This religion was false, and this worship mistaken; yet the principle of it was laudable, and founded in nature; the stream was corrupted, but the fountain was pure. Man, assisted only by his own light, sees nothing beyond the present moment. Futurity is to him an abyss invisible to the most keen, the most piercing sagacity, and exhibits nothing on which he may with certainty fix his views, or form his resolutions. He is equally feeble and impotent with regard to the execution of his designs. He is sensible, that he is dependent entirely on a Supreme Power, that disposes all events with absolute authority, and which, in spite of his utmost efforts, and of the wisdom of the best concerted schemes, by raising only the smallest obstacles and slightest disappointments, renders it impossible for him to execute his measures.
This obscurity and weakness oblige him to have recourse to a superior knowledge and power: he is forced, both by his immediate wants, and the strong desire he has to succeed in all his undertakings, to address that Being who he is sensible has reserved to himself alone the knowledge of futurity, and the power of disposing it as he sees fitting. He accordingly directs prayers, makes vows, and offers sacrifices, to prevail, if possible, with the Deity, to reveal himself, either in dreams, in oracles, or other signs which may manifest his will; fully convinced that nothing can happen but by the divine appointment; and that it is a man's greatest interest to know this supreme will, in order to conform his actions to it.
This religious principle of dependence on, and veneration of, the Supreme Being, is natural to man: it is imprinted deep in his heart; he is reminded of it, by the inward sense of his extreme indigence, and by all the objects which surround him; [pg xviii] and it may be affirmed, that this perpetual recourse to the Deity, is one of the principal foundations of religion and the strongest band by which man is united to his Creator.
Those who were so happy as to know the true God, and were chosen to be his peculiar people, never failed to address him in all their wants and doubts, in order to obtain his succour, and to know his will. He accordingly vouchsafed to reveal himself to them; to conduct them by apparitions, dreams, oracles, and prophecies; and to protect them by miracles of the most astonishing kind.
But those who were so blind as to substitute falsehood in the place of truth, directed themselves, for the like aid, to fictitious and deceitful deities, who were not able to answer their expectations, nor recompense the homage that mortals paid them, any otherwise than by error and illusion, and a fraudulent imitation of the conduct of the true God.
Hence arose the vain observation of dreams, which, from a superstitious credulity, they mistook for salutary warnings from Heaven; those obscure and equivocal answers of oracles, beneath whose veil the spirits of darkness concealed their ignorance; and, by a studied ambiguity, reserved to themselves an evasion or subterfuge, whatever might be the event. To this are owing the prognostics with regard to futurity, which men fancied they should find in the entrails of beasts, in the flight and singing of birds, in the aspect of the planets, in fortuitous accidents, and in the caprice of chance; those dreadful prodigies that filled a whole nation with terror, and which, it was believed, nothing could expiate but mournful ceremonies, and even sometimes the effusion of human blood: in fine, those black inventions of magic, those delusions, enchantments, sorceries, invocations of ghosts, and many other kinds of divination.
All I have here related was a received usage, observed by the heathen nations in general; and this usage was founded on the principles of that religion of which I have given a short account. We have a signal proof of this in that passage of the Cyropædia,[48] where Cambyses, the father of Cyrus, gives that young prince such noble instructions; instructions admirably well adapted to form the great captain, and great king. He exhorts him, above all things, to pay the highest reverence to the gods; and not to undertake any enterprise, whether important or inconsiderable, without first calling upon and consulting them; he enjoins him to honour the priests and augurs, as [pg xix] being their ministers and the interpreters of their will, but yet not to trust or abandon himself so implicitly and blindly to them, as not, by his own application, to learn every thing relating to the science of divination, of auguries and auspices. The reason which he gives for the subordination and dependence in which kings ought to live with regard to the gods, and the benefit derived from consulting them in all things, is this: How clear-sighted soever mankind may be in the ordinary course of affairs, their views are always very narrow and bounded with regard to futurity; whereas the Deity, at a single glance, takes in all ages and events. “As the gods,” says Cambyses to his son, “are eternal, they know equally all things, past, present, and to come. With regard to the mortals who address them, they give salutary counsels to those whom they are pleased to favour, that they may not be ignorant of what things they ought, or ought not, to undertake. If it is observed, that the deities do not give the like counsels to all men; we are not to wonder at it, since no necessity obliges them to attend to the welfare of those persons on whom they do not vouchsafe to confer their favour.”
Such was the doctrine of the most learned and most enlightened nations, with respect to the different kinds of divination; and it is no wonder that the authors who wrote the history of those nations, thought it incumbent on them to give an exact detail of such particulars as constituted part of their religion and worship, and was frequently in a manner the soul of their deliberations, and the standard of their conduct. I therefore was of opinion, for the same reason, that it would not be proper for me to omit entirely, in the ensuing history, what relates to this subject, though I have however retrenched a great part of it.
Archbishop Usher is my usual guide in chronology. In the history of the Carthaginians I commonly set down four æras: The year from the creation of the world, which, for brevity's sake, I mark thus, A.M.; those of the foundation of Carthage and Rome; and lastly, the year before the birth of our Saviour, which I suppose to be the 4004th year of the world; wherein I follow Usher and others, though they suppose it to be four years earlier.
We shall now proceed to give the reader the proper preliminary information concerning this Work, according to the order in which it is executed.