1

the Dictates of Inspiration, believing that (a) a Divine Sentence was in the Lips of their Kings, and that their Mouths tranfgreffed not in the Appointments which they made them; and this they readily went into, not being artfully betrayed by Kings into a Belief of Revelation, but believing them to be inspired, from the universal Knowledge which the World was then full of, that God had revealed to their several Ancestors and Heads of Families, in what way and manner they should worship him. If Reason only had been the first Guide in Matters of Religion, Rulers would neither have thought of, nor have wanted the Pretence of Revelation, to give Credit to their Institutions; whereas on the other hand, Revelation being generally esteemed in all Nations to be the only true Foundation of Religion; Kings and Rulers, when they thought fit to add Inventions of their own to the Religion of their Ancestors, were obliged to make use of that Disposition, which they knew their People to have, to receive what came recommended to them under the Name of a Revelation. But to proceed to the Second Query: If there was no Revelation made to the

Men of the first Ages, how came the Knowledge and Worship of God so earJy into the World? Perhaps some will answer, according to Lord (a) Herbert, From innate Principles: If they do so, I must refer them to what our ingenious Countryman Mr. Locke has offered upon that Subject. The only way that Reafon can teach Men to know God, must be from confidering his Works; and if fo, his Works must be first known and confidered, before they can teach Men to know the Author of them. It seems to be but a wild Fancy, that Man was at first raised up in this World, and left intirely to himself, to find out by his own natural Powers and Faculties what was to be his Duty and his Business in it. If we could imagine the first Men brought into the World in this manner, we muft, with Diodorus Siculus, conceive them for many Ages to be but very poor and forry Creatures. The invisible things of God are indeed to be understood by the things that are made, but Men in this State would for many Generations be confidering the things of the World in lower Views, in order to provide themselves the Conveniences of Life from them, before they would reflect upon them in such a manner as should awaken up in their Minds any Thoughts of a God: And when they should come to confider Things in such a Light as to discover by them that there was a God, yet how long must it be before they can be imagined to have arrived at fuch a thorough Knowledge of the Things of the World, as to have just and true Notions of him? We fee in Fact, that when Men first began to speculate and reason about the Things of the World, they reafoned and speculated very wrong. In Egypt, in Chaldea, in Perfia, and in all other Countries, false and ill-grounded Notions of the Things which God had made, induced them to worship the Creatures instead of the Creator, and that at Times when other Perfons who had less Philofophy, were Profeffors of a truer Theology. The Defcendents of Abraham were true Worshippers of the God of Heaven, when other Nations, whose great and wife Men pretended to confider and reafon about the Works of the Creation, did in no wife rightly apprehend or acknowledge the Workmaster; but deemed either Fire, or Wind, or the fwift Air, or the Circle of the Stars, or the violent Water, or the Lights of Heaven to be the Gods which govern the World (a),

being delighted with their Beauty, or aStonished at their Power, they took them for Gods. In a Word, if we look over all the Accounts we have of the feveral Nations of the Earth, and confider every thing that has been advanced by any or all the Philofophers; we can meet with nothing to induce us to think, that the first Religion of the World was introduced by the Ufe and Direction of mere Natural Reafon; but on the other hand, all Hiftory, both Sacred and Prophane, offers us various Arguments to prove, that God revealed to Men in the first Ages how he would be worshipped; but that, when Men, instead of adhering to what had been revealed, came to lean to their own Underftandings, and to fet up what they thought to be right, in the room of what God himself had directed, they loft and bewildered themselves in endless Errors.

This

I am sensible is a fubject that should be examined to the bottom, and I am perfuaded, if it were, the Result of the Enquiry would be this, that he that thinks to prove, that the World ever did in Fact by Wisdom know God (a), that any Nation up-. on Earth, or any Set of Men ever did, from the Principles of Reason only, without any Affistance from Revelation, find

i

(a) 1 Corinth. i. 21.

out

out the true Nature and the true Worship
of the Deity, must find out fome History
of the World entirely different from all
the Accounts which the present Sacred or
Prophane Writers do give us; or his Opi-
nion muft appear to be a meer Guess and
Conjecture of what is barely poffible, but
what all History affures us never was real-
ly done in the World.

The End of the First Volume.

INDEX.