Revealed religion, then, embraces all that is claimed for natural religion, and a great deal more ; and, whilst we are at no loss to point out doctrines peculiar to revelation, we cannot point out a single doctrine which we can pronounce to be peculiar to natural religion. We cannot be sure that even any part of the religious knowledge contained in the popular creed, or in the philosophical speculations of the heathen, is the produce of unassisted reason. It is not enough to say that they had no revelation, and therefore their religious knowledge must have arisen out of their own resources. In the early ages of the world direct revelation was imparted to few ; but traditional information prevailed among all ; in consequence of which, much knowledge, originally derived from revelation, might be dif fused among mankind. This, at least, we may be certain of, that man, on his first creation, possessed the knowledge of God, either by revelation or in tuition : it was not acquired by the usual processes of discipline and experience. Adam, on his crea tion, must have been endowed with knowledge, otherwise he would never have lived to acquire it, but would have fallen the victim of his own igno rance, before lie obtained the knowledge useful to direct him. His children, however, were placed in very different circumstances ; reared from an in fancy of helplessness and ignorance, they gradually rose to the knowledge of God, in consequence of parental instruction. The information which they had thus received they transmitted to their descen dants, who carried it with them into their various settlements, and thus diffused the knowledge of God over the face of the earth. The corruptions which speedily took place in religion, and the varie ties of worship which prevailed among nations widely different from each other in situation and circumstances, are exactly such as might have been expected ; whilst, at the same time, we may expect among all the varieties of religious forms and opi nions, some features of resemblance to connect them all with primeval tradition.
We do not, however, affirm that the mind, en lightened by general knowledge, would not arrive, even without the aid of revelation or tradition, at some idea of a first cause, or presiding principle. It seems next to impossible for a mind which has formed a notion of power and causation, (and these surely are among the first and strongest impressions which the mind receives, and are perfectly plain to all but those who attempt to account for them,) not to conceive of a power superior to that of man, as necessary for the production and arrangement of' the visible phenomena of nature. The mind, in deed, is marvellously backward to form right con ceptions on this subject ; for though the invisible things of God are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, yet men changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds and to four footed beasts and creeping things. Rom. i. 20. But the question is not whether men could acquire right conceptions of God, but whether they could acquire, by unaid ed reason, any conception of him at all : and we cannot but think that a mind, though ever so little improved in general knowledge, must entertain some idea of a first cause, on contemplating the vi sible universe.
It. is natural for a child when he looks on the vi sible heavens to ask, who made these things ? He never supposes that they exist there without a cause: the first impression of unsophisticated nature is, that they have been produced ; and the next step in time process of reasoning is, that they have been produced by some being possessed of power infi nitely superior to that of man. Such, we think, would be the first impressions of the mind of man with regard to visible phenomena. But we arc not sure but, if he carried his reasoning the length of philosophizing, lie might reason himself out of these obvious impressions, and ascribe the whole to fate or chance ; or might suppose that they have existed, and will continue for ever to exist, as we now see them. We apprehend, then, that all the religious knowledge which the unenlightened mind could receive would never rise above superstition ; and they who affected a more liberal creed, or at tempted to establish a more liberal system, found no other way of emancipating themselves from what they saw to be prejudicial, than by setting aside the idea of an intelligent first cause, and thus abolishing all religious obligation.
Although, then, we do not deny that the natural reason of man affords some light, yet it is evidently insufficient either for direction or consolation. It presents objects through an obscure medium, which so completely distorts and alters their real propor tions, that, in many instances, it is little better than absolute darkness. Besides, whatever we may ad vance or admit as to the capacity of human reason for religious discoveries, rests entirely on theory and assumption ; for in no one instance can we af firm, that it has made a single discovery of this na ture. All the religious systems in the heathen world were evidently traditional : they are all con nected with each other by some striking features of superstition, which are inventions and not discove ries, the figments of human fancy, and not the off spring of reason; and whenever the heathens make any approach towards a rational creed, it will pro bably be nearer the truth to ascribe their knowledge to some borrowed light derived from tradition or revelation, than to regard it as the result of their own investigation. Believing that all mankind are descended from a common stock, we may naturally expect some vestiges of a common creed, in conse quence of traditional information. These resem blances and coincidences we observe in the sacri fices and rites of expiation, which were adopted by all nations. And farther, if we believe that the Bible gives the most ancient and the most accurate account of the primeval religion of men, and of the peopling of the earth, we may naturally expect to find a strong resemblance to the Scripture creed, among the various tribes of mankind, particularly in the earlier periods of the world. This resem blance can, in many instances, be distinctly traced. The history of the creation, for instance, as record ed by Moses, was adopted by all the nations of an tiquity. 1\legasthenes, who lived in the time of Se leucus Nicator, affirms that all the doctrines of the Greeks, respecting the creation of the world and the constitution of nature, were current among the Bramins in India, and the Jews in Syria. \Ve are inclined to think that Ovid must have had the sa cred volume before him, (the Septuagint transla tion, no doubt,) when he wrote his account of the creation. The coincidence is too striking to be ac cidental. Ile first describes the chaotic state of matter, before the Creator arranged it in its various forms ; the next step was to divide the heavens from the earth, and the earth from the waters : he then mentions fishes as the first living things of this world, and goes on to state the formation in the other creatures, till the work was crowned with man. in this account it is evident that the heathen poet has not only adopted the facts, but the order of the creation as given by the sacred historian ; and when we consider what follows about the war of the giants, the general corruption of mankind, the universal deluge, the preservation of Deucalion and Pyrrha, &c. &c. it is impossible to doubt that Ovid has borrowed directly from Moses. In this case the plagiarism seems fairly detected. At the same time, Ovid gives the general account which was current among both Greeks and Romans ; and therefore we have reason to conclude that they all borrowed from the same source. The imagination of the Greeks soon disguised the traditional ac counts which they had received of the early history of mankind, with the most extravagant fables, and converted the early history of religion into a sys tem of the most absurd mythology. They have done irreparable injury to ancient history by the mere circumstance of translating proper names, and then inventing a history to correspond with the translated meaning ; whilst the Egyptians rendered any religious knowledge which they possessed per fectly inaccessible by the veil of symbols and alle gories under which they concealed it. The only inventions of human reason in matters of religion have been to obscure what was plain, to mystify what was simple, and to degrade what was sublime, by unavailing attempts at explanation and refine ment.