people. There was much conflict, little certainty, ceaseless discord, no victory, rare conviction; and the more orthodox sophist who pretended to reverence the polytheism of his country, contributed as little to popular edification, as he who exchanged the credulity of superstition for the yet more flagrant credulity of the atheist, and impiously surrendered the world to the blind dominion of necessity or of chance.

It is, indeed, a fact which will scarcely admit of dispute, that the Greeks, in proportion as they advanced in politeness and erudition, became more corrupt and superstitious in their creed. They were so little satisfied with the number of the gods created by the fancy, or borrowed by the plagiarism, of their poets, that they were at all times ready to admit into the calendar of their pantheon the adopted divinities of the surrounding nations. Syria and Egypt, accordingly, augmented the celestial catalogue of the polytheist of Athens, of Sparta, and of Rome; and this infusion of foreign extravagance into the established religion of Greece, contributed to heighten the vices of the popular faith. There was no philosopher bold enough to oppose the progress of the torrent. The error and the mischief were sanctioned, instead of being repressed, by the laws. The Areopagus of Athens, the Ephori of Sparta, and a long list of statesmen and legislators, extending from an early period, to the age of the philosophic Julian, and the sage and imperial Antoninus, were equally zealous to lend their authority -to the idols of their temples, and to perpetuate the creed by which the popular mind was darkened and misled. The people, in whom the light of nature

had been almost extinguished, were consigned, apparently, to hopeless and irremediable ignorance; and it is not wonderful, under such a constitution of things, that the most absurd and mischievous persuasions on all the topics of religion, and the most ludicrous yet pernicious forms of idolatrous worship, should continue to prevail in, otherwise, the most civilized and gifted regions of the globe.

The priesthood, which should have endeavoured to instruct this ignorance, was either unable or unwilling to interpose. The priest, himself, was often as deeply tainted with the superstition of the times as the vulgar crowd; and the system to which he was attached, was rather to be sustained by his influence than impeached by his wisdom. But the interests of his office co-operated with the prejudices of his faith, to render him still more effectually the friend and the supporter of the established order of things. In proportion to the credulity of the people, he was to be reverenced and obeyed. The foundation of his authority was laid in the holy credulity of the multitude. He could not suffer a god to be displaced from his pedestal, a rite, however barbarous, to be omitted or reformed, or a customary sacrifice to the most contemptible of his deities to be witheld, without danger to the existence of his sacerdotal power. He was, therefore, by every effort of priestly policy, to preserve the fabric of superstition from alteration or decay; and this purpose was to be accomplished but by confirming the idolatry of the popular faith, and by strengthening those chains of religious slavery, which, for so many ages of consecrated ignorance,

* Tuscul. Disput. lib, iii. c. 1.

had been imposed on the understanding or the simplicity of the people.

This design of the priest had nothing to apprehend from the interference of the philosopher. The philosopher was heard only within the walls of his school, and his scepticism was as harmless, as his systems, generally, were extravagant and incomprehensible. The theories, therefore, which he framed, left untouched the altar, the statue, the temple, and the oblation. The prescriptive belief of the multitude remained unquestioned and undisturbed; and the national veneration continued to embrace a mythology which had been framed or adopted in times of anarchy and confusion, and of which the deities were often as contradictory in their passions. and their views, as they were execrable in their licentiousnes and their crimes.

Under this system the inferior orders of men were considered, not as worthy of instruction, but as demanding the restraints of religious despotism. Could the gross multitude, it was indignantly asked, be rendered holy and good by philosophy and by reason? Could the violence of their passions be governed by the cold precepts of scholastic wisdom, or the refined arguments of scholastic subtilty? Could a religion reach their hearts, which rejected the thunders of Jupiter, the ægis of Minerva, the trident of Neptune, the snakes of the Furies, or the ivy-bound spears of the grape-loving Bacchus?-The philosopher, the legislator, and the priest, agreed in the answer; and the admitted incapacity of the mass of men for better institutions, was considered as a justification of the superstitious ignorance to which they had been prescriptively and contemptuously assigned *.

Strabo. lib. i. p. 36.

The whole of this superstition was well calculated to accomplish the purpose for which it seems to have been framed. Designed, not to enlighten, but to govern and to occupy, the crowd, it abounds with solemn rites and licentious observances; the first inspiring the votary with awe, the last engaging and conciliating him by pleasure, and neither of them instructing or elevating his heart. Sometimes the shrines were to be covered with fruits and flowers, and the prayer was to ascend to deities of laughter and of frolic; and splendid festivals, and joyous ceremonies, intermingled with the allurements of dance and song, of beauty and of love, were to kindle and to gratify the passions of the worshipper, and not rarely to terminate in scenes of debauch too gross to be described *. But, when the more terrific gods were to be appeased, and the people were to be impressed with superstitious fears, a machinery wholly different was employed. The altars were stained with blood; hecatombs were slain; midnight sacrifices were offered in the gloom and retirement of the cavern; the victim of desecration †, which, like the scape-goat of the Jews, was to bear the sins of the nation, was driven forth to perish under a public curse; and human oblations were to excite and attest the fanaticism of terror. In a religion of such a structure we can discern little but the extravagancies of a wild and undisciplined fancy, or the artifices of a corrupt and corrupting policy. The passions of men were appealed to, not their reason. All was delusion, and the delusion was embraced as essen

*Strabo. lib. viii. p. 581; lib. xii. p. 837.

A man, or a woman, and sometimes both, as the emergency of circumstances required.

Y

tial and indisputable truth. The progress of science and philosophy had not the slightest influence on a creed which was nothing more than a system of falsehood and contradiction; and the very people, who looked down upon the rest of mankind as devoted and irreclaimable barbarians, retained, at their proudest period, a religion not less gross nor less pernicious than that of the most ignorant and savage nations.

Under these circumstances, where was the poor man to look for instruction! The philosopher himself admitted, that, in this world of darkness, he could discover nothing but phantoms and shades; that the most common of all things were utterly beyond his comprehension, and that his best judgment was, in the highest degree, fallible and frail *. This admission, as far as it referred to religious topics, we know to be true; and it may enable us to judge what must have been the comparative darkness in which the inferior classes of the people were involved. They had no teachers but teachers of error. They had no religion but a religion of fraud and fallacy. They had no priesthood inclined to free them from the chains of superstition in which they grovelled. They had no disposition to question the authority of their creed, or to pass beyond the narrow circle assigned to their understanding by a corrupt and implicit faith. What was the result history has informed us. They worshipped any thing, and every thing. At one moment they laughed at their gods, at the next adored them. The vices of their Olympus were brought upon the stage for their sport, but the objects of their merriment continued to be suppli

Plato. Repub. lib. vii. In Init. Aristot. Metaphys. lib. vii. c. 1. Marc. Antonin. lib. v. 10.