try sat brooding over the moral world. The Egyptians, 20 the fathers of philosophy, the Grecians, the inventors of the fine arts, the Romans, the conquerors of the universe, were all unfortunately celebrated for the perversion of religious worship, for the gross errors they admitted into their belief, and the indignities they offered 25 to the true religion. Minerals, vegetables, animals, the elements, became objects of adoration; even abstract visionary forms, such as fevers and distempers, received the honours of deification; and to the most infamous vices, and dissolute passions, altars were erected. The 30 world, which God had made to manifest his power seemed to have become a temple of idols, where every thing was god but God himself! The mystery of the crucifixion was the remedy the 35 Almighty ordained for this universal idolatry. He knew the mind of man, and knew that it was not by reasoning an error must be destroyed, which reasoning had not established. Idolatry prevailed by the suppression of reason, by suffering the senses to predominate, which are apt to clothe every thing with the qualities 40 with which they are affected. Men gave the Divinity their own figure, and attributed to him their vices and passions. Reasoning had no share in so brutal an er ror. It was a subversion of reason, a derilium, a phrensy. Argue with a phrenetic person, you do but the 45 more provoke him, and render the distemper incurable. Neither will reasoning cure the delirium of idolatry. What has learned antiquity gained by her elaborate discourses? her reasonings so artfully framed? Did Plato, with that eloquence which was styled divine, over50 throw one single altar where monstrous divinities were worshipped? Experience hath shown that the overthrow of idolatry could not be the work of reason alone. from committing to human wisdom the cure of such a malady, God completed its confusion by the mystery of 55 the cross. Idolatry (if rightly understood) took its rise from that profound self-attachment inherent in our nature. Thus it was that the Pagan mythology teemed with deities who were subject to human passions, weak Far nesses, and vices. When the mysterious cross display 60 ed to the world an agonizing Redeemer, incredulity exclaimed it was foolishness! But the darkning sun, nature convulsed, the dead arising from their graves, said it was wisdom! Bossuet. END. |