In our researches we do not mean to set reason and revelation in opposition to each other, but to exhibit them as mutually co-operating to establish the same important results. It is the proper province of theolo gy to enforce the sanctions of revealed religion : it is the business of our present department to analyse the prin ciples of moral action, and to point out their foundation in the nature and circumstances of man.—It is not in deed possible, in any discussion on the subject, to sepa rate morals wholly from theology. For as soon as men have acquired a belief in the existence Z.;1 a God, their moral perceptions must be considerably influenced by the attributes which they assign to him. If he is sup posed to be cruel, or vindictive, or lascivious, we may naturally expect to see the same qualities exemplified in the character of his votaries ; for wherever men have admitted the existence of a God, they have also admitted that they were bound both to imitate and obey him.—It is absolutely necessary, then, in all moral discussion, to endeavour to ascertain how far the unaided powers of man can go in obtaining right conceptions of the divine nature and attributes; for if these could be properly as certained, they would constitute a rule from which there could be no appeal.
This point will be soon settled, if we take facts for the foundation of our argument, and consider what has actu ally been done in the province of natural theology by the unassisted efforts of the human understanding. We have only to recollect the impure and absurd theology of the Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians ; which some writers have chosen to denominate elegant, merely be cause its absurdities have been concealed under the !Splendour of poetical diction and imagery : or we have only to read Cicero's book on the nature of the gods, and if facts may be allowed to influence our reasoning, we wilt not hesitate to pronounce at once the incompe tency of human reason to discover the attributes and perfections of the Supreme Being.
'It may, perhaps, be thought unfair to decide on the capabilities of the human mind, from its aberrations and perversions ; and we may be called upon to con template what it is naturally able to achieve. But here our speculations must be involved in great uncertainty. We find, indeed, the belief in a Supreme Being to be almost universal. In many instances, we discover very enlightened views respecting the unity of his nature, and some of his attributes ; but in no one case can we pronounce with certainty how far these notions are the product of unassisted reason. We have stated elsewhere, (see Loore,) the very natural process by which the idea of God may be supposed to arise in the human mind ; but it is impossible to demonstrate that it ever has arisen, in any one instance, in this man ner. We are firmly persuaded that there is no such
thing in the universe as a system of theism, the pure re sult of human reason ; for it will not be difficult to show that all the religions which have ever been in the world are either traditional or revealed.
As far as we are acquainted with the religious sys tems which prevail throughout the immense continent of Asia, from China to the Red Sea, and from Cape Como rin to Siberia, we may discover the traces of a traditional sulierstition, but not of a system of natural religion ; for its features are too fantastic to pass as the offspring of reason. In the same manner, we may perceive that the religions of Greece, of Rome, of Egypt, and of India, had a common origin, not in reason, but in tradition ; for reason is not so uniform in its aberrations, as to run into exactly the same conceits and absurdities.
Where, then, shall we discover the pure religion of nature ? Not among the sages of Greece and Rome : they evidently and avowedly borrowed from more an cient sources. Not among the philosophers and hiero phants of Egypt : they, in all probability, borrowed from India. Nowhere, indeed, do we find among any of these nations any pretensions to this religion of nature : they altogether disavow this origin of their religious opinions; for they have, severally, their legislators and their sages, to whom they ascribe the origin of their laws and of their religion; and however much they may be dis posed to reverence these founders of' their polities, civil and sacred, they never ascribe to them the honour of discovering, by their own ingenuity, the laws and reli gious opinions which they promulgated. These they ascribe to the particular favour and illumination of the gods.
This opinion, if not strictly correct, may, perhaps, lead us to the truth ; for were we to judge from appearances and partial facts, we would perhaps be led to conclude, that man, on his creation, was placed under a system of revelation, or was made perfectly acquainted with the great truths of religion, immediately depending on the being and attributes of God. This inference amounts to certainty, if we take the sacred Scriptures for our guide. On the supposition, then, (and it is surely a natural one,) that this primeval religion was taught by the first race of men to their families and descendants, and by this means diffused over the face of the earth, \ve might na tunny expect those diversified features of superstition, which meet us in our researches, and which betray few marks of their parentage as the offspring of reason, but are exactly what we might expect as the corrupted tra ditions of primeval revelation.