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chose, for the objects of their adoration, the sun, moon, and 

 planets, to which their philosophers thought proper to add 

 the elements,* for reasons that will presently be seen. The 

 Persians also, at first, confined their religious worship to the 

 sun and moon, to which they afterwards added fire, earth, 

 water, and the winds, but they erected no temples to them, 

 nor raised altars, nor represented them by statues. Neither 

 at first did any of the Polytheists, as Eusebius assures us ,f 

 that they imagined the planets actuated by distinct intel- 

 ligences, appears by Diodorus..]: The Cananeans certainly, 

 even so late as the days of Moses, had no temples, else 

 ]je would have commanded them to be detroyed, as he did 

 their altars, groves, and high places, Exod. xxxiv. 13, and 

 their images, Deuter. vii. 6. 



Fanciful and absurd as were these and other polytheistic 

 notions, it is possible that they were led to receive them, by 

 a misconception of some parts of the true antediluvian 

 tradition : for instance, by that in which it is related. Gen. i. 

 18, that the sun was to preside over the day, and the moon over 

 the night ; or as the Hebrew has it, to have dominion over 

 the day and the night : hence they might infer that domi- 

 nion implied intelligence. It is also said, Psalm xix. 5, that 

 God placed his tabernacle in the sun (so the Septuagint 

 translate it, and the Vulgate in the supplement to the ISth 

 psahn) : and elsewere it is said, that God dwells in light 

 inaccessible ; now such light is that of the sun. Their belief, 



also, 



* Euseb. p. 29. 30. t P. 29. 3C: % Lib. 2. § 30. 



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