If the style of the history of the book of Kings and Chronicles be divine, it does not necessarily follow that the actions related in those histories are also divine. David murders Uriah; Isbosheth and Mephibosheth are murdered; Absalom murders Ammon; Joab murders Absalom; Solomon murders Adonijah, his brother; Baza murders Nabab; Zimrï murders Ela; Hamri murders Zimri; Ahab murders Naboth; Jehu murders Ahab and Joram; the inhabitants of Jerusalem murder Amaziah, Joash's son; Selom the son of Jabes murders Zachariah the son of. Jeroboam; Manahaim murders Selom the son of Jabes; Phaceus the son of Romeli murders Phaceia the son of Manahaim; Hoshea the son of Ela murders Phaceus the son of Romeli; with a multitude of other murders of less note. Thus it must be owned, if the holy spirit did write this history, he has not chosen a very edifying subject.

IDOL, IDOLATER, IDOLATRY (').

IDOL comes from the Greek sidos, a figure, EIDOLOS, the representation of a figure, LA-TREUEIN, to serve, to revere, to adore. The word

(1) This article of idols is a strong attack against the Roman Catholic worship of images; and the author seems to justify Dr. Middleton's treatise upon the Romish ceremonies. He displays his erudition in treating this subject; but surely he is fond of paradox, when he maintains that neither the Greeks nor Romans,

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word adore is originally Latin, and has various meanings, as, to put the hand to the mouth in token of respect, to bend the body, to kneel, to salute, and more commonly to pay a supreme worship.

It is proper to observe here, that the Trevoux dictionary begins this article with saying that all the Pagans were idolaters, and that the Indians are still so. First, nobody was called Pagan before the time of Theodosius the younger, when that appellation was given to the inhabitants of the country-towns of Italy, " Pagorum "incolæ Pagani," who retained their ancient religion. Secondly, Indostan is entirely Mahometan, and the Mahometans are implacable enemies to images and idolatry. Thirdly, many people of India, who are of the ancient religion of the Parsis, a certain tribe which admit of no idols, cannot, with any propriety, be termed idolaters.

WHETHER IDOLATRY WAS EVER THE PROFESSED RELIGION OF ANY NATION.

It appears that there never was any people on the earth, who took to themselves the name of idolaters.

mans, nor indeed no other nation, were idolaters. The point is not to know what might be the private opinion of a few philosophers, but what was the practice of those nations in their external forms of religious worship. Now it must be running counter to all antiquity, to affirm that the honours paid by those people to the statues and images of their god, were not rank idolatry. To say that the Roman Catholics do the same is not answering the question: he may represent those of his own religion (if he can be said to have any) as guilty of idolatry; but this does not prove that the others were not also idolaters.

idolaters. It is rather an abusive word, a term of detestation; as the Spaniards formerly used to call the French GAVACHOS, which the French returned by calling the Spaniards MARANAS. Had the senate of Rome, the Areopagus of Athens, the court of the kings of Perfia, been asked, "Are you idolaters ?" They would hardly have known what the question meant; at least not one of them would have answered, "We worship idols or images." The word idolater or idolatry do not occur either in Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, or any gentile author. Never was there any edict or law, ordering idols to be worshipped, to be accounted as deities, or to be considered as such.

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The Roman and Carthaginian generals, at the making of a treaty, called all their gods to witness; it is in their presence, say they, that we swear to this peace. Now the statues of all these gods, their number being none of the smallest, were not in the general's tent; but they held the gods to be, as it were, present at the actions of men as witnesses and as judges; and certainly it was not the image which made the deity.

In what light did they then look on the statues of their false deities, which stood in the temples? In the same light, if I may be allowed the expression, as we view the images of the objects of our veneration. Their error was not the worshipping a piece of wood or marble, but the worshipping a false deity, represented by the wood and marble. The difference between them and us is not that they had images and we have none; but that their images represented imaginary beings, and in a false religion; whereas ours represent real beings, and in a true reli

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gion.

gion. The Greeks had the statue of Hercules; and we that of St. Christopher; they had Esculapius and his goat, and we St. Roch and his dog; they had Jupiter with his thunder-bolts, and we St. Anthony of Padua, and St. James of Compostella.

When the consul Pliny, in the exordium of his Panegyric on Trajan, addresses his petitions to the IMMORTAL GODS, he cannot be thought to mean the images, which were far from being immortal.

Neither in the later nor the most remote times of paganism, one single fact occurs to conclude that they worshipped idols. Homer mentions only gods dwelling in lofty Olympus. The palladium, though it fell from heaven, was no more than a sacred pledge of Pallas's protection; it was the goddess herself who was reverenced in the palladium.

But the Romans and Greeks kneeled down before statues, put crowns on them, decked them with flowers, burnt incense to them, and carried them in solemn state through public places. These usages we have consecrated in our religion, and yet we are not idolaters.

In times of drought the women, after keeping a fast, carried forth the statues of the gods in public, walking barefooted, with their hair loose; and immediately, according to Petronius, the rain would pour down by pales full,“ statim "urceatim pluebat." Have we not adopted this rite which, though an abomination among the Gentiles, is doubtless genuine devotion with Catholics? How common is it among us to carry barefooted the shrines of saints, in order to obtain a blessing from heaven by their intercession?

A Turk,

A Turk, a lettered Chinese, at seeing those ceremonies, might, from his ignorance, accuse us of placing our confidence in the images which we thus carry about in procession; but a word or two would undeceive him.

We are surprized at the prodigious number of declamations thundered out in all ages against the idolatry of the Romans and Greeks; and after. wards, our surprize is still greater, at finding that they were not idolaters.

Some temples were more privileged than others. The great Diana of Ephesus stood in higher fame than a village Diana; more miracles were performed in the temple of Esculapius at Epidaurus than in any other of his temples. More offerings were made to the statue of Jupiter the Olympian, than to that of the Paphla gonian Jupiter: but since it is proper always to contrast the usages of a true religion to those of a false worship; have not some of our altars, for ages past, been more frequented than others? what are the offerings to our lady DES NEIGES in comparison of those made to our lady of Loretto? It is our business to examine whether this affords a just pretence for charging us with idolatry.

The original invention was only one Diana, one Apollo, and one Esculapius, not as many Dianas, Apollos, and Esculapiuss, as they had temples and statues. Thus it is evidenced, as far as a point of history can be, that the ancients did not hold a statue to be a deity; that the worship could not relate to the statue or idol; and consequently that the ancients were not idolaters.

A rude superstitious populace incapable of reflection, either to doubt, to deny, or believe, who flocked to the temples, as having nothing

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