§ 



^' nature ; we nifty as well imagine that men inhabited palaces 

 'y before huts and cottages," S^q. 



This reasoning would be perfectly just, if men had sprung 

 up from the earth like mushrooms, as Atheists suppose ; but 

 sipce such origination is evidently impossible, reason as well 

 as history compels us to believe that the human race owes its 

 existence to the will of the Supreme Being, and that the first 

 created pair received various instructions from the Author 

 of their existence, else they must have soon perished, not 

 being able, from want of experience, to discover even their 

 proper food. Among these instructions, the duties of gra- 

 titude, veneration, and worship, must have been impressed on 

 their minds, and consequently a sufficient knowledge of the 

 Being to whom these sentinxents were due. It cannot surely 

 be doubted that they connnunicated this knowledge to their 

 descendants, and consequently Moo.otbiej^m must have been 

 the primeval religion of mankind. 



This being the case, it must surely be a curious ajid inte- 

 resting subject of inquiry, to discover through what causes the 

 knowledge of this ira'portant truth was lost. What could 

 induce men almost universally to embrace, first the errors of 

 polytheism, then idolatry, and finally to give credit to fables 

 so glaringly absurd, that nothing but the most indubitable 

 testimony of all histories, both sacred and profane, and the 

 unshaken attachment afforded to many of them even at this 

 day in the East Indies, could oblige us to believe that the 

 iiinnan mind once was, ajid stillis capable of prostituting its 



asseiU 



