evocare mentem fuetudine. Cic.. ligion, thofe e in the highghly venerate, for instance, fied were utal, if we had in Conftan be the fame, points? monftrous nfular time with reafon ons as with r you look ike them: nion of a "as his , in fine, ntry, and house." ent thing ( 34 ) thaginians facrificed their children to Mɔ lock, now and then, on extraordinary occafions of public calamity; the thing was done pompously; and they are infamous for it to this day. The Romans put theirs to a more cruel death, because more lingering, daily; and the commonnefs of it, without ceremony, made it difregarded for above a thousand years, quite down to the reign of Valentinian. At length the mildness and benevolence of the Chriftian religion put a final end to, and utterly abolished this dire practice; and took away from parents the power of murdering their own children.Good God! that this power fhould ever have been given them, or that it should ever have needed to be taken away from them! Perhaps we fee nothing as it is, and all our ideas of truth depend on cuftom; what we happen to have been used to. Certainly the fame things are feen very differently, by people in the higheft life, thofe in the middling, and by the dregs of the populace; as, though they speak the fame language, they hardly use any of one anothers words and hrafes Whole nations fee things. much in the fame grofs light with o ther, and quite different from that in other whole nations fee them; not religion and politics, (into which th in a manner compelled) but in the co Occurrences and fafhions in the 8 commerce of the world. When ou are familiarifed to a certain repetiti verfes or words, we cannot abide to c them often, though found to be wrong makes that appear to be reafon, at w on the first hearing, in our mature yea fhould have fcoffed, but now will di and wrangle for; and if very abfur altogether unintelligible, we will fuffer fecution, and even death, in the fupp it. We may fay, that every national rel is a factitious one, and all are fure o rightnefs of it in its own little or diftrict, though contradicted, abhorre defpiled every where elfe, all around it, like affurance. That then, one fh think, feems to bid the faireft for being first beft, which every other agrees t the next best to itfelf; and this is tha nature and reafon, whofe only articles all the focial virtues. -ht with one ano- be wrong. ( 36 ) "The author of the Religion of Nature Delineated afked a bigot, "How many religions and fects he thought there' might be in the world?” "Why, fays he, I can make no judgment; I never confidered that question." "Do you think, faid Wollafton, there may be an hundred ?” “Oh, yes fure, replied he, at least.” “ Why then, faid he, it is ninety-nine to one you are in the wrong." 66 "As to that spirit of toleration in religion, for which the Gentoos are fo fingularly diftinguished, it is doubtlefs owing to that fundamental tenet of it, of which the purport is, that the diverfity of modes of worship is apparently agreeable to the God of the universe; that all prayers put up to him from man are equally acceptable; and fanctified to him by the fincerity of the intention; that the true univerfal religion is no other than the religion of the heart; that the various outward forms of it are only acceffories, indifferent in themselves, and merely accidents of time, place, education, or birth." Grofe, Voyage to the Eaft. Indies, 291. Whether "The Whether thefe are the notions fimple, good, and altogether harmle people, I know not; or whether t thor hath rather given us his own are wife, humane, and worthy of rent of the univerfe, and of all tho nite varieties of all kinds that this al ficent father hath ordained for the de as well as neceffities, of his children. the compulfion to an uniformity of and articles, is the interefted rogu every fhop ftriving to keep all the tr itfelf, and bring in as much more a fible. POPE's Ess AN is an animal that hath two P only, without wings, and is E. e notions of this her harmless fet of whether the aus his own; they orthy of the pa of all those infihat this all benefor the delights, children. And Formity of faith ted of roguery all the trade to ch more as pof is pure ( 38 ) other than high fpirits, well fed. And many men have this, who have no great degree of pride, as others that are very proud, have abfolutely no mettle. They are two very diftinét qualities, one of which natural fpirit, kept up or improved by accident; and the other is upon princi-. ple. Pride arifes from comparing ourselves with others, while we plead the cause of both before the tribunal of our own felf-love. This fort of comparison, I believe, no other animal makes, in any degree whatfoever *. Man proceeds, like the reft, from an egg, a worm, an embrio, to a thing that feels, to a thing that reflects; and then it is proud. It looks about, and fees how every other thing is inferior to it, and then it laughs, which is only a quality given it to exprefs its other quality, Pride; and as other animals have not the one, they have no occafion for the other. Now this animal that hath got thus far, it knows not at all how, comes in a little Nec miferius quidquam homine aut fuperbius. Plin. H. N. II. 7. Heu dementiam ab his initiis exifliman- · tium ad fuperbiam fe genitos! Id. VII. 1. timè, |