Chap. VI. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 379 



That all arts, fciences, and philofophy, came orighially from E- 

 gypt, I have proved to the fatisfadtion, I hope, of my readers. 

 They were all veiy much cultivated there, and particularly philofo- 

 phy, which, as it contaii s the principles of all Iciences, may he fit- 

 ly called the fc'ience of fciences. And as they were fo religious a 

 people, it would have been very extraordinary if they had not ap- 

 plied their philofnphy to religion: But this they did; and according- 

 ly they had a philofophical religion as well as a popular *. Of their 

 popular religion I have already ijioken, and fhown, that it went to 

 Greece, and to o.her countries. But as to their philofophical reli- 

 gion, it was only :he religion of the philofophers in Egypt, and 

 Avas kept as a myftery from the reft of the people. It went, how- 

 ever, to Greece, but ftill in the Ihape of a myftery; for it was com- 

 municated to fome few of the learned Greeks who came to Egypt, 

 and they communicated it to a very few cholen men of their coun- 

 try, under the feal of inviolable fecrecy ; and the dodtrines of this re- 

 ligion made what they called the myf cries, greater and leifer. Of 

 thcfe myfteries Bifhop Warburton has given us a very full and ac- 

 curate account, (for which, 1 think, the learned world is much oblio-- 

 ed to him), in his lirft volume of the Divine Legation of Mofes. 

 They came to Greece from Egypt, as Dr Warburton tells us; and, 

 indeed, they could come from no other country : And they main- 

 tained, firft, the dodlrine of one God; then, an antecedent ftate of 

 jnan, in which he was much happier than in his prefent ftate, and 

 ■^yhich, I find, is alfo mentioned by Jamblichus, the Alexandrian 

 philofophcr, in his work De Myficriis f ; and likewife a future ftate 

 of rewards and punilhments : And to thofe who were mitiated into 

 the greater myftcries, who were very few, it was revealed, that the 

 Gods of the popular religion were mere mortal men. 



3 B 2 Thii 



* Page 165. and 373^of this vol. 

 ( Page 176. 



