INTRODUCTION. S3 



ney as might be required in making preparations for the voyage. 

 But Santangel, another friend and patron of Columbus, immediate- 

 ly engaged to advance the sum that was requisite, that the queen 

 might not be reduced to the necessity of having recourse to that 

 expedient. 



Columbus now set sail, anno 1492, with a fleet of three ships, 

 upon one of the most adventurous attempts ever undertaken by 

 man, and in the fate of which the inhabitants of two worlds were 

 interested. In this voyage he had a thousand difficulties to contend 

 with ; and his sailors, who were often discontented, at length began 

 to insist upon his return, threatening, in case of refusal, to throw 

 him overboard ; but the firmness of the commander, and the dis- 

 covery of land after a passage of 33 days, put an end to the commo- 

 tion. From the appearance of the natives, he found to his surprise 

 that this could not be the Indies he was in quest of, and that he had 

 accidentally discovered a new world ; of which the reader will find 

 a more circumstantial account in that part of the following work 

 which treats of America. 



Europe now began to emerge out of that darkness in which she 

 had been sunk since the subversion of the Roman empire. These 

 discoveries, fiom which such wealth was destined to flow to the 

 • y. commercial nations of Europe, were accompanied and sue- 

 1440 ceea "ed by others of unspeakable benefit to mankind. The 

 invention of printing, the revival of learning, arts, and sci- 

 ences, and, lastly, the happy reformation in religion, all distinguish 

 the 15th and 16th centuries as the first aera of modern history. It 

 was in these ages that the powers of Europe were formed into one 

 great political system, in which each took a station, wherein it has 

 since remained, with less variation than could have been expected 

 after the shocks occasioned by so many internal revolutions, and so 

 many foreign wars, of which we shall give some account, in the 

 history of each particular state, in the following work. 



PART III. 



OF THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF RELIGION. 



Deity is an awful object, and has ever roused the attention of 

 mankind ; but they, being incapable of elevating their ideas to all 

 the sublimity of his fierfections, have too often brought down his 

 fierfection* to the level of their own ideas. This is more particu- 

 larly true with regard to those nations whose religion had no other 

 foundation but the natural feelings, and more often the irregular 

 passions of the human heart, and who had received no light from 

 heaven respecting this important object. In deducing the history 

 of religion, therefore, we must make the same distinction which 

 we have hitherto observed in tracing the progress of arts, sciences, 

 and civilization among mankind. We must separate what is hu- 

 man from what is divine ; what had its origin from particular reve- 

 lations from what is the effect of general laws, and of the unassist- 

 ed operations of the human mind. 



