mon policy or law.' (Strabo Geogr. lib. 16, c. 2.) And as to the Thracian savages Orpheus is said to have had to deal with, and whom he reduced to society by recommending to them Piety to the Gods by teaching them the ways of superstition." Yet this was not the case, according to the learned Bishop, with most of those with whom these lawgivers had to do. "And therefore if we would assign a cause of these pretences to Revelation as extensive as the fact, it must be the cause which we contend for here, it was made for the sake of religion alone, for many legislators were called upon by a willing people on the strength of this personal virtue and wisdom, and we find that where Religion was thoroughly settled there no inspiration was pretended to (Dracon, Solon), there it was pretermitted. For if any wanted inspiration it was Dracon's laws, but Ion and Triptolemus had already provided for that.

2. "As to aiming at perpetuating and rendering their institutions immutable, this entered not," says Warburton, "into the intention of the Greek legisla tions, nor if it had could it be obtained by giving them a divine original. A system of immutable laws might indeed be the wild project of Eastern policy (Medes and Persians), but the Grecian lawgivers were too well acquainted with the nature of mankind, the genius of society and the ceaseless vicissitude of human Things, ever to conceive a project so absurd, so ridiculous a design. Besides, the Egyptian legislation from which they borrowed all their civil Wisdom went upon very different principles. It directed public laws to be occasionally accommodated to the variety of Times, Places and Manners. But had they aimed at perpetuity, the belief of a divine imposition would not have served the purpose. For it never entered the heads of that

ancient people that civil institutions became irrevocable by their issuing from the mouth of a God, or that the divinity of the sanction altered the mutability of their nature. The honor of this discovery is due to certain modern writers who have found out that divine authority reduces all its commands to one and the same species. Here we have employed these false revelations, wicked instruments as they are and wickedly as they have been abused, to terrify true believers, to evidence the high probability of God's having actually given a revelation to Mankind. For if such exists it must have a characteristic mark, and this mark must be our guide. Now the genius of all ancient religions, notwithstanding their pretence to originality, and their actual independence, was so perfectly harmonious as to the Object, Subject, and End of all religious worship, that we must needs conclude them all to be false, or all to be true. Now the primary mark of true Revelation was its asserting to come from the first Cause of all Things, and condemning every other religion for an imposture."

And, "Not one of all that numerous rabble of Revelations ever pretended to come from the Frst Cause, or taught the worship of the One God in their public administrations. Dr. Prideaux, in his excellent history, has indeed told us a very interesting Story of Zoroaster; whom of an early lawgiver of the Bactrians, he hath made a false prophet of the Persians, and the preacher of One God in the public religion; which doctrine however this learned man supposes to be stolen from the Jews. But the truth is that the whole is a pure fable, contradicts all learned antiquity, and is supported only by the ignorant and romantic relations of late Persian writers under the califes, who make Zoroaster contemporary with Darius Hystaspes, and servant to

one of the Jewish prophets, and even say he was Abraham, nay stick not to make him one of the builders of Babel. It may be wondered how such crude imaginations of over-zealous men should ever be thought serviceable to Revelation, when they may be so easily turned against it, for all falsehood is naturally of the party with infidelity. I have long indeed looked when some minute philosopher would settle in this corrupted place. And, just as I thought, one of these idle, teaz ing things hath lately given it the infidel taint, having grounded upon this good old man's afternoon dream, with Hyde at his elbow, I can't tell what foolery of the Jews receiving in the time of their captivity juster notions of God and His Providence from the followers of Zoroaster." Warburton therefore sides with Eusebius in this controversy, "for, to the Hebrew people alone was reserved the honor of being initiated into the knowledge of God the Creator and of being instructed in the practice of true piety towards Him." This knowledge of the true God or of One God, the Bishop admits was taught in the mysteries of the Heathens to a few, whilst with the Hebrew it constituted the general worship. He reminds the reader of the remark of Eusebius that tallies with this view of his, respecting the mystery under which the Heathen concealed or hid the existence of One God. Eusebius, opposing this case of the Jews to the Pagans, where a small select number only was initiated into the knowledge of the Creator, expressly points out the difference. The words of Isaiah when foretelling the conquests of Cyrus are also explained by the Bishop in that sense, when announcing the exaltation of the Persian empire the prophet apostrophizes the God of Israel in this manner: "Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God, of Israel the Saviour." This was the Deus absconditus.

The Oracles of Apollo, quoted by Eusebius from Porphyry (Præp. Evang. 1. ix. c. x.), Warburton interprets in his sense, and says they seem not to have been rightly understood by the ancient writers. The first relates to the Mysteries in which the initiated can alone come to know God. "The way to the knowledge of the Divine Nature is extremely rugged, and of difficult Ascent. The entrance is secured by brazen gates, opening to the adventurer, and the roads to be passed through impossible to be described. These to the vast benefit of mankind were first marked out by the Egyptians." The second oracle is as follows: "True Wisdom was the lot only of the Chaldeans and Hebrews, who worship the Governor of the world, the self-existent Deity, with pure and holy rites." Marsham, says Warburton, supposing after Eusebius, that the same thing was spoken of in both the oracles, here exclaims, Certè nulla est controversia quin ati uovaozias, de unius regimine sive de unico Deo, reverens fuerit et rectissima Ebræorum, non item recta Egyptiorum existimatio; and again, verum Apollo parum sibi constans (Canon chron. p 155, 6 ed.) because in the one oracle the Egyptians are said to be the first, and in the other, the Chaldeans and Hebrews the only people who knew the true God. Now, Warburton asserts that the oracles were on the contrary very consistent as treating of different things, in the first of the knowledge of the true God, and in the second of His public worship. This he considers to be apparent by the different terms in which the oracles are delivered the Hebrews, whom the oracle, by another name calls Chaldeans, were, he says, well known to be the only people who publicly worshipped the true God. "But the knowledge of Him being likewise taught, though to a few, all over the Gentile World and VOL. II.-3

χιας,

:

only in the Mysteries, and Mysteries coming, as we have shown, originally from Egypt, the oracle says that the Egyptians first taught men the knowledge of the Divine nature. Warburton therefore interprets with great appearance of being in the right the beginning of the first oracle as intimating and describing exactly the state of the initiated and the rites they underwent before coming to the participation of this knowledge, whilst the same oracle speaking of the knowledge that the Hebrews had of God, uses a very different language evidently relating to his public worship as selfexistent God (σεβαζομθροι Θεον αγνως).

The mark on which Warburton particularly insists as distinguishing the Mosaic revelation from all others is the relation Moses established with the First Su

preme Being. "There is nothing more amazing in all pagan antiquity than that amidst their endless revelations not one should pretend to come from the First Cause of all things." He says that it was the difficulty of accounting for so extraordinary a circumstance that caused the ancient fathers of the Church to recur so generally to the agency of the Devil. Warburton, in order to obviate all objections, asserts that those who pretended to inspirations from Jupiter never considered him in the sense of the creator of all things, but as the local tutelary God, such as the Jupiter of Creta, or of Libya, or Jupiter Olympian, or Capitolinus at Rome; and that those who pretended to the best system of religion meant thereby not simply the best of all, but the best for their own community. And the Fathers conceived that the admitting of the Evil Spirit as suffering his agents to pretend inspiration from the First Cause might greatly endanger the cause of Idolatry, because the power of God was virtually admitted by that proceeding.