[ 5 1] 
fee himfelf expofed to the refentment of each deified vice. Thus 
polytheifm, in deftroying the ftability of virtue, deftroys her very 
effence. 
Tue fame thing may alfo be inferred by examining one of 
the fources from which the fyftem ef polytheifm has originated. 
And here it is neceffary to combat an affertion of Mr. Hume’s, 
that contains one of thofe fecret attacks on revealed religion, 
which are no further dangerous than as they come from an 
infidious foe. In his “ Natural Hiftory of Religion” he 
afferts and advances fpecious arguments to prove that “ poly- 
“ theifm was the primary religion of man.” But his affertion 
and his arguments are founded on this fuppofition, that the 
Mofaic account of man’s original produdtion is falfe—that the 
origin of all human fociety is not to be traced back to a fingle 
pair. The truth of this fuppofition we fhall not try upon the 
ground of revelation, but examine it merely by the light of reafon. 
It involves one of thefe two hypothefes—either that there has 
been a feries of generated beings actually infinite, or that the 
Deity at firft created a Joctety of men. The former is one of thofe 
old atheiftical hypothefes, which if at all difficult to be refuted, is 
only fa on account of its abfurdity and inherent contradictions, 
_ But the confideration of that is foreign from our prefent pur- 
pofe. As to the latter hypothefis, if it be received as a maxim 
that in the inanimate world Nature does nothing in vain, muft 
it not be equally true that in the animate world the opera- 
tions of the God of Nature are none of them in vain? And 
would it not have been operating in vain to have produced a 
multitude of human beings, by the immediate interpofition of 
CF 2) his 
