displeasure of this divine being, you must be careful never to set
your bare foot upon the ground, nor spit into a fire, nor throw any
water upon it, even though it were consuming a whole city.[42] Who
can express the perfections of the Almighty? say the Mahometans.
Even the noblest of his works, if compared to him, are but dust and
rubbish. How much more must human conception fall short of his
infinite perfections? His smile and favour renders men for ever
happy; and to obtain it for your children, the best method is to cut
off from them, while infants, a little bit of skin, about half the
breadth of a farthing. Take two bits of cloth,[43] say the <Roman
catholics>, about an inch or an inch and a half square, join them by
the corners with two strings or pieces of tape about sixteen inches
long, throw this over your head, and make one of the bits of cloth
lie upon your breast, and the other upon your back, keeping them
next your skin: There is not a better secret for recommending
yourself to that infinite Being, who exists from eternity to
eternity.

     The G/ETES\, commonly called immortal, from their steady belief
of the soul's immortality, were genuine theists and unitarians. They
affirmed Z/AMOLXIS\,[44] their deity, to be the only true god; and
asserted the worship of all other nations to be addressed to mere
fictions and chimeras. But were their religious principles any more
refined, on account of these magnificent pretensions? Every fifth
year they sacrificed a human victim, whom they sent as a messenger
to their deity, in order to inform him of their wants and
necessities. And when it thundered, they were so provoked, that, in
order to return the defiance, they let fly arrows at him, and
declined not the combat as unequal. Such at least is the account,
which H/ERODOTUS\ gives of the theism of the immortal G/ETES\.[45]

     S/ECT\. VIII. <Flux and reflux of polytheism and theism>.

                                  

     It is remarkable, that the principles of religion have a kind
of flux and reflux in the human mind, and that men have a natural
tendency to rise from idolatry to theism, and to sink again from
theism into idolatry. The vulgar, that is, indeed, all mankind, a
few excepted, being ignorant and uninstructed, never elevate their
contemplation to the heavens, or penetrate by their disquisitions
into the secret structure of vegetable or animal bodies; so far as
to discover a supreme mind or original providence, which bestowed
order on every part of nature. They consider these admirable works
in a more confined and selfish view; and finding their own happiness
and misery to depend on the secret influence and unforeseen
concurrence of external objects, they regard; with perpetual
attention, the <unknown causes>, which govern all these natural
events, and distribute pleasure and pain, good and ill, by their
powerful, but silent, operation. The unknown causes are still
appealed to on every emergence; and in this general appearance or
confused image, are the perpetual objects of human hopes and fears,
wishes and apprehensions. By degrees, the active imagination of men,
uneasy in this abstract conception of objects, about which it is
incessantly employed, begins to render them more particular, and to
clothe them in shapes more suitable to its natural comprehension. It
represents them to be sensible, intelligent beings, like mankind;
actuated by love and hatred, and flexible by gifts and entreaties,
by prayers and sacrifices. Hence the origin of religion: And hence
the origin of idolatry or polytheism.

     But the same anxious concern for happiness, which begets the
idea of these invisible, intelligent powers, allows not mankind to
remain long in the first simple conception of them; as powerful, but
limited beings; masters of human fate, but slaves to destiny and the
course of nature. Men's exaggerated praises and compliments still
swell their idea upon them; and elevating their deities to the
utmost bounds of perfection, at last beget the attributes of unity
and infinity, simplicity and spirituality. Such refined ideas, being
somewhat disproportioned to vulgar comprehension, remain not long in
their original purity; but require to be supported by the notion of
inferior mediators or subordinate agents, which interpose between
mankind and their supreme deity. These demi-gods or middle beings,
partaking more of human nature, and being more familiar to us,
become the chief objects of devotion, and gradually recal that
idolatry, which had been formerly banished by the ardent prayers and
panegyrics of timorous and indigent mortals. But as these idolatrous
religions fall every day into grosser and more vulgar conceptions,
they at last destroy themselves, and, by the vile representations,
which they form of their deities, make the tide turn again towards
theism. But so great is the propensity, in this alternate revolution
of human sentiments, to return back to idolatry, that the utmost
precaution is not able effectually to prevent it. And of this, some
theists, particularly the J/EWS\ and M/AHOMETANS\, have been
sensible; as appears by their banishing all the arts of statuary and
painting, and not allowing the representations, even of human
figures, to be taken by marble or colours; lest the common infirmity
of mankind should thence produce idolatry. The feeble apprehensions
of men cannot be satisfied with conceiving their deity as a pure
spirit and perfect intelligence; and yet their natural terrors keep
them from imputing to him the least shadow of limitation and
imperfection. They fluctuate between these opposite sentiments. The
same infirmity still drags them downwards, from an omnipotent and
spiritual deity, to a limited and corporeal one, and from a
corporeal and limited deity to a statue or visible representation.
The same endeavour at elevation still pushes them upwards, from the
statue or material image to the invisible power; and from the
invisible power to an infinitely perfect deity, the creator and
sovereign of the universe.