him to the use of his arm, it did not bring back either himself or his people to a sense of their sin, for he died in his idolatry, as did all the kings of Israel after him. Idolatry being thus established in Israel by public authority, and countenanced by all their princes, was universally adopted by the people, notwithstanding all the remonstrances against it by the prophets whom God sent to reclaim them from time to time, and who stood as a barrier against this growing wickedness, regardless of all the persecutions of impious Jezebel, who did what she could quite to extinguish the worship of the true God. At length this brought a flood of calamities upon that kingdom, and was the source of all the evils with which that people were afterwards afflicted; so that after a continual scene of tragical deaths, civil wars, and judgments of various kinds, they were at length carried away captive by Shalmaneser into Assyria.

The people of Judah were little better. One might justly have expected, that, if there had been no other reason than state policy for preserving the true religion in its native purity, that alone would