presents their sentiments.* endeavoured to put a fair gloss upon the most stupid idolatry, even when, through the prevailing light of the Gospel, many of the vulgar came to be sensible of the absurdity of it.+ By such pretences as these they : None of the Pagan philosophers were thought to have sublimer notions of the Divinity, than the Platonists and Pythagoreans, those of them especially who lived after the Christian revelation was published to the world, yet none were more strenuous assertors of the worship of inferior deities. And indeed the whole scheme and system of that philosophy tended to support and encourage it. They held that the supreme Being is so far above us, as not to be approached even in thought and that the highest class of gods next to the Supreme are so far removed from us, that there is no immediate communication between them and mankind: but that there are vast numbers of intermediate powers dwelling in the airy regions between the highest æther and our earth, by whom our desires and prayers are carried up to the gods, and to whom the management of things here below is committed; and that to them religious worship is to be paid. It is evident that these principles of Plato's school were favourable to the Pagan polytheism. They even represented the worshipping inferior deities as an honour done to the Supreme; and found fault with those who were for paying their adorations to the one supreme God, and to him only. "The great king "of the universe,” says that eminent philosopher, Plotinus, "shows his greatness chiefly by the multitude of gods. For "this is not the part of those who know the power of God to "contract the Divinity into one, rò ouseîña, eis ëv, but to ex *Intel. Syst. p. 228. Julian Orat. iv. cited by Cudworth. Epistle of Maximus Madaurensis, a noted Apud Augustin. Opera, tom. II. epist. 16. Intel. Syst. p. 515. See also the ‡ The Indian Bramins in Malabar have the same notions, which they make use of to justify the worship paid by them to a vast number of inferior deities See Narrative of the Danish Missionaries, part. 2d. p. 7. et seq. "pand or display it as he himself hath expanded it; who, re"maining, what he is, one, maketh many, all of whom depend ❝ upon him, and are by him, and from him."* And Onatus, the Pythagorean, in a passage preserved by Stobæus, asserts, that "there is not one only God, but one the greatest and "highest God: and that there are many other gods, differing "in power, but he reigneth over them all, as surpassing them "all in power, reason, and virtue." He adds, that "those "who maintain that there is only one God, are much mis"taken for they do not consider that the greatest dignity of "the divine super-eminence consists in ruling and governing "those who are like him, and in his being more excellent "than others, and superior to them." Thus ingenious have men been to devise plausible pretences for paying divine honours to the creatures. But how much nobler is the Scripture doctrine: which teaches us, that there are numberless myriads of holy and mighty angels, subject to the Supreme, but that we are not to adore them, but to join with them in adoring their and our supreme universal Lord. Maximus Tyrius, in the conclusion of his first dissertation, expresseth himself thus, "If you are too weak to contemplate the Father "and Maker of all things, it is sufficient for you at present "to behold the works, and to worship his progeny (rà exyova, "the things which proceed from him) which are many, and of "various kinds; not merely as many as the Boeotian poet "mentions; for there are not only thirty thousand gods, the 66 sons and friends of God, but their number is not to be com"prehended: and such in the heaven are the stars, in the "æther demons."+ Thus were the objects of worship mul * Ennead. II. lib. ix. cap. 9. † Apud Stob. Eclog. Physic. lib. i. cap. 3. p. 4. edit. Plant. Onatus seems to intimate that there were some in his time who held that there is only one God: where he either refers to the Jews, or to some among the Gentiles who joined with them in this. But whoever they were, he plainly charges it as an error; and in this he speaks the sense of the most eminent philosophers. Max. Tyr. Dissert. 1. p. 18. Edit. Oxon. 1677. VOL. I. tiplied by the philosophers themselves to an amazing degree:* whilst, at the same time, under pretence of the most exalted notions of the supreme Being, they declined speaking of him, or of the worship due to him, to the people. They alleged that the vulgar were unable to form any conception of an invisible Deity, and looked upon that to be nothing which they could not see or perceive by their senses; that, therefore, the worshipping the things of nature and the inferior deities, was the only way to keep the people from running into Atheism. On the same foundation they pleaded for and recommended the worship of images. Thus Maximus Tyrius, in a dissertation on this very subject, says, that "the divine nature "stands not in need of images or statues; but that the nature "and condition of man being very weak, and as far distant "from the Divinity as heaven is from the earth, framed these "signs for itself, and attributed to them the names and titles "of the gods ;" and he thinks the legislators acted wisely in contriving images for the people. He especially approves the making images of the gods in human forms; but he also justifies the worshipping rivers, mountains, and other parts of nature, as the signs and representations of the Divinity. I would observe, by the way, that Moses and the prophets under the Old