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power which wrought true miracles for the people of God; and the corresponding society of Heathens would communicate it to one another, and never forget it afterwards the re: port went down to their posterities; and nothing remained, but to make as many miracles as they could of their own, in order to maintain the credit of their false deities; and their universal practice is a demonstration of miracles that were true. Every boy that reads Livy, or Florus, or Homer, or Virgil, will see how universally miracles were admitted among the Heathens. What they were I care not: I am contented with knowing that there never was a shadow without a substance; and that there is not an Infidel upon earth who can speak sense upon this subject. How far Satan might sometimes interfere, to make Heathen prodigies real, I do not inquire now because the Infidel will not choose to come off that way. The supposi tion would be fatal: for then the Devil, who deluded Heathens, may delude him. There was a time when he deceived the world, by showing himself openly for God then showed himself openly; but the same end is answered

now

* Cadmus very likely brought a great deal of this knowlege into Greece.

now by hiding himself: though his works be tray him to Christians, and ever will, as ef fectually as if they saw him acting in person.

If the Bible describes or predicts the appear

ance of divine persons upon earth, say not the Heathens the same? We are stunned with the exploits of the sons of their Gods and Goddesses. Achilles, the hero of Homer, is like the HERO first predicted in the book of Genesis, vulnerable only in the heel. If we read that heavenly beings, are visible to some and not to others, we find the like in Homer, as when Minerva comes to Achilles from Heaven:

Οι φαινομένη, τῶν δ' ἀλλῶν ἔτις ὁρᾶτο.

She appears to him alone, while nobody else could see her. See Daniel, x. 7.

If we read of beasts speaking with human voice, we find the same in Virgil * :

pecudesque locutæ.

In short, there is scarcely a sign or a wonder recorded in the Bible, but we find something of the same sort in the history which the Heathens give of themselves, and their gods; even to the restoring the dead to life; it being told

of

Some of these things I noted long ago, in Letters from a Tutor to his Pupils.

of Jupiter, that he restored Pelops, who had been slaughtered by his father. It seems more remarkable that they should borrow the wonders of the sacred History, than that they should. use the same ceremonies in their religion: for, when they undertook to set up a religion against God, they found themselves baffled and discomfited in their first attempt; they had nothing to begin with, and so were under the necessity of taking such rites as they found, and changing the application of them to false objects, to make it answer their wicked purpose. Thus it came to pass, that although they abhorred the Jews for denying their Gods, they all used the same rites of divine worship: which is a prodigious fact; but we are so early accustomed to it, that it does not strike us.

But I think we may go a step farther: for, though it may seem strange to say it, yet learned men have thought, with good reason, that even the false objects which the Heathens worshipped were taken from Revelation; for God, being an invisible spirit, could never be known to men from the beginning of the world, but through the emblematic visible powers of nature; particularly by the power of fire, which attended his presence in Egypt, at the burning bush,

then

then in the Red Sea, and afterwards at Mount Horeb, when the law was delivered. All this while, the spirit of God, thus represented, was invisible; consequently an object of faith. This they lost, having their reasons for not retaining it in their minds, and took the visible fire of Nature for the true object, when it was nothing but the figure. Mr. Bryant, in his History of Mythology, shows abundantly, that fire was the first and great object of antient idolatry all over the world; and the fire of the natural world being the Sun, they made him the standing object of adoration, And Macrobius, a very learned Heathen, has a long chapter, in which he attempts (but overstrains the point) to reduce all the Gods of Heathenism to the Sun, which the Scripture itself uses as an emblem of HIM, in whom there is no darkness. So that, upon the whole, if we examine Heathenism, and turn it about on every side, it answers the purpose of my argument, and gives never-failing testimony to an original revelation, There was absolutely nothing original in Heathens, but only that rebellious wickedness, which turned every thing to a wrong use. They invented little; but abused every thing.

These sacrifices, which were originally of

fered

fered to God, they offered to impure, revengeful, cruel, beings, whom the Apostle calls devils; who were never content, in any part of the world, without human sacrifices. Wherever was Heathenism there was human sacrifice, which must have been derived from a knowlege, that man was to atone for man; not only the antient Molochians, but the more polished Greeks and Romans. Homer, at the death of Patroclus, and Virgil, at the funeral of Pallas. The act of Q. Curtius most probably proceeded from the same idea, that one man must perish for the redemption of others. Their objects, the elements, which were innocent as they stand in Scripture, were abominable and detestable, when taken for realities; and Mr. Bryant hath shown how the plagues of Egypt were generally aimed at the false objects of Heathen worship: but the author of the Book of Wisdom had told us the same long before: " for look for what things "they grudged, when they were punished, "that is, for them whom they thought to be "gods; now being punished in them, when "they saw it, they acknowleged him to be the "true God, whom they before denied to know, " and therefore came extreme damnation upon "them." Wisd. xii. 27.

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