to our view. It shall now be my task to supply to the world this singular desideratum. It shall be my

task to shew that priestcraft in all ages and all nations has been the same; that its nature is one, and that nature essentially evil; that its object is self-gratification and self-aggrandizement; the means it uses the basest frauds, the most shameless delusions, practised on the popular mind for the acquisition of power; and that power once gained, the most fierce and bloody exercise of it, in order to render it at once awful and perpetual. I shall shew that nothing is so servilely mean in weakness, so daring in assumption, so arrogant in command,— earth, heaven, the very throne and existence of God himself being used but as the tools of its designs, and appealed to with horrible impudence in the most shameless of its lies. That, professing itself merciful, nothing on this earth, which is by no means wanting in scenes of terror, has ever exhibited itself in shapes of equal cruelty-cruelty, cold, selfish, and impasable; that, claiming sanctity as its peculiar attribute, nothing has been so grossly debauched and licentious; that, assuming the mien of humility, nothing is so impiously proud, so offensively insolent; that, proclaiming to others the utter vanity of worldly goods, its cupidity is insatiable-of worldly honours, its ambition is boundless; that, affecting peace and purity, it has perpetrated the most savage wars, ay, in the very name of heaven, and spread far and wide the contagion of sensuality; that, in Europe, usurping the chair of knowledge, the office of promulgating the doctrines of a religion whose very nature overflows with freedom, and love, and liberal enlightenment, it has locked up the human mind for more than a thousand years in the dens of ignorance; mocked it with the vilest baubles, the most imbecile legends;

made it a prey to all the restless and savage passions of an uncultured and daily irritated soul; robbed it of the highest joys of earth or heaven-those of the exercise of a perfected intellect and a benevolent spirit; and finally, by its tyrannies, its childish puerilities, its inane pomps and most ludicrous dogmas, overwhelmed the middle ages with the horrors of an iron bigotry, and the modern world with the tenfold horrors of infidel heartlessness and the wars of atheism.

This is a mighty and an awful charge.

Alas! the

annals of all people are but too affluent in proofs of its justice. I shall prove this through the most popular histories, that the general reader may, if he please, easily refer to them, and be satisfied of the correctness of my statements. While I proceed, however, to draw these proofs from the most accessible works, I shall carefully war alone with the principle, not with individual men. The very worst systems have often involved in their blind intricacies the best of men: and in some of those which it will be my duty, as a man, to denounce, there have been, and there are at the present moment, numbers of sincere and excellent beings, who are an honour and a blessing to their

race.

CHAPTER II.

ORIGIN OF PAGANISM.

PRIESTCRAFT and kingcraft began at pretty much the same time, and that at an early age of the world, to exercise their baneful influence over it. Whether they existed, and if so, what they did, in the antediluvian world, we know not, and it concerns us little: but immediately after the flood, they became conspicuous. Nimrod is usually supposed to be the first monarch; the first man who, not satisfied with the mild patriarchal rule over his brethren, is believed to have collected armies, dispossessed the peaceful children of Shem of part of their territories by violence, and swayed all whom he could by the terrors of overwhelming force. Priestcraft, it is evident by many indubitable signs, was busily at work at the same moment. Certain common principles running through idolatrous worship in every known part of the globe, have convinced the most acute and industrious antiquarians, that every pagan worship in the world has the same origin; and that origin could have coincided only with some early period, when the whole human family was together in one place. This fact, now that countries, their habits and opinions, have been so extensively examined, would have led learned men of the present day, had not the Bible been in our possession, to the confident conclusion that mankind had, at first, but one source, and one place of abode: that their religious opinions

had been at that time uniform: and that, dispersing from that point of original residence, they had carried these opinions into all regions of the earth, where, through the progress of ages, they had received many modifications, been variously darkened and disfigured, but not to such an extent as to extinguish those great leading features which mark them as the offspring of one primeval parent. But the Bible not

only shews that such was the origin of the various human families, not only shews the time when they dwelt in one place, when and how they were thence dispersed, but also furnishes us with a certain key to the whole theory of universal paganism.

We see at once that every system of heathen mythology had its origin in the corruption of patriarchal worship before the dispersion at Babel. There the whole family of man was collected in the descendants of Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhat; and thence, at that time, they were scattered abroad by the hand of God over the world. Japhat colonized the whole of Europe; all those northern regions called Tartary and Siberia; and, in process of time, by the easy passage of Behring's Straits, the entire continent of America. His son Gomer seems clearly to have been the father of those who were originally called Gomerians; and by slight variations, were afterwards termed Comarians, Cimmerians, Cymbri, Cumbri, Cambri, and Umbri; and, in later years, Celts, Gauls, and Gaels. These extended themselves over the regions north of Armenia and Bactriana; thence over nearly all Europe, and first planted Britain and Ireland. Magog, Tubal, and Mesech, as we learn from Ezekiel, dwelt far to the north of Judea, and became the ancestors of the great Sclavonic or Sarmatian families; the name of Magog still existing in the appellations of Mogli, Monguls, and

Mongolians; those of Tubal and Mesech, in Tobolski, Moschici, and Moscow and Moscovites : Madai was father of the Medes, and Javan of the original inhabitants of Greece, where we may trace the names of his sons Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim, in Elis, Tarsus, Cittium, and Dodona. The posterity of Shem were confined to southern Asia; founding by his sons Elam, or Persia, Ashur, or Assyria, a province of Iran, or Great Assyrian empire of Nimrod, whose son Cush appears to have subdued these descendants of Shem. Arphaxad became the father of the Hebrews and other kindred nations; his descendant Peleg founded Babylonia; and Joktan, stretching far towards the east, probably became the father of the Hindoos. Ophir, one of the sons of Joktan, is often mentioned in Scripture as dwelling in a land of gold, to which voyages were made by ships issuing from the Red Sea, and sailing eastward; but Elam and Cush occupied the whole sea-coast of Persia, as far as the Indus. This, therefore, brings us to the great peninsular of Hindostan for the seat of Ophir. Lud, the fourth son of Shem, is presumed to be the founder of Lydia; and Aram, the fifth, the father of Mesopotamia and Syria.

Ham was at first mixed with Shem throughout southern Asia, and became the sole occupant of Africa. Of his sons, Cush became the founder of Iran, or Central Asia, the great Assyrian empire, and the progenitor of all those called Cushim, Cushas, Cuths, Goths, Scuths, Scyths, Scots, or Gauls. Mizraim peopled Egypt; Phut, the western frontier of Egypt, and thence passing west and south, spread over the greater part of Africa: and Canaan, it is well known, peopled the tract afterwards inhabited by the Israelites.

Thus, it is said, was the world peopled; and that