served the purpose of the Christian priests, to enable them to run down the religion of the ancients, and, in exposing its absurdities, to contrast it disadvantageously with their own, it has been, and continues to be, sedulously inculcated, in every public and private seminary. The generality of schoolmasters know no better; they teach what they have learned and what they believe. But, as this rank of men increase in talent and learning, this is gradually wearing away.
Although the pretended worship of Heroes appears at first sight plausible, very little depth of thought or learning is requisite to discover that it has not much foundation in truth. It was not in the infant state of society, that men were worshiped; it was not, on the contrary, until they arrived at a very high and advanced state of civilization. It was not Moses, Zoroaster, Confucius, Socrates, Solon, Lycurgus, Plato, Pythagoras, or Numa, that were objects of worship; the benefactors of mankind in all ages have been oftener persecuted than worshiped. No, divine honours (if such they can be called) were reserved for Alexander of Macedon, the drunkard, for Augustus Cæsar, the hypocrite, or Heliogabalus, the lunatic. A species of civil adoration, despised by all persons of common understanding, and essentially different from the worship of the Supreme Being, was paid to them. It was the vice of the moment, and soon passed away. How absurd to suppose that the elegant and enlightened Athenian philosopher could worship Hercules, because he killed a lion or cleaned a stable! Or Bacchus, because he made wine or got drunk! Besides, these deified heroes can hardly be called Gods in any sense. They were more like the Christian Saints. Thus we have Divus Augustus, and Divus Paulus, and Divus Petrus. Their nature has been altogether misunderstood; it will afterward be explained.
3. After a life of the most painful and laborious research, Mr. Bryant’s opinion is, that all the various religions terminated in the worship of the Sun. He commences his work by shewing, from a great variety of etymological proofs, that all the names of the Deities were derived or compounded from some word which originally meant the Sun. Notwithstanding the ridicule which has been thrown upon etymological inquiries, in consequence of the want of fixed rules, or of the absurd length to which some persons have carried them, yet I am quite certain it must, in a great measure, be from etymology at last that we must recover the lost learning of antiquity.
Macrobius[1] says, that in Thrace they worship the Sun or Solis Liber, calling him Sebadius; and from the Orphic poetry we learn that all the Gods were one:
Diodorus Siculus says, that it was the belief of the ancients that Osiris, Serapis, Dionusos, Pluto, Jupiter, and Pan, were all one.[3]
Ausonius represents all the deities to be included under the term Dionusos.[4]
Sometimes Pan[5] was called the God of all, sometimes Jupiter.[6]
Nonnus also states, that all the different Gods, whatever might be their names, Hercules, Ammon, Apollo, or Mithra, centred in the Sun.
Mr. Selden says, whether they be called Osiris, or Omphis, or Nilus, or Siris, or by any other name, they all centre in the Sun, the most ancient deity of the nations.[7]
Basnage[8] says, that Osiris, that famous God of the Egyptians, was the Sun, or rather the Sun was the emblem of the beneficent God Osiris.
