of nature could do, must be abundantly obvious from the writings of the philosophers of Greece and Rome. In them is shown the utmost that human reason, unaided by divine revelation, can discover of God and of human duty. Whatever moral truth the world had not been able to discover in the study of four thousand years, cannot be reckoned to the account of the religion of nature. Nor is there the pretence of uninterrupted barbarism. In Greece for some hundred years the human understanding had the fairest field for exhibiting its powers. The most ardent love of knowledge distinguished that period from any other age of the world, while their habits and manners gave the lovers of wisdom the most entire leisure for prosecuting their studies. The names of the most distinguished of them are better known in all civilized countries than the names of the most eminent philosophers of the present day. Yet with all their advantages they did not know God.

Notwithstanding all the wise things which the ancient philosophers occasionally said with respect to God, they wavered with respect to those attributes that are now thought to be the most obvious to reason. What philosopher, what peasant, now thinks himself at a loss to prove from the light of nature the existence of God? But how many ancient philosophers, as well as the vulgar, were ignorant of this, or even denied it? Who is it that now finds any difficulty in proving the Unity of God? But show us any ancient philosopher who held this truth with a steady consistent faith? There is not one of them that can be said strictly to have held it at all. They spoke indeed of One Supreme; but the wisest of them did not hold this supremacy in such a sense as to exclude every other being from Deity

and its attributes. It is therefore an abuse of language, and a false representation, to assert that they held the Unity of God. Almighty power is now an obvious attribute in every system of natural theology; but where is the ancient philosopher that properly held this doctrine? They spoke, indeed, occasionally of God as almighty; but it was in reality an empty complimentary expression. Whatever power they might in some things ascribe to God, they all set bounds to this divine attribute. He could, indeed, do many wonderful things; but still many other things he could not do. To create something out of nothing was in the estimation of the wisest of them beyond the power of God; and to raise the dead was supposed neither desirable nor possible.* Thus we might run over all

*That the Epicurean scheme was no other than Atheism disguised; that the hypothesis of the Stoics was little different from the Polytheism of the vulgar; and that the faith of the Academics was either none at all, or faint and fluctuating at best, will not be disputed by those who have any knowledge of antiquity. To judge of their sentiments by occasional sayings with which modern philosophers are wont to embellish their works, it may be believed, as many have believed, that the ancient philosophers were possessed of the whole system of what is called Natural Religion. But if we look into their writings, we shall be undeceived. Or if we take the testimony of one of the most considerable among them who had made their doctrines his study, we shall be told that the being and providence of God was, of all subjects, a matter of the greatest doubt and disputation among philosophers. Let Cicero's dialogues concerning the nature of the gods, stript of rhetorical embellishments, and reduced to simple propositions, be put into the hands of some peasant of common understanding, and acquainted with the Christian revelation, and he will be astonished at the opinions of the ancients, the gross stupidity of the Epicureans, the frivolous superstition of the Stoics, and the presumptuous rashness of the Academics, and be thankful that he possesses the Holy Scriptures.

the attributes of the Godhead, and we should find that not one of them was given in perfection to the Supreme Being of the philosophers of the heathen world. While they may be ascribed in words, they are in reality subject to innumerable limitations. In estimating then the importance of Revelation, it is absolutely necessary to consider the exact extent of that knowledge of God and human duty, manifested by the discoveries of ancient wisdom. As often as natural religion points to her systems of moral science, and from the perfection of these would lower the value of the discoveries of the gospel, she ought to be stript of her borrowed feathers, and instead of the rich and brilliant plumage in which she now usually appears, if she is not altogether unfledged, she will have but a plain and scanty covering.

At first sight, these observations may appear to some inconsistent with the doctrine of the Apostle Paul, in the beginning of his Epistle to the Romans; but a moment's reflection will show the perfect consistency. That the existence, and many of the attributes of God, are written in the two volumes of the heavens and the earth, is a conclusion which reason ought in all men to draw, and is a thing which cannot be questioned by any man who acknowledges this Epistle of Paul to be a part of the inspired Word of God. But there is a difference between what reason ought to find out, if it would properly exert itself in the discovery, and what it has actually found out, or what, from the corruption of human nature, it would ever find out. The heavens and the earth teach a lesson, that, from the enmity of the heart of man to God, no man ever learned. And as a matter of fact, we find, that although the sun has been preaching the existence and attributes of the God

that made him for a period of some thousand years to all nations, no individual has ever fully understood his voice, or received his testimony. Men are not by the preaching of the sun, moon, or stars, led to the knowledge of the true God, because they hate him: and even when from tradition they knew God, yet they did not like to retain him in their knowledge, but formed to themselves gods more suitable to their own character. Notwithstanding the incessant labours of these faithful preachers, when, at the end of 4000 years from the beginning of the world, Jesus Christ appeared, all nations, with the exception of the Jews, were found idolaters, and there was not an individual that had discovered and worshipped God, as manifested in his works, from the mere testimony of these works. The necessity, then, of an explicit revelation from God, to be promulgated to all nations, in order to bring them back to the worship of himself, and to carry into effect his gracious purposes of mercy, is placed beyond all doubt. This will be fully evident, if we take a view of the religious, as well as the moral degradation into which the most distinguished of the heathen nations had fallen, at the time when civilisation was carried to the highest pitch.

The Greeks and Romans, with whose history we are best acquainted, who looked with contempt on all the rest of the world as barbarians, were plunged in the grossest ignorance with respect to the knowledge of God, and of those moral relations in which they stood ́to him, and to one another. Respecting their religious worship, they were all, without exception, idolaters. Innumerable deities were feigned by them of the worst characters, and infamous for the most enormous crimes.

They invented ideal gods of all classes, and for purposes even the most base and ignoble. They deified the inanimate parts of the world. They ascribed to their deities passions and propensities the most odious and abominable. These deities were represented by their worshippers as guilty of drunkenness, incest, rapes, adulteries, thefts, and quarrels. They were, in short, monsters of cruelty, lewdness, and profligacy. Statues and pictures were formed, and set up in temples dedicated to them, in which the worship of their votaries entirely corresponded with the characters they bore. It consisted in the vilest and most detestable rites, many of which were cruel and contrary to humanity, and hence the licentiousness and impurity of their religious services became notorious. Human sacrifices were frequently offered on their altars. Many of their temples were places of avowed prostitution. Fornication and drunkenness formed part of the worship of Venus and Bacchus. Strabo relates that the temple of Venus at Corinth was exceedingly rich, so as to have in property more than a thousand harlots, the slaves and ministers of the temple, donations made to the goddess by persons of both sexes. Hence, he says, that "the city was crowded, and became wealthy." Such, according to Gibbon, was "the cheerful devotion of the Pagans," and such were the gods and goddesses who composed what he terms "the elegant mythology of the Greeks." The same, according to the history of all heathen nations, both ancient and modern, is thé character of that idolatry, which in one form or other has spread over all the earth, and which has been uniformly found the most gross in countries the most civilized.

Just notions of God, obedience to his moral law,