every new object and every unusual event. Savages, having no protection against ftorms, tempefts, nor other external accidents, and having no pleasures but in gratifying hunger, thirst, and animal love; have much to fear, and little to hope. In that difconfolate condition, they attribute the bulk of their diftreffes to invifible beings, who in their opinion must be malevolent. This feems to have been the opinion of the Greeks in the days of Solon; as appears in a converfation between him and Crœfus King of Lydia, mentioned by Herodotus in the first book of his hiftory. "Crofus, faid Solon, you afk me "about human affairs; and I answer as one who thinks, that all the gods are "envious and disturbers of mankind." The negroes on the coaft of Guinea, dread their deities as tyrants and oppreffors: having no conception of a good deity, they attribute the few bleffings they receive, to the foil, to the rivers, to the trees, and to the plants. The Lithuanians continued Pagans down to the fourteenth century; and worshipped in gloomy woods, where their deities were held to refide. Their worship probably was prompted by fear, which is allied to gloominefs. The people of Kamfkatka acknowledge to this day many malevolent deities, having little or no notion of a good deity. They believe the air, the water, the mountains, and the woods, to be inhabited by malevolent fpirits, whom they fear and worfhip. The favages of Guiana afcribe to the devil even their most common difeases; nor do they ever think of anotherremedy, but to apply to a forcerer to drive him away. Such negroes as believe in the devil, paint his images white. Befide the Efquimaux, there are many tribes in the extenfive country of Labrador, who believe the Deity to be malevolent, and worfhip him out of fear. When they eat, they throw a piece of flesh into the fire as an offering to him; and when they go to fea in a canoe, they throw fomething on the shore to render him propitious. Sometimes, in a capricious fit, they go out with guns and hatchets to kill him; and on their return boaft that they have done fo. Conviction of fuperior beings, who, like men, are of a mixed nature, fometimes doing good, fometimes mischief, constitutes the second stage. This came to to be the system of theology in Greece. The introduction of writing among the Greeks while they were little better than favages, produced a compound of character and manners, that has not a parallel. in any other nation. They were acute in fcience, fkilful in fine arts, extremely deficient in morals, grofs beyond conception in theology, and fuperftitious to a degree of folly; a strange jumble of exquifite fense and abfurd nonfenfe. They held their gods to resemble men in their external figure, and to be corporeal. In the 21ft book of the Iliad, Minerva with a huge stone beats Mars to the ground, whose monstrous body covered feven broad acres. As corporeal beings, they were fuppofed to require the nourishment of meat, drink, and fleep. Homer mentions more than once the inviting of gods to a feast: and Paufanias reports, that in the temple of Bacchus at Athens, there were figures of clay, reprefenting a feast given by Amphyction to Bacchus and other deities. The inhabitants of the island Java are not fo grofs in their conceptions, as to think that the gods eat the offerings prefented to them but it is their opinion, that that a deity brings his mouth near the offering, fucks out all its favour, and leaves it taftelefs like water *. The Grecian gods, as defcribed by Homer, drefs, bathe, and anoint, like mortals. Venus, after being detected by her husband in the embraces of Mars, retires to Paphos, Where to the pow'r an hundred altars rise, blooms. Juno's dress is most poetically described, Iliad, book 14. It was also univerfally believed, that the gods were fond of women, and had many children by them. The ancient Germans thought more fenfibly, that the gods were too high to refemble men in any degree, or to be confined within the walls of a temple. The Greeks feem to have thought, that the gods did not much exceed themfelves in *All Greek writers, and thofe in their neighbourhood, form the world out of a chaos. They had no fuch exalted notion of a deity as to believe, that he could make the world out of nothing. knowledge. knowledge. When Agefilaus journeyed with his private retinue, he usually lodged in a temple; making the gods witneffes, fays Plutarch, of his moft fecret actions. The Greeks thought, that a god, like a man, might know what paffed within his own houfe; without knowing any thing "If it be true,' paffing at a distance. fays Ariftotle, (Rhetoric, book 2.) "that even the gods do not know every thing, there is littlę reafon to expect great "knowledge among men.' Agamemnon in Efchylus, putting off his travelling habit and dreffing himself in fplendid purple, is afraid of being feen and envied by fome jealous god. We learn from Seneca, that people ftrove for the feat next to the image of the deity, that their prayers might be the better heard. But what we have chiefly to remark upon this head, is, that the Grecian gods were, like men, held capable of doing both good and ill. Jupiter, their highest deity, was a ravisher of women, and a notorious adulterer. In the fecond book of the Iliad, he fends a lying dream to deceive Agamemnon. Mars feduces Venus by 2 bribes |
