had taken in war. This we find to have been the practice with Heathens*; who also paid tenths to their kings, for religious uses. Florus tells us, that the Romans sent the tenths of the spoils they had taken, after a ten years' siege, to Apollo Pythius. Lib. i. cap. 12.

As we read of many signal judgments in the Scriptures; so there was an universal opinion, that the Gods visited the sins of men, and had been known to have done it personally. But, instead of searching for particulars, I shall speak of one instance, which might stand for all the rest; and this is the destruction of the world by a flood. The testimony of Ovid is so well known, that it need not be repeated; but the fact is attested by the Greeks as well as the Latins. They relate, that the present race of wicked men are not the first that were upon earth; for that there were a former race, who all perished; and that the present race came from Deucalion, a man who survived the flood, by entering into an ark with his family, and all kinds of living creatures, none of which hurt him that this fact was annually commemorated at the temple of Juno, in Syria, a temple said

to

Josephus gives many examples from Heathens in his Antiquities.

Religious Worship of the Heathens. 261

to have been originally built in commemoration of the flood. All this may be found in Lucian's Treatise de Dea Syria, quoted by Grotius, lib. i. 16. Mr. Bryant has taken great pains to show, in his Analysis of Ancient Mythology, what foundation the Arkite ceremonies of the Heathens had in Divine Revelation. For this he has met with his due praise; but it is much to be regretted, that when he had so fair an opportunity, he did not also show, that other ceremonies of their religious worship had the same foundation, and bore their testimony to the same authority. I believe it may be said with truth that there never was a single rite in general use among Heathens which was not founded in Revelation *. Mr. Bryant would then have done what the learned Dr. Spencer ought to have done when he did exactly the contrary. He preposterously deduced the rites of the Hebrews from the rites of the Heathens; and so produced a work of learned appearance, and composed in elegant Latin, but disgraceful to Christian Divinity, dishonourable to the Church of England, and affording a very bad example to vain scholars who should succeed him. The Hebrew

s 3

And so far as their rites differed, they were corruption; when they offered unclean animals in sacrifice.

7

1

Hebrew rites, he contends, were derived from the Heathen rites. But this position laid him under an obligation which he did not foresee: for the Heathen religion, like that of the Hebrews, abounded also with miracles. Did the Hebrews derive their miracles also from the miracles of the Heathens? This one question, to my apprehension, makes nonsense of his whole scheme. The true Religion had its miracles. Its miracles were the credentials of its doctrines. Those who professed that religion believed and knew them to be true, because their eyes had seen them. This their Heathen enemies knew; and, resolving not to be behind them, overacted the part, and multiplied miracles to such a degree, that they became fulsome and ridiculous: and here we shall find the true reason why they so universally hated the nation of the Jews. When a man is a plagiary, he either hides the original out of which he borrows, or represents it as worthless and contemptible. When boys are taught to read Heathen historians, they find so much of this miracle-making, that they wonder not at it, But it is a wonderful thing; and they should stop to think about it: for how came Heathens to dream of such things as miracles? No man

could

could dream of a thunder-storm, unless he had heard one. The reason of an Infidel, in these days, tells him there can be no such thing as a miracle. But the man who says this, must give us a reason why they were so universally received among the Heathens. Dr. Middleton would reason upwards, from the legendary miracles of the Papists, to the Apostolical miracles of Christianity, and conclude them all legendary but we will reason down to them, and make the false prove the true; for the false would never have existed, but for the true, which made way for them.

Is any man so weak as to think, that base money came into use before true money? That the shadow was made first, and the substance afterwards? Ridiculous! Heathens knew that there had been true miracles wrought by the true God for his people; therefore they never questioned the reality of miracles--they knew too well-and feeling it a defect and disgrace to them, that they had no miracles of their own to support them, they fabricated them in such abundance, that the Heathen Celsus impudently argued, that the miracles of the Scripture were borrowed from the miracles of their mythology. But what can our poor mo

dern Infidel say? the weight of the evidence, profane and sacred, for the existence of miracles, is so great on both sides, that between them he is crushed to death: his scheme cannot last a moment. If the philosopher Hume's arguments against miracles had then been produced, they would have made a wretched figure; though Christians may be so bewitched as to listen to them, the Heathens themselves would have cast them out. This is a strange case, and it shows us that no man can rightly judge of the enemies of God, till he compares them with one another; and then he will see how senseless they are. Truth being one, the friends of God are alike in all ages: but error being various, and never able to fix its foot any where, produces nothing but inconsistent chaWhen all the kings west of Jordan, and all the Canaanites, heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of Jordan from before the children of Israel, until we were passed over, then their heart melted; neither was there spirit in them any more. Thus it was then; now, indeed, the time is remote, the thing is pronounced impossible, and the fact itself is denied: but Mr. Leslie's argument sets all that to rights. The Heathens of Canaan knew that there was a

racters.

power