tion. They did not consider the Gentiles as subject's of the grace of the Gospel, if we except the distant hope held out to them by Christ, in his parables and prophetic declarations, grounded on the rejection of his Gospel by the Jews, and which were not understood by his apostles till after his resurrection.

The whole genius of the Pagan religion, consisted in the occasional worship of a multitude of Gods, of their own making, for the attainment of mere tempo. ral good, or the indulgence of their passions, without having an idea of the spiritual nature of the great self! existent First Cause of all things; or the least expec tation of the resurrection of the dead. Their hints of an immortality after death, were very obscure and imperfect. Cicero, in his Tusculan Questions, says, "Show me first if you can, and it be not too troublesome, that souls remain after death; and if you cannot prove this, for it is difficult, declare how there is no evil in death?" Again-" I know not what mighty things they have got by it, who teach, that when the time of death comes, they shall entirely perish; which if it should be, (for I do not see any thing to the contrary) what ground of joy or glorying does it afford?" Hence, an admission of any new God, or different mode of worship, was easily assented to by them; so that it did not derogate from the established principles of intercommunity of divine homage to their various' deities, agreeably to their national institutions.

The Christian system, grounded on the religion of the Jews, so odious to the whole world of Gentiles, opened a new scene to mankind. Jesus Christ commenced his prophetic office, by preaching repentance and forgiveness of sins, through his name alone, in

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opposition to all the Gods of the nations; declaring their worship to be that of demons and devils-that no salvation could be procured by any of them to their votaries, and that there was but one only living and true God-that life and immortality was now brought to light by his Gospel, in which, for the first time, was clearly revealed the resurrection of the body-that every man, every where, was now commanded to repent and believe his Gospel, as by no other name under Heaven, but that of his own, could eternal life be obtained that whoever believed on him, should be saved; but all who refused, and would not believe, should be damned-that no man could come to God, but by him that he was, emphatically the resurrection and the life-that there could be no communion in the worship of the heathen deities, even their most supreme, no not so much as to eat or drink with them at their festivals and solemnities, their being no possible connection between the cup of the Lord, and of devils.

The heathen world was now in an awful state of darkness and vice. It will therefore throw some light on the necessity mankind were in at this time, of great reformation, to attend to the nature and practice of the heathen mythology. A respectable author, has given an epitome of it in the following words" The chief oracles among the heathens, appointed human sacrifices; that of Delphi, of Dodona, and of Jupiter Saotes. It was the custom of all the Greeks, to sacrifice a man, before they went out to war. It was a custom among the Phoenicians and Canaanites, for their kings, in the times of great calamity, to sacrifice one of their sons, whom they loved best; and it was common both with

them, the Moabites, and Ammonites, to sacrifice their children. Herodotus says, "That in the expedition of Xerxes into Greece, arriving in the country of the Edonians, in Persia, the magi took nine of the sons and daughters of the inhabitants, and buried them. alive-and that when Amestris, wife of Xerxes, had happily attained to mature age with confirmed health, she ordered fourteen children of the noblest families of Persia, to be buried alive, in grateful sacrifice to the subterraneous deity."* The Egyptians, the Athenians and Lacedemonians, and generally all the Grecians, Romans and Carthagenians-the Germans, Gauls and Britons-and indeed almost all the heathen nations throughout the world, offered human sacrifices upon their altars; and this, not on certain emergencies, and in imminent dangers only, but constantly, and in some places, every day; but on extraordinary accidents, multitudes were sacrificed at once to their bloody deities.

Diodorus Siculus and others, relate, that in Africa, two hundred children, of the principal nobility, were sacrificed to Saturn at one time; and Aristomenes sacrificed three hundred men together to Jupiter Ithometes, one of whom was Theopompus, king of the Lacedemonians.

Plutarch, in his Tract on Superstition, says, "Had it not been much better for the so much famed Gauls and Scythians, that they had neither thought nor imagined, nor heard any thing of their Gods, than to have believed them such as would be pleased with the blood of human sacrifices, and who accounted

such for the most complete and meritorious of expiations. How much better had it been for the Carthagenians, if they had had either Critias, or a Diagoras, for their first law-giver, that so they might have believed neither God nor Spirits, than to make such offerings to Saturn, as they made. But they knowingly and willingly devoted their own children; and they who had none of their own, bought of some poor people, and then sacrificed them, like lambs or pidgeons; the poor mothers standing by, without either a sigh or a tear or if by chance she fetched a sigh, or let fall a tear, she lost the price of her child, and it was nevertheless sacrificed. All the places round the image, were in the mean time filled with the noise of hautboys and tabors, to drown the poor infants' crying."

Let those who are instrumental, with so much industry, to destroy our holy religion, and bring us back. to this awful state of things, seriously reflect on the just deserts of so aggravated a crime, and fear the tremendous punishment that awaits their absurd conduct.

Livy makes mention of human sacrifices at Rome-Dion Cassius relates that two men were sacrificed in the Campus Martius, under Julius Cæsar. He says it was a custom, begun under Augustus, for men to be devoted to death for the safety of the emperor,

Suetonius mentions, that some writers affirmed, that Augustus offered a great number of enemies, who had surrendered themselves, to be slain on the ides of March, in devotion to the manes of Julius Cæsar. We are informed by Pliny, that in the year of the city 658, a decree of the senate passed, that no

man should be sacrificed, and that, till then, such sacrifices were public. This prohibition seemed to concern only the common and frequent use of them; for besides what has been already observed, Plutarch says, They continued in his time; and it was not till about the time of Constantine's reign, that a final stop was put to so strange and abominable a practice; for though it was forbidden by Adrian, and very much abated in his reign, yet Antinous was made a sacrifice by Adrian himself." Tatian declares, “That the human sacrifices offered to Jupiter at Rome, and to Diana, not far from thence, were the chief cause of his leaving the heathen religion, and turning Christian."

Pliny acquaints us, that they were practised in the age in which he lived; and Minutius Felix, that they were used when he wrote. Porphyry mentions them as notoriously practised at Rome, in his time; and Lactantius speaks of them, as not laid aside in his.*

Did not this degenerate and cruel state of things loudly call for a speedy and effectual remedy? The Jews, as a people, had lost every sense of the spirituality of their divine religion, and had settled down into mere form and hypocrisy. Their example no longer edified and instructed the neighbouring nations, to forsake their vain idols and turn to the living God. Among the heathens, their diabolical sacrifices, with other as impure practices, made up so great a part of their worship, and were become so habitual and fashionable, that arguments and reasonings drawn from the nature of God, and the proof of his