in shewing the weakness and folly of this pretence against the truth of the principles of Religion, shall be this,

I. To confider it in the way of Fact, whereby it will appear to be without any ground or foundation in point of History.

II. In the way of Reafon and argument, to shew the absurdity of such a supposition.

I. To confider it in the way of Fact, whereby it will appear, to be without any ground or foundation in point of history. They that pretend to give an account, how the generality of mankind came to be poffefs'd with so remarkable an opinion, as that of the Being of a God all at once, if it had no antecedent foundation in nature, nor were ever known among them before, should, one would think, in reafon be concerned, to affign fome time and place for fo extraordinary an event, to give it at least some colour of probability. For if there ever was a time, when all mankind was entirely without any notion of a God, or Providence, and had always before continued fo, but yet all at once, either by confent or compulsion, were brought to agree in the belief of his Being, fo great a revolu

tion could not easily have been forgotten, but that fome footsteps of it muft remain, and fome memorial of it be preferved in fome part of the world by fome means or other. It is indeed fuppofed to have been brought about before there was any learning or history, when people were all very rude and ignorant, and eafy to be impofed upon by their governors; but then those governors must at the fame time be supposed to have been men of very extraordinary parts and great fubtilty indeed, who could with fo great dexterity bring fuch a wonderful change to pafs, without being taken notice of; there must have been fuch a prodigious difproportion between the capacities of the governors and their people, as has never been known in any age or country fince. But not to infift too rigorously upon fuch fcruples, which yet must require a great degree of credulity to get over; let us confider, what pretence they have from antiquity for supposing such a fact; and though they cannot affign the exact time, when fuch a general belief firft began, yet at least they ought to pitch upon fome time antecedent to it, when there was no fuch belief, or else they ought not to blame us for thinking it to be as old as mankind.

It would indeed be unreasonable to expect,

that they should bring us any authentick written History, of a time which may be suppofed to have been fo long before writing was invented; but at least there fhould be fome traditional relations of it preferved in fome parts of the world, like the ftory of Deucalion's Deluge, which tradition fhould in time come to be taken notice of in history, as soon as history begins to appear. But now they can alledge nothing like this in the first beginnings of history, but the further we go backwards into antiquity, the stronger the tradition runs against this fuggeftion. We may indeed trace up fome particular kinds of Idolatry to their first original, and we may also come up to a time when Idols began to be worship'd instead of God; but to a time when men owned or believed no God at all we cannot come. We may go back, for instance, to the Deification of Hercules, or Bacchus, or the rest of those imaginary Deities, who were once mortal men, and whose worship therefore had a beginning from men; but the higher we go beyond this, the nearer we shall come to the original notion of the true God, the maker of heaven and earth.

And to this purpose, it is a very remarkable observation which Ariftotle makes concern

ing this

very kind of ancient tradition, ↳ That there are thefe Gods, fays he, and that the Deity contains (or encompaffes) all nature, are notions that have been delivered down by primitive and antient men, and left to pofterity wrapp'd up in the dress of Fable; but that other things have been fabulously added, to perfuade the multitude, and for the benefit of Law and publick utility. For thus they fay, for inftance, that these Gods are of human shape, and are like fome other animals, and divers other things confequent upon these opinions, or agreeable to them; from which if a man should separate, and take only that which was first or original, namely, That they thought Gods were the firft be

Ο Παραδέδος ἢ ὑπὸ το αρχαίων καὶ παλαίων ο μύθος χήματι καταλελειμμένα τοῖς ὕτερον, ὅτι Θεοί τέ εἰσιν ἔτοι, καὶ περιέχε τὸ Θείου Η όλων φύσιν, τὰ ἢ λοιπὰ μυθικῶς ἤδη προσήχθη προς - πειθώ ἳ πολλών και προς εἰς τὰς νόμος και το συμφέρον χρῆσιν· ἀνθρωποειδείς τε γδ τέτες, καὶ ἄλλων ζώων ομοίως τιτὶ λέγεσι, καὶ τέτοις ἕτερα ακόλεθα καὶ οαπλήσια τοῖς εἰρημθρίοις· ὧν ἔτις χωρίσας αὐτὸ λάβοι μόνον τὸ πρῶτον, ὅτι Θεὸς ᾤοντο τὰς πρώτας ἐσίας εἶναι, θείως ἂν εἰρήσθαι νομίσεις, καὶ κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς πολλάκις εύρημθύης εἰς τὸ διατὸν ἑκάσης καὶ τέχνης καὶ φιλοσοφίας, και πάλιν φθειρομορίων, καὶ ταύτας τας δόξας ἐκείνων, οἷον λείψανα περισσώς μέχρι τῷ ναῶ· ἡ μ εν πάτρια δόξα, και η * πρώτων ἐπὶ τοσότον ἡμῖν φανεροί μόνον. Arift. Metaphys. lib. Λ κεφ. η. in fine.

ings, he might well think it divinely spoken, and that perhaps every art or Science, being often found out as far as poffible, and loft again, thefe their opinions have been preferved, as reliques to this time. The opinion then of our forefathers, and that which comes from the first men, is only so far evident to us. This paffage deserves to be the more taken notice of, because Aristotle had as great an infight into the nature of human policy, as most men, and is as little fufpected of credulity, in matters of Religion; and in this place he makes as much allowance for human invention, as the cafe will bear; and yet plainly makes a great difference between the truth of things delivered, and that fabulous dress, in which it was conveyed down to pofterity; and likewise puts a manifest distinction, between the true original tradition, or belief of a Deity, and those other conceits, which were fuperadded to it by human invention, for fome publick convenience, or better governing the people, which might be altered and changed, in different ages and places, while the fundamental tradition continued the fame. He had before, in this Treatife, with a great deal of metaphyfical reasoning, affert

he

ed