Testament, as well as our Saviour and his apostles under the New, acted upon far nobler principles. They did not pretend a necessity for leading the people into wrong The philosophers not only joined with the popular Pagans in deifying and worshipping sensible objects, the things of this visible world, but the most refined of them, the Platonists, added a vast number of deities of their own ima. gining, and which belonged to the world of ideas, the intelligible and archetypal world, of which this sensible world is only the shadow and image, as Plotinus calls it. Ennead. III. lib. viii. cap. 10. It was their humour to deify the abstract notions of their own minds, and to make them divine powers, intelligences, and substantial essences. The latter Platonists, especially, who affected an extraordinary sublimity and refinement, carried this to a strange degree of extravagance. Any man will be convinced of this that considers the account which Proclus gives of these mystic and metaphysical deities, in the third and following books of his Theologia Platonica. Max. Tyr. Dissert, 38. p. 452. Edit. Oxon. 1677. notions of religion, and into a worship unsuitable to the divine Majesty. Animated by a holy zeal for the glory of God, and assured of his divine assistance, they taught the people to worship an invisible Deity, in a pure and spiritual manner, without corporeal images and representations, and were not for dividing their religious homage between the great Lord of the universe, and his creatures and subjects, or parcelling out that worship to a multitude of pretended deities, which was due to him alone. Another method which the philosophers took to uphold and justify the Pagan theology was, by allegorizing the fables of the poets and mythologists, which lay at the foundation of many of their sacred rites. I had occasion to take notice of this before, and observed, that the Stoics were particularly remarkable for their allegorical and physiological explications of those fables: though many of the Pagans themselves ridiculed the explications they gave, as forced and unnatural. This, however, was the way that was almost universally taken by the philosophers, after the Christians set themselves to expose the absurdities of the Pagan mythology, and the religion founded upon it. Instead of absolutely rejecting those fables, many of which were of an immoral tendency, and altogether unworthy of the Deity, the philosophers represented them as full of hidden wisdom, and thereby confirmed the people in the opinion they had of the divine original and authority of those fables, which was of the most pernicious consequence. Plotinus himself endeavoureth to accommodate the poetical fables and theogony to his own scheme of philosophy.* And all the latter Platonists and Pythagoreans interpreted those fables in a physical sense, and applied them to the phenomena of nature. A remarkable instance of which we have in Porphyry's interpretation of Saturn's emasculating his father Coelus,+ though this is one of the fables which Plato represents Plotin. Ennead. V. lib. viii. cap. 13. p. 554. † Porphyr. de Musarum Antro, p. 260, 261. in the Cambridge edition of Porphyr. de Abstin. as not fit to be tolerated in the commonwealth, whatever allegorical sense might be put upon it. Even the Egyptian idolatry, in worshipping several kinds of animals, which was ridiculed for its absurdity, by many of the common Pagans in other countries, found advocates among the philosophers. Celsus observes, that the Egyptians looked upon the brute animals they worshipped to be a kind of symbols of God, τίνα αὐτὰ θεῖ σύμβολα, and that in the veneration they paid to those animals, they designed to honour the eternal ideas; and therefore blames the Christians for deriding them.* And others of the philosophers, who pretended to an extraordinary refinement, endeavoured to persuade the world, that the Egyptian idolatry had a great deal of occult wisdom contained in it. That great philosopher Plotinus expresses a high esteem of the wisdom of the Egyptian priests, in representing divine mysteries under the figures of animals.† Porphyry, after having given a great encomium of the piety, the abstinence, the purity, the continence, the philosophy of the Egyptian priests, and their unwearied diligence in their studies,‡ observes, that the divinity dwelleth not only in men, but in all animals: and that therefore they made the images of the gods in the figure of all animals, and sometimes joined the bodies of wild beasts and birds to the bodies of men :§ * Origen contra Cels. lib. iii. p. 121. For clearing this, it is proper to observe, that the Platonists speak of eternal ideas in God, as distinct beings, subsisting in and with the supreme God. And Plato himself, in his Timæus, represents them as vonrà ga, intelligible animals, the patterns and prototypes of those that are sensible and that they are immortal gods. He also teaches that those ideas are the only things derived from the supreme God, which have a real existence : and that all things in the world are only the images and representations of those ideas. See Campbell's Necess. Revel. p. 304, 305. Marg. note. Thus it ap pears, that their philosophy led to idolatry, and tended to furnish excuses even for the grossest kinds of it: since they might worship every thing in nature under pretence of doing honour to the eternal ideas, and divine originals, of which all things in this world are the representations. Ennead. lib. viii. cap. 6. p. 547. De Abstin. lib. iv. sec. 6. p. 149. edit. Cantab. 1655. § Ibid. sect. 9. p. 154. |