INTRODUCTION. 55 



the characters of those two orders of divinities, and form various 

 systems of religion, which, though warped by a thousand particu- 

 lar circumstances, gave no small indications of their first texture 

 and original materials. For, in general, the gods of the ancients 

 gave abundant proof of human infirmity. They were subject to 

 all the passions of men ; they partook even of their partial affec- 

 tions ; and, in many instances, discovered their preference of one 

 race or nation to all others. They did not eat and drink the same 

 substances with men ; but they lived on nectar and ambrosia : they 

 had a particular pleasure in smelling the steam of the sacrifices ; and 

 they made love with an ardour unknown in northern climates. The 

 rites by which they were wqrshipped naturally resulted from their 

 character. The most enlightened among the Greeks entertained 

 nearly the same notions of gods and religion as those that are to be 

 met with in the poems of Hesiod and Homer ; and Anaxagoras, 

 who flourished 430 years before Christ, was the first, even in 

 Greece, that publicly announced the existence of one Creator and 

 Governor of the universe. 



It must be observed, however, that the religion of the ancients 

 was not much connected either with their private behaviour, or 

 with their political arrangements. If we except a few fanatical 

 societies, whose principles do not fall within our plan, the greater 

 part of mankind were extremely tolerant in their principles. They 

 had their own gods, who watched over them ; their neighbours, 

 they imagined, also had theirs : and there was room enough in the 

 universe for both to live together in good fellowship, without inter- 

 fering or jostling with each other. 



The introduction of Christianity, by inculcating the unity of Godj, 

 by announcing the purity of his character, and by explaining the 

 service he requires of men, produced a total alteration in the reli- 

 gious sentiments and belief of the civilized part of mankind, among- 

 whom it rapidly made its way by the sublimity of its doctrine and 

 precepts. It required not the aid of human power; it sustained 

 itself by the truth and wisdom by which it was characterised : but 

 in time it became corrupted by the ambition of the clergy, and the 

 introduction of worldly maxims, of maxims very inconsistent with 

 the precepts of its divine author. 



The management of whatever related to the church being natu- 

 rally conferred on those who had established it, first occasioned the 

 elevation and then the domination of the clergy, and the exorbitant 

 claims of the bishop of Rome over all the members of the Chris- 

 tian world. It is impossible to describe within our narrow limits 

 all the concomitant causes, some of which were extremely delicate, 

 by which this species of universal monarchy was established. The 

 bishops of Rome, by being removed from the controul of the Ro- 

 man emperors, then residing in Constantinople ; by borrowing, 

 with little variation, the religious ceremonies and rites established 

 among the heathen world, and otherwise working on the credu- 

 lous minds of the barbarians by whom that empire began to be dis- 

 membered ; and by availing themselves of every circumstance 

 which fortune threw in their way, slowly erected the fabric of their 

 antichristian power, at first an object of veneration, and afterwards 

 of terror, to all temporal princes. The causes of its happy disso- 

 lution are more palpable, and operated with greater activity. The 

 most efficacious were the invention of printing, the rapid improve- 



