1.

kept the keys of the mind for free admission, when impor- CHAP. tant truths, but contrary to men's preconceptions or interest, have been forbidden entrance. Prejudice is the wrong bias of the soul, that effectually keeps it from coming near the mark of truth; nay, sets it at the greatest distance from it. There are few in the world that look after truth with their own eyes; most make use of spectacles of others making, which makes them so seldom behold the proper lineaments in the face of truth; which the several tinctures from education, authority, custom, and predisposition, do exceedingly hinder men from discerning.

VII.

(2.)

de Iside et

Another reason why there are so few who find truth, when so many pretend to seek it, is, that near resemblance which error often bears to truth. It hath been well observed, that Error seldom walks abroad the world in her own raiments; she always borrows something of Truth, to make her more acceptable to the world. It hath been always the subtlety of grand deceivers, to graft their greatest errors on some material truths, to make them pass more undiscernible to all such who look more at the root on which they stand, than on the fruits which they bring forth. It will hereafter appear how most of the grossest of the Heathen errors have, as Plutarch saith of Plutarchus the Egyptian fables, αμυδράς τινας ἐμφάσεις τῆς ἀληθείας, some Osiride,c.9. faint and obscure resemblances of truth; nay, more than Ed. Oxon. so, as most pernicious weeds are bred in the fattest soils, their most destructive principles have been founded on some necessary and important truths. Thus idolatry doth suppose the belief of the existence of a Deity; and superstition the immortality of the souls of men. The Devil could never have built his chapels, but on the same ground whereon God's temples stood; which makes me far less wonder than many do, at the meeting with many expressions concerning these two grand truths in the writings of ancient Heathens; knowing how willing the Devil might be to have such principles still owned in the world, which, by his depraving of them, might be the nourishers of idolatry and superstition. For the general knowledge of a Divine nature, supposing men ignorant of the true God, did only lay a foundation to erect his idolatrous temples upon; and the belief of the soul's surviving the body after death, without knowledge of the true way of attaining happiness, did make men more eager of embracing those rites and ceremonies, which

BOOK came with a pretence of shewing the way to a blessed immortality.

1.

Which may be a most probable reason, why philosophy and idolatry did increase so much together as they did; for though right reason, fully improved, would have overthrown all those cursed and idolatrous practices among the Heathens; yet reason, only discerning some general notions, without their particular application and improvement, did only dispose the most ordinary sort of people to a more ready entertainment of the most gross idolatry. For hereby they discerned the necessity of some kind of worship, but could not find out the right way of it; and therefore they greedily followed that which was commended to them, by such who did withal agree with them in the common sentiments of human nature: nay, and those persons themselves who were the great maintainers of the sublimer notions concerning God and the soul of man, were either the great instruments of advancing that horrid superstition among them, as Orpheus and Apollonius, or very forward compliers with it, as many of the philosophers were. Although withal it cannot be denied to have been a wonderful discovery of divine Providence, by these general notions to keep waking the inward senses of men's souls, that thereby it might appear, when divine revelation should be manifested to them, that it brought nothing contrary to the common principles of human nature, but did only rectify the depravations of it, and clearly shew men that way which they had long been ignorantly seeking after. Which was the excellent advantage the Apostle made of the inscription on the altar at Athens to the unknown God; Acts xvii. Whom, saith he, ye ignorantly serve, him I declare unto you. And which was the happy use the primitive learned Christians made of all those passages concerning the Divine nature, and the immortality of the souls of men, which they found in the Heathen writers, thereby to evidence to the world that the main postulata, or suppositions of Christian religion, were granted by their own most admired men; and that Christianity did not rase out, but only build upon those common foundations, which were entertained by all who had any name for

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IX.

reason.

Though this, I say, were the happy effect of this building errors on common truths to all that had the advantage of Divine revelation, to discern the one from the

I.

(1.)

other; yet as to others who were destitute of it, they CHAP. were liable to this twofold great inconvenience by it: First, for the sake of the apparent rottenness of the superstructures, to question the soundness of the foundations on which they stood. And this, I doubt not, was the case of many considerative Heathens, who observing that monstrous and unreasonable way of worship obtaining among the Heathen, and not being able by the strength of their own reason, through the want of divine revelation, to deduce any certain instituted worship, they were shrewdly tempted to renounce those principles, when they could not but abhor the conclusions drawn from them; for there is nothing more usual than for men who exceedingly detest some absurd consequence they see may be drawn from a principle supposed, to reject the principle itself for the sake of that consequence; which, it may be, doth not necessarily follow from it, but, through the shortness of their own reason, doth appear to them to do so. Thus when the intelligent Heathen did apparently see, that from the principles of the being of God, and the immortality of souls, did flow all those unnatural and inhuman sacrifices, all those absurd and ridiculous rites, all those execrable and profane mysteries; out of a loathing the immoralities and impieties which attended these, they were brought to question the very truth and certainty of those principles which were capable of being thus abused.

