came the mansion of deities; seven of whom had their respective planets, the others taking up with what quarter they could find; the general council of the gods was held in a large saloon, to which they went by the milky way; for men having council-chambers on earth, the gods, to be sure, should have one in the heavens. When the Titans, a kind of creatures between the gods and men, declared war, and not without some grounds against those deities, to recover part of their inheritance, (being on the father's, side the sons of Calum and Terra,) they only heaped two or three mountains one on the other, concluding, that would be full enough for them. to reduce the citadel of Olympus, together with the heavens, Neve foret terris securior arduus æther, This absurd system of physics was of prodigious antiquity; yet certain it is, that the Chaldeans had as just ideas of what is called the heavens as we ourselves. They placed the sun in the centre of our planetary world, and nearly at the same distance we have found it to be; and they held the revolution of the earth, and of all the planets round that body: this we are informed of by Aristarchus of Samos; and it is the true system of the world, since revived by Copernicus. But the philosophers, to be the more respected by sovereigns and people, or rather to avoid being persecuted, kept the secret to themselves. T The language of error is so familiar to men, that that we still give the name of heavens to our vapours, and to the space between the earth and moon: we say to go up to heaven, as we say the sun turns round, though we know it does not; probably we are the heaven to the moon, and every planet makes the neighbouring planet its heaven. Had Homer been asked to which heaven the soul of Sarpedo went, and where that of Hercules was, the poet would have been a little puzzled, and eluded the question by some harmonious verses. What certainty was there that the ærial soul of Hercules would have had a better time of it in Venus, or Saturn, than on our globe? it is not to be supposed that its residence was appointed in the sun; the place would have been too hot. After all, what did the ancients mean by the heavens? They knew nothing of the matter; they were perpetually bawling HEAVEN and EARTH, which is just as much as to cry infinitude and an atom. Properly speaking, there is no such thing as the heavens; there is a prodigious number of vast globes rolling in the void expanse, and our globe rolls like the others. The ancients thought that the way to the heavens was by ascent: no such thing; the celestial globes are sometimes above our horizon, and sometimes below: thus, supposing Venus was returning from Paphos to her planet after its setting, the goddess, relatively to our horizon, instead of going up went down; and in such a case we ought to say to go down to heaven. But the ancients were not so nice; their notions in every thing relating to natural philosophy were vague, uncertain, and contradictory. Immense volumes volumes have been written to know what their opinion was on many such questions; whereas five words would have done, "they never thought "of it." Here, however, we must except a few wise men; but they came late: few opened their minds freely, and those who did, the empyrics on earth took care to dispatch them to heaven the shortest way. A writer, I think his name is Pluche, has pretended to make Moses a great natural philosopher; another before him, in a place called Cartesius Mozaizans had reconciled Moses with Descartes. According to him, Moses first found out the vortices and the subtile matter; but it is well known that God meant Moses for a great legislator and a great prophet, and not for a professor of physics; he instructed the Jews in their duty, and not a word in philosophy. Calmet, who has compiled a vast deal, and never once reflected, talks of the system of the Hebrews; but so far was that rude people from having a system, that they had not so much as a geometryschool; the bare name was unknown to them, all they understood was brokerage and usury. In their books we meet with some vague incoherent ideas on the structure of the heavens, and such as shew them to have been a dull illiterate people. Their first heaven was the air, the second the firmament, to which the stars were fastened. This firmament was solid and of ice, and supported the upper waters, which, at the time of the deluge, made their way out of this reservoir, thro' gates, sluices, and cata racts. Over this firmament, or these upper waters, was was the third heaven or the EMPYREUM, to which St. Paul was caught up. The firmament was a kind of demi-arch round the earth. They little thought of the sun moving round a globe, whose form they were ignorant of. When it got to the west, it had some unknown path for returning to the east; and as to its not being seen, Baron Feneste accounts for that, by saying it came back in the night. Farther, these whimsical ideas the Hebrews had borrowed from other nations, of whom, except the Chaldean school, the greater part looked on the heavens as solid; the earth was fixed and immoveable, and by a third longer from east to west than from south to north, whence are derived our geographical terms longitude: and latitude. This opinion, it is evident, admitted no antipodes; accordingly, St. Austin calls the notion of antipodes an absurdity; and Lactantius flatly says, "Are there any so foolish as to be "lieve there are men whose head is lower than "their feet?" " St. Chrysostom, in his fourteenth homily, calls out, "Where are they who say the heavens "are moveable, and their form round?" Lactantius again says, b. ii. of his Institutions, "I could prove to you by a multitude of "arguments, that it is impossible the heavens "should encompass the earth." The author of Spectacle de la Nature is wel come to tell the chevalier over and over, that Lactantius and Chrysostom were eminent philo sophers; still it will be answered that they were great saints, which they may be without any acquaintance with astronomy. We believe them to to be in heaven, but own that in what part of the heavens they are we know not. 5 HELL. WHEN men came to live in society, they could not but perceive, that many evil doers. escaped the severity of the laws: these could affect only open crimes; so that a curb was wanting against clandestine guilt, and religion alone could be such a curb. The Persians, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians, and the Greeks, introduced a belief of punishments after this life; and of all ancient nations we are acquainted with, the Jews alone admitted only temporal punisha ments. It is ridiculous to believe, or to pretend to believe from some very obscure passages, that the ancient Jewish laws, their Leviticus, and their Decalogues correspond with the doc trine of future punishments; when the author of those laws says not a single word which bears any relation to that doctrine. One might justly say to the compiler of the Pentateuch: you are inconsistent with yourself, you have no more judgment than probity; you a legislator, as you stile yourself! How! you conscious of a tenet 30 coercive, so powerful, so necessary to people as that of hell, and yet not make it known expli citly, nor urge it? and though received among all the nations round about you, you leave so momentous a doctrine to be guessed at by some commentators, who are not to come into existence till four thousand years after your time, and will wrest and distort some of your words to find in them what you never said? Either you are an ignoramus, who don't know that this was the |