SECTION I.

Of the origin and corruption of natural religion in general.

ERSONS who begin to think upon

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these subjects when they are arrived to years of maturity, and who find in themfelves a full perfuafion concerning the great truths of natural religion, concerning the being of God, the unity of his nature, and his moral character and government; as alfo concerning the rule of human duty, and the doctrine of a future ftate, do not fufficiently confider how they came by that knowledge; and thinking the whole system to be very rational and natural, they are apt to conclude that it must therefore have been very obvious, and that all the particulars of it could not but have been known to all mankind.

But, in fact, there is no man living whose knowledge of these subjects was not derived

VOL. I.

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from

from inftruction, and the information of others; and therefore there is no man living who, from his own sense of things and experience, can be deemed a competent judge of what the powers of his own nature are able to do in this cafe. For the folution of this important queftion, we must have recourse to history only, and see what mankind have in fact attained to in a variety of circumftances.

Now it appears, by the most careful investigation, that all the useful and practical knowledge of religion, of which we find any traces among the Eaftern nations and the Greeks, was, by their own confeffion, derived to them from their ancestors, in more early ages. Among the Greeks it was more particularly acknowledged, that their wifdom and religion came from the Barbarians, and especially thofe who were from the Eaft, many of whom arrived in Greece by the way of Thrace. It is well known to have been a long time before men pretended to reafon at all upon fubjects of morals or religion. The celebrated' wif

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dom of the East, and alfo that of the earlieft Greek philofophers, confifted in nothing else than in delivering the traditions of the antients.

It is another remarkable fact, that it is in the earlieft ages of the heathen world that we are to look for the pureft notions of religion among them; and that, as we defcend into the lower ages, we find religion growing more and more corrupt, even among the moft intelligent of the heathens, who arrived at great refinements of tafte, and made confiderable improvements in science. This was the cafe univerfally till the promulgation of chriftianity in the world.

History informs us that the worship of one God, without images, was in all nations prior to Polytheifm. Varro fays, exprefsly, that the Romans worshipped God without images for one hundred and feventy years. This was alfo the case with all the nations of the Eaft, with the Greeks, and even throughout this Western part of the world.

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We alfo find that the belief of future rewards and punishments was never questioned among the Greeks, till they began to reason upon the subject; when, rejecting the old traditions, and not finding fatisfactory evidence of any other kind, they came at length to disbelieve them. This fcepticism and infidelity was introduced by the philofophers, and was from them diffused through all ranks of men, both in Greece and Rome.

These remarkable facts certainly favour the fuppofition, that the most important doctrines of natural religion were communicated by divine revelation to the first rents of mankind.

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We even find the moft acute of modern unbelievers acknowledging the improbability that the doctrine of the divine unity, and others above-mentioned, fhould naturally have been the first religion of mankind. Bolingbroke fays that Polytheism and Idolatry have fo close a connection with the ideas and affections of rude and

ignorant

ignorant men, that one of them could not fail to be their firft religious principle, and the other their firft religious practice; and Mr. Hume, after difcuffing the matter very minutely, acknowledges, that the doctrine of one God is not naturally the religion of mankind.

The view of this writer is to make it probable that the rudiments of religious knowledge were acquired by mankind in the fame manner as the rudiments of other kinds of knowledge, and that fimilar advances were made in both; but the teftimony of history is uniformly and clearly against him. Indeed it cannot, furely, be fuppofed, that, according to his principles, the divine being should leave mankind under a neceffity of forming either no religion at all, or a falfe and dangerous one.

Is it not, therefore, more agreeable to our ideas of the wisdom and goodness of God, to suppose that, at the fame time that he inftructed the first parents of mankind how