And therefore I am very prone to suspect the apology usually made for Protagoras, Diagoras, and such others of them who were accounted atheists, to be more favoùrable than true, viz. that they only rejected those Heathen deities, and not the belief of the Divine nature. I should think this account of their reputed atheism rational, were it any ways evident that they did build their belief of a Divine nature upon any other grounds than such as were common to them with those whose worship they so much derided. And therefore, when the Heathens accused the Christians of atheism, I have full and clear evidence that no more could be meant thereby than the rejection of their way of worship; because I have sufficient assurance from them, that they did believe in a Divine nature, and an instituted religion most suitable to the most common received notions of God, which they owned in opposition to all Heathen worship; which I find not in the least pretended to by any of the forementioned persons, nor

X.

BOOK any thing of any different way of religion asserted, but only a destruction of that in use among them.

I.

XI.

Voss. de Idololat. c. i.

XII.

Ánd although the case of Anaxagoras Clazomenius, and the rest of the Ionic philosophers, might seem very different from Diagoras, Theodorus, and those before mentioned, because although they denied the Gods in vulgar repute to be such as they were thought to be; (as Anaxagoras called the sun μύδρον διάπυρον, a mere globe of fire, for which he was condemned at Athens to banishment, and fined five talents; yet the learned Vossius puts in this plea in his behalf, that he was one that asserted the creation of the world to flow from an eternal Mind ;) although therefore, I say, the case of the Ionic philosophers may seem far different from the others, because of their asserting the production of the world, (which from Thales Milesius was conveyed by Anaximander and Anaximenes to Anaxagoras,) yet to one that thoroughly considers what they understood by their eternal Mind, they may be sooner cleared from the imputation of atheism than irreligion: which two certainly ought in this case to be distinguished; for it is very possible for men, meeting with such insuperable difficulties about the casual concourse of atoms for the production of the world, or the eternal existence of matter, to assert some eternal Mind as the first cause of these things, which yet they may embrace only as an hypothesis in philosophy to solve the phenomena of nature with, but yet not to make this eternal Mind the object of adoration. And so their asserting a Deity, was only on the same account as the Tragedians used to bring in their Oeds åñò μnxavñs, when their fables were brought to such an issue, and perplexed with so many difficulties, that they saw no way to clear them again, but to make some God come down upon the stage, to solve the difficulties they were engaged in; or, as Seneca saith of many great families, when they had run up their genealogies so high, that they could go no further, they then fetched their pedigree from the Gods: so when these philosophers saw such incongruities in asserting an infinite and eternal series of matter, they might by this be brought to acknowledge some active principle which produced the world, though they were far enough from giving any religious worship to that eternal Mind.

Thus even Epicurus and his followers would not stick to assert the being of a God, so they might but circumscribe him within the heavens, and let him have nothing

1.

to do with things that were done on earth. And how CHAP. uncertain the most dogmatical of them all were, as to their opinions concerning the being and nature of their Gods, doth fully appear from the large discourses of Tully upon that subject; where is fully manifested their variety of opinions and mutual repugnancies, their selfcontradictions and inconstancy in their own assertions; which hath made me somewhat inclinable to think, that the reason why many of them did to the world own a Deity, was, that they might not be martyrs for atheism: Which Tully likewise seems to acknowledge, when Cicero de speaking of the punishment of Protagoras for that speech Nat. Deor. of his; De diis neque ut sint, neque ut non sint, habeo di- l. i. c. 63. cere: Ex quo, says he, equidem existimo tardiores ad hanc sententiam profitendam multos esse factos, quippe cum poenam ne dubitatio quidem effugere potuisset. So that, for all the verbal asserting of a Deity among them, we have no certain evidence of their firm belief of it, and much less of any worship and service they owed unto it. And though, it may be, they could not totally excuss the notions of a Deity out of their minds, partly through that natural sense which is engraven on the souls of men; partly, as being unable to solve the difficulties of nature without a Deity; yet the observing the notorious vanities of Heathen worship, might make them look upon it as a mere philosophical speculation, and not any thing that had an influence upon the government of men's lives: for, as in nature, the observing the great mixture of falsehood and truth, made the Academics deny any certain xpipov, κριτήριον, or rule of judging truth, and the Sceptics take away all certain assent; so the same consequence was unavoidable here, upon the same principle. And that made even Plato himself so ambiguous and uncertain in his discourses of a Deity; sometimes making him an eternal Mind, sometimes asserting the whole world, sun, moon, stars, earth, souls, and all, to be gods, and even those that were worshipped among the Heathens, as Tully tells us out of his Timæus and De Legibus; which, as Valleius the Epicurean there speaks, Et per se sunt falsa et sibi invicem repugnantia. This is the first inconvenience following the mixture of truth and falsehood, for the sake of the falsehood to question the truth itself it was joined with.

The other is as great which follows, when truth and falsehood are mixed, for the sake of the truth to embrace the falsehood; which is a mistake as common as the other,

XIII.

(2.)