ideas. Had he called Jove the father of the world, no objection would have been taken to the epithet. It is a deviation from the ordinary mode of expression, perhaps without cause, but which might be made without guilt. And when he adds—
"Unlike the God of human error, thou
Requirest no prayers, or praises!"
he adopts the Epicurean idea, that the gods look with indifference upon the conduct of men, having placed their happiness in their virtue, and leaving their misery to correct their vices. Christians say that God needs no prayers, or praises. If he need them not, he requires them not;—for he cannot require what he does not need, Nor would they be of any value were they the result of any sense of duty. Where praise is not spontaneously offered, it is better repressed. Unless the heart beat in unison with the tongue, the prayer ought to be disregarded, and the praise is hypocrisy. Besides it would be a strange assumption to single out the Christian deity, as the god of human error, when the earth abounds both with false gods, and with false ideas of the divinity. The catholic, who deems the protestants entertain erroneous notions of the Supreme Being, must think the protestant deity
