was not then thought of. He is under the appointment and protection of a Deity; he wears the insignia of his power; and is seconded in a miraculous way by his interposition. The character is not given to him by halves. No Heathens were what we now call Low Churchmen: they carried things to such a height on the contrary part, that I wonder Infidels do not burn their books for teaching Tory principles, and bearing such testimony against themselves.

Now let any man ask himself the questionHow Heathens ever came to think of such a thing as a priest? a minister appointed by Heaven, to officiate between God and Man in holy things? I say in holy things; for this is the reason of the name both in Greek and Latin. 'Iepeùs is from 'Iepòs, sacred; and sacerdos in Latin from sacer. They never would, they never could, have thought of this, unless a priest had been first appointed by the true GOD. We go back to the times, when all the earth was of one religion from which times, the Heathens began to carry off what we find amongst them. The fact is in no other way to be accounted for. Did Nature ever invent a priest? The men of Nature, the Deists abhor the idea: they are gentlemen who can do every thing for themselves:

they

they even look upon a Bishop at this day, not as an object of reverence, but of scorn and mockery; and call his ministry juggling and conjuring. In bringing things to this pass, Infidels have acted very unfairly: and indeed no man who knows them would expect any honesty from them. They have taken advantage of the forms and fopperies of Popery; as if Christianity had been nothing till the Papists had spoilt it. What would Voltaire have done, if he could not have played on Popish abuses, to make the character of a priest ridiculous? But if he had lived in other times, and had argued against the Heathen priests as he did against the Christians, the Heathens would have put him to death perhaps they would have flayed him alive they would not have crowned him with roses, and set up his image in their temples. They were mad enough in many things; but not so mad as that. Such acts were reserved for the time when Christians should run mad.

The case is then plain concerning the origin of priesthood. It must have come either from God, or from Nature, or from Tradition. From Nature it could not come; not a Deist in the nation will pretend it. If it came from tradition, that tradition must have had some true

original;

original; and this is but another way of saying that it came from God.

What we say of priesthood, we must say of sacrifice they are relative terms: and one is nothing without the other: for in the one we have the minister, and in the other the ministry. And here we shall ask the same question as before. Did Nature think of sacrifice as

a duty? Never. She pronounces it to be

folly.

Stultitia est.

moritur cur victima pro te?

Is it possible for reason to conclude, that the Creator can be pleased with the destruction of his creatures? Can a guilty person become less guilty by adding one offence to another? Here some consideration must be admitted, which does violence to natural reason: and this is, the doctrine of man's fall into a sinful state: for without this the whole is an absurdity: it is an effect without a cause. To suppose sacrifice is

to suppose sin and the heathen practice bears universal testimony to it: so that our Infidels have another reason for burning their heathen books. I grant that, when the Heathens themselves reasoned about it, they said many foolish things; nevertheless, the fact is what I insist

upon.

upon. Some of them thought thar animals were offered in sacrifice on a principle of revenge, because they did mischief. This might be a reason for killing them, but no reason for offering them to God by a religious act. The question still recurs, how came they to imagine that this could be an act of devotion, acceptable to God? Is the Creator revengeful, because we are so? Is he spiteful to poor creatures for being such as he made them? Yet in this foolish manner did some of them argue, when they had lost the primary intention: they then thought this to be the original :

--Prima putatur

Hostia sus meruisse mori, quia semina pando
Eruerit rostro, spemque interceperit anni.
OVID, lib. xv.

But then they perceived, that not the most hurtful, but the most harmless creatures were chiefly condemned to this use; which, being contrary to the other practice, makes it senseless and absurd.

Victima labe carens, et præstantissima formâ, (Nam placuisse nocet).

This reason is in point against the other: for here the victim is to be the most perfect of an harmless kind :

Quid meruere boves? animal sine fraude dolisque :Quid meruistis oves, placidum pecus, &c,

When people talk and give reasons in ignorance, they are sure to betray themselves by talking inconsistently. The latter distinction, of which we speak, is agreeable to the Divine Law, and leads to the doctrine of atonement: a victim without spot or blemish was required, with great propriety. When Heathens offered unclean animals, such as dogs and swine, I am not clear whether they meant it as an affront to the Mosaic distinction, or whether they judged impure victims more acceptable to their impure deities. How deplorable does human reason appear, when it departs from the true God! departs from the true God into darkness, and then falls to giving its reasons! Here the wise man makes a worse figure than the idiot. The Christian, who looks with his eyes open into the regions of Heathenism, will often shake his head with pity, as a sober man when he looks into Bedlam. The more the Heathens were in the dark about this affair, so much the better for my plan: for, if they practised what they did not understand, it is evident, that the practice was not the result of any reasoning of their own, but that it was received from

authority.