ON MATTERS OF BELIEF, | - 



and the name of Jefus, what the necromancers and 

 the pretended theurgi of the heathens effected by the 

 aiHftance of the fpirits of hell. The chronicles and 

 legends of the four firft centuries to Conftantine the 

 great, fwarm with ftories of exorcifms, refurreclions of 

 the dead, apparitions of angels, devils, and wretched 

 fouls ; all is full of the marvellous, often ridiculoufly 

 incredible and abfurd, and performed by numberlefs. 

 holy monks and bifhops. Nature, during all this time, 

 if one twentieth part of thefe pretended facts were true, 

 muft have loll: all her properties, and have been funk 

 in a total antinomy and anarchy. The people necefhV 

 rily fell deeper and deeper, under fuch circumftances, 

 into a fuperilition difgraceful to human nature. The 

 old idle fancies of the heathen world were unnaturally 

 mixed with the pure maxims of chrifiianity, and pro- 

 duced the molt monfcrous phantoms that the imagina- 

 tion candevife; which were adopted without examination , 

 and fupported by the clergy (for rcafons very well known 

 both to them and to us) by every method they could 

 invent; nay, they even coined fonie of them into dog- 

 mas and articles of faith, which they fenced round, 

 againft every attempt of reafon, with the formidable 

 catalogue of Ernulphus's curfes. 



It would lead me too far out of my way, and is un- 

 fieceffary to my prefent deiign, to continue this hifto- 

 rical piclure, and only fummarily to mention the Iliad 

 of calamities, which, under fuch circumitances, partly 

 by the leagues and partly by the difputes between the 

 emperors and the clergy, were diftufed over a great 

 part of the globe of the earth. Though a really true 

 and impartial hiftorical difplay of this remarkable pe- 

 riod 



