discerned in Egypt." It is thought that idolatry was not established by law in any part of that country, till Moses fell into disgrace at the court, when he first retired to his brethren in Goshen: about fifty years before the Israelites left Egypt.b

One of the first deviations from revealed truth, was the worship of the heavenly bodies. Babylon, as has been observed, is considered to be the mother of this kind of idolatry; for Egypt was not a nation when the sun began to be worshipped in Chaldea. Babylon infected Egypt, Assyria, Phoenicia, and they spread the moral contagion throughout the world. Then followed the worship of renowned ancestors, whose spirits they imagined had taken up their residence in the heavenly bodies. Into these two parts idolatrous worship may justly be

divided.'

Concerning the former of these, Job, who lived about A. M. 2600, says, "If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness; and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand: this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge; for I should have denied the God that is above." As to the latter, Euhemerus, in the account he wrote on the gods, shows that they were only men. There is also, to the same purpose, ample information in the Theogony of Hesiod, the works of Homer, and generally in the classic poets, which contain a narration of their birth, genealogies, and lives. Manilius affirms, that the poets, by their verses, have turned the whole heavens into fable. © Cicero, in his Tusculan Disputations, intimates, that the

a Vide Poli Synopsin in Gen. xlvi. 34.

b Cooke's Inquiry into the Patriarchal and Druidical Religion, Temples, &c.

• Astronomicon, lib. ii. v. 37.

whole heavens are filled with mankind; that if we search into ancient things, especially into what the Grecian authors have recorded, we may find that the very chief deities, the majorum gentium Dii, have gone from this earth to heaven; and that their sepulchres are shown in Greece, which they who are initiated into these mysteries ought to remember. St. Augustin and St. Cyprian mention, that Alexander the Great, when in Egypt, having been told by Leo, the distinguished priest of the sacred things in that country, that even the gods of the highest rank, Jupiter, Juno, Saturn, and the rest, were men, wrote to his mother, Olympias, acquainting her with the important secret, but at the same time requested her, after reading the contents, to burn the letter. a

Idolatry, for some time, was pure Sabianism, the worship of the heavenly bodies, free from the use of images. Eusebius, in his Evangelical Preparation, on the authority of undeniable testimonies, states, that "for a long time neither the ancient Egyptians, nor Phoenicians, nay, nor even the Greeks, had any images. He says, the first and most ancient men did not trouble themselves to build any temples, or make any images, because the art of painting and carving, and even building, was not then invented, neither was there any mention of those who were afterwards called gods, or heroes. They had then neither Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Apollo, Juno, Bacchus, nor any other male or female deity; a

Apud Augustin. de Civ. Dei, lib. viii. cap. 5.

"Pure Sabianism," says Faber, "appears to have been the most ancient idolatry; but in process of time deified mortals were supposed to be regents of the heavenly bodies, and were worshipped conjunctly with them. Ham, from his Egyptian name, 'X-□л, Ham-On, seems to have been adored in union with the sun, as Nimrod was elevated to the constellation of Orion."-Hora Mosaicæ, vol. i. p. 195. Cedreni Hist. comp. fol. 14.

great number of which were afterwards owned both by Greeks and barbarians; yea, there was no good or evil demon then worshipped, but only the stars which appear in the heavens."

Herodotus, speaking of the Persians, says, "The Persians had neither altars, nor temples, nor statues; they laughed at those who worshipped the gods in such a manner; they sacrificed on the tops of mountains to the King of Heaven, whom they called Jupiter; for they did not take their gods from among men, as the Greeks. They sacrificed to the sun, the moon, fire, water, and winds; to these only they sacrificed from the beginning."

a

Plutarch affirms, that King Numa forbade the Romans to represent God in the form of man or beast; nor was there any painted or graven image of a deity admitted among them for the space of the first hundred and sixty years; all which time their temples were free and pure from idols and images, which seemed too mean representations of God, to whom no access was allowed, but by a mind raised and elated by divine contemplation. b

Varro, cited by Augustine, assures us, that the ancient Romans, for more than one hundred and seventy years, worshipped their gods without images: if they had done so still, the gods might have been served with great purity; and he concludes, that those who first brought images into worship, took away the fear due to the deities, and led people into error.

с

Athenagorus says, that even among the Greeks, till the art of painting and statuary was found out, there was no mention of the images of the gods. Soon after

a Herodot. lib. i. cap. 131.

b Life of Numa, Engl. Edit. vol. 1. p. 24, 25.

• De Civitate Dei, lib. iv. cap. 31.

the images and statues of the gods were framed, we can relate the names of those workmen who made them. If they be gods, why are they not from the beginning? Why stood they in need to be framed by the art of man? Nay, to be sure, they are only earth, stones, and matter fashioned by curious art. a

Dr. Prideaux, speaking of the Persians, who imagined that intelligences had their residence in the sun, moon, and stars, says, " And therefore when they paid their devotions to any one of them, they directed their worship toward the planet, in which they supposed he dwelt. But these orbs, by their rising and setting, being as much under the horizon as above, they were at a loss how to address them in their absence. To remedy this, they had recourse to the invention of images, in which, after their consecration, they thought these intelligences, or inferior deities, to be as much present by their influence, as in the planets themselves, and that all addresses to them were made as effectually before the one, as before the other; and this was the beginning of image-worship among them. To these images were given the names of the planets they represented, which were the same by which they are still called. And hence it is, that we find Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, Mercury, Venus, and Diana, to be first ranked in the polytheism of the ancients; for they were their first gods. After this, a notion obtaining, that good men departed had a power with God also to mediate and intercede for them, they deified many of those whom they thought to be such; and hence the number of their gods increased in the idolatrous times of the world. This religion first began among the Chaldeans, to which their knowledge in

a Legatio pro Christianis, p. 16, 17. Edit. 1686.

(

astronomy helped to lead them. And from this it was, that Abraham separated himself when he came out of Chaldea. From the Chaldeans it spread itself over all the East, where the professors of it had the name of Sabians. From them it passed into Egypt, and from thence to the Grecians, who propagated it to all the Western nations of the world." a

It appears that the Jews, when they first turned to idolatry, following the example of the surrounding heathen nations, worshipped the sun, moon, and stars, without images, prostrating themselves before them, or their emblems of light and fire. The God of Israel, in prohibiting this, says, "Take ye, therefore, good heed, lest thou lift up thine eyes to heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and all the host of heaven, should be driven to worship them and serve them."

While sculpture was in its infancy, the images were made of coarse materials, such as potters' clay, and, after being burned like our earthen vessels, were painted with vermilion. Afterwards they used wood, being the easiest for carving. Hence trunks of trees were formed into gods. "Thus," says Isaiah, "the carpenter stretcheth out his rule; he marketh it out with a line; he fitteth with planes, and he marketh it with the compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man; that it may remain in the house." The Prophet proceeds, "He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the cypress and the oak, which he strengtheneth for himself among the trees of the forest: he planteth an ash, and the rain doth nourish it. Then shall it be for a man to burn: for he will take thereof, and warm himself; yea, he kindleth it, and baketh bread: yea, he

a

Connection, &c. Part i. p. 177-179. Octavo Edit.