we are apt to say, the spirit of love, the spirit of hatred, the spirit of pride, &c. &c. which is the same thing as if we said the demon of charity, the demon of hatred, &e. One of the dialogists, in Plutarch's Amatorius, asked a question that was not answered, viz. How came love to be deified? He might as well have asked, how came nine months of the year to be deified or realized into nine goddesses called Muses? How the other three months were realized into, charities or graces? How the hours, the smiles, the laughs, the jokes, the joys, &c. were all realized and deified, and supposed, even by our christian poets, to inhabit the isle of Cyprus, and to attend the goddess Venus in all her intrigues and marches.

St. Paul and St. John say that Christians will in the latter times, depart from the faith giving heed to the doctrines of demons, forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from meats, and worshipping idols of gold and silver and brass and stone and wood, which can neither see, nor hear, nor walk. Now it is certain that christians never worshipped evil spirits or devils. Therefore the demons, spoken of bere, are the angels and saints that are worshipped by christians; and consequently the word demon, even among the sacred writers, did not always signify an evil spirit or devil.

St. Epiphanius says, that St. Paul's prophecy, as aforesaid, was fulfilled upon the Collyridians inasmuch as by their offering a cake to the Virgin Mary, they gave heed to, and revived, the doctrine of worshipping demons. Now it is certain, that neither Epiphanius nor the Collyridians considered the virgin as an evil spirit or devil. Therefore it is incontestible, that the word daimones, daimonia, or demons, formerly signified not only evil spirits or devils, but also gods and goddesses deified men and women, &c,

*1 Tim. 4.

+

† Rev. 9.

In confirmation of what I have hitherto advanced, I shall show, by pointing out the origin and rise of idolatory, that it was not devils, but canonized or deified men and women, &c. that were worshipped by the heathens.

Adam and Eve, as we learn from Scripture, were no sooner created than endued with the gift of language; but while there were but few in the world, there was no immediate necessity for any kind of writing; Adam, therefore, and his posterity were left to discover the use of it by their own experience. According as the children of Adam began to multiply, the use of some kind of writing became necessary; the most compendious therefore, and the most natural was what they must have first hit upon: and certainly nothing more so than that which consists in an analogy of name or nature; hence the symbolic writing was invented. This was the only writing known in the world, until after the dispersion of the children of Noah. We find it in their several migrations all over the globe. There was no other in use in America when the Spaniards first landed there; for, it was in paint that advice of that invasion was sent to Montezuma, the emperor of Mexico. There are some countries still where no other is in use. The same, notwithstanding all our alphabets, is more or less in use among us to this day in our standards, flags, signs, paintings, carvings, &c.

In process of time, this symbolic writing was so improved, that it was fitted to all the purposes of religious and civil instruction, and government. At last the multiplicity of those characters or symbols and the arbitrary complication of them occasioned an endless perplexity. Here people began to reflect, that, as the different articulations of the voice are but few, if sound were embodied and painted as well as thought, it would remedy the

inconveniencies arising from the luxuriance of analogy. Hence the alphabetic writing was struck out, a scheme, indeed, more perfect, though less natural than the other. But according as this prevailed, the original meaning of that was forgotten.

As the ceremonial of religion is that which most affects the multitude, and therefore cannot be reformed without dangerous consequences, and as mankind are natuarally fond of mystical pageantry, the symbols were continued in the places of public worship as usual. The people, now ignorant of the primitive intention of those emblems of the sun, moon, and stars, men, women, &c. began, every one according to his own caprice and fancy, to form new systems and conjectures. At last they concluded that their adorations were primitively directed to the objects which the symbols immediately represented to the eye. It is natural then to think that the first symbol they misinterpreted was that of the sun which was the symbol of God, and the most distinguished of all. As they had their eyes fixed upon the symbol of the sun in their public acts of worship, and their minds upon the sun itself, forgetting that they ought to go farther, they ascribed all the great titles of God and directed their thanks, to that star of the day. God was no sooner thus confounded with his own work, but a door was opened to all the extravagances of human imagination. The second mistake they committed, was confounding a dead man with God and the sun, or rather supposing that some man or other must have been deified and translated into the sun, and there worshipped,For, as the symbol of the sun exhibited the figure, of a man's face, as it does to this day, they concluded that it imported what I have said. All the rest of the symbols took their turn and were

interpreted, in the same arbitrary manner. And as the symbols were multiplied and carried from one country to another, the persons supposed to have been deified were multiplied accordingly; for every country had an equal right to think it was some of their own ancestors, some of their kings and queens, heroes, and heroines, &c. that had been deified and translated into the places pointed to by the symbols respectively.

Nor does it make any thing against my assertion to say, that in the time of Abraham several of the eastern nations were infected with idolatry when, at the same time, the Egyptian king and his court and priests professed the religion of Noah ; for, it was the rabble or the multitude that first fell into idolatry. The priests and other men of sense overlooked the matter, for a series of time, either through fear or upon principles of policy. And, though they fell into it themselves at last, yet the notion of one supreme God was never utterly extinguished, as we find by their notion of Jupiter, and Deus optimas maximus, and by the notion that prevails even among the savage hottentots to this day. When the symbols and allegorical representations used for the purposes of religion, were no longer understood but by the priests, the former were called hieroglyphics, and the latter mysteries, where the primitive truths also were preserved for many ages, though lost, at last, in a sink of prostitution and corruption.

Thus an universal idolatry was introduced and supported under various pretences. Thus the heavens, the earth, and the whole universe, were peopled with deified men and women, good and evil spirits, genii, and other imaginary beings, struck out upon the mistaken meaning of the characters of the symbolic writing, and multiplied according to the various aspects and relations of

those characters. And thus the foundation was laid for the machinery, not only of the angels and saints that are worshipped in the church of Rome, but also of the fairies, hobgoblins, apparitions of 'horned and eloven footed spirits, little airy robbers, &c. that have no existence, but in the imaginations of the vulgar.

As to the other argument the Romanists allege, in their own justification, viz. the examples of some great men that are said in Scripture to have prayed to, and worshipped, angels and saints, I must observe.

1st. That there is a wide difference between honouring such as are present to our senses, and honouring such as are absent, the former is a civil honour or worship, the latter a religious one.

2d. That the Scripture, as I shall show hereafter abounds with allegories and figurative expressions. For instance, St. Paul says, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven, in earth, and under the earth. This is only a figurative expression. All that he meant by it was, that Jesus Christ was exalted so high that the whole universe must acknowledge him to be true God and true man; otherwise how could the beings in heaven and under the earth, bow or kneel, whereas they have neither heads, nor knees, nor body at all?

3d. That it was our Saviour that was called an angel by Malachy, Isaias and others. There are several passages in Moses where an angel is said to have appeared, spoke, &c. tho' it is evident from the context that it was God himself that appeared, spoke, &c. for instance, Exod. 3. 2. it is said that the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and yet it is said. in verse 4, 5, 6, &c. that it was God himself that appeared. The Romanists themselves say, that the