Such
a stupidity or wantonness had seized upon the most raised wits that it
might be doubted whether the philosophers or the owls of Athens
were the quicker sighted. But then for religion; what prodigious,
monstrous, misshapen births has the reason of fallen man produced!
It is now almost six thousand years that far the greater part of the
world has had no other religion but idolatry: and idolatry certainly
is the first-born of folly, the great and leading paradox, nay, the
very abridgment and sum total of all absurdities. For is it not
strange that a rational man should worship an ox, nay, the image of an
ox? That he should fawn upon his dog? Bow himself before a cat? Adore
leeks and garlic, and shed penitential tears at the smell of a deified
onion? Yet so did the Egyptians, once the famed masters of all arts
and learning. And to go a little further, we have yet a stronger
instance in Isaiah, "A man hews him down a tree in the wood, and a
part of it he burns, with the residue thereof he maketh a god." With
one part he furnishes his chimney, with the other his chapel. A
strange thing that the fire must first consume this part and then burn
incense to that.
Pages:
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250