We shall therefore a little further inquire into it, and what the Judgments of the soberest men anciently were of it; the rather that a learned Author of our own seems unwilling to own that Notion of it which we have hitherto out of Plutarch and others contended for; who though he have freed it from that gloss which the late Ages have put upon it, yet he may seem to have too strictly confined it to a Cowardly Worship of the ancient Gentile Daemons, as if Superstition and Polytheism were indeed the same thing, whereas Polytheism or Daemon-worship is but one branch of it, which was partly observed by the learned Casaubon in his Notes upon that Chapter of Theophrastus περὶ δεισιδαιμονίας, when it is described to be δειλία πρὸς τὸ δαιμόνιον, which he thus interprets, Theophrastus voce δαιμόνιον et Deos et Daemones complexus est, et quicquid divinitatis esse particeps malesana putavit antiquitas. And in this sense it was truly observed by Petronius Arbiter,
Primus in orbe Deos fecit Timor—
The whole progeny of the ancient Daemons, at least in the Minds of the Vulgar, sprung out of Fear, and were supported by it: though notwithstanding, this Fear, when in a Being void of all true sense of Divine goodness, hath not escaped the censure of Superstition in Varro’s judgment, whose Maxim it was, as S. Austin tells us, Deum a religioso vereri, a superstitioso timeri: which distinction Servius seems to have made use of in his Comment upon Virgil, Aeneid 6, where the Poet describing the torments of the wicked in hell, he runs out into an Allegoricall exposition of all, it may be too much in favour of Lucretius, whom he there magnifies. His words are these, Ipse etiam Lucretius dicit per eos super quos jamjam casurus imminet lapis, Superstitiosos significare, qui inaniter semper verentur, et de Diis et Cœlo et locis superioribus male opinantur; nam Religiosi sunt qui per reverentiam timent.
But that we may the more fully unfold the Nature of this πάθος, and the effects of it, which are not alwaies of one sort, we shall first premise something concerning the Rise of it.
The Common Notions of a Deity, strongly rooted in Mens Souls, and meeting with the Apprehensions of Guiltiness, are very apt to excite the Servile fear: and when men love their own filthy lusts, that they may spare them, they are presently apt to contrive some other waies of appeasing the Deity and compounding with it. Unhallowed minds, that have no inward foundation of true Holiness to fix themselves upon, are easily shaken and tossed from all inward peace and tranquillity; and as the thoughts of some Supreme power above them seize upon them, so they are struck with the lightning thereof into inward affrightments, which are further encreas’d by a vulgar observation of those strange, stupendious, and terrifying Effects in Nature, whereof they can give no certain reason, as Earthquakes, Thundrings, and Lightnings, blazing Comets and other Meteors of a like Nature, which are apt to terrifie those especially who are already unsetled and Chased with an inward sense of guilt, and, as Seneca speaks, inevitabilem metum ut supra nos aliquid timeremus incutiunt. Petronius Arbiter hath well described this business for us,
Primus in orbe Deos fecit Timor, ardua cœlo
Fulmina cum caderent, discussaque moenia flammis,
Atque ictus flagraret Athos—
From hence it was that the Libri fulgurales of the Romanes, and other such volumes of Superstition, swelled so much, and that the pulvinaria Deorum were so often frequented, as will easily appear to any one a little conversant in Livy, who everywhere sets forth this Devotion so largely, as if he himself had been too passionately in love with it.
And though as the Events in Nature began sometimes to be found out better by a discovery of their immediate Natural Causes, so some particular pieces of Superstitious Customs were antiquated and grown out of date (as is well observ’d concerning those Charms and Februations anciently in use upon the appearing of an Eclipse, and some others) yet often affrights and horrours were not so easily abated, while they were unacquainted with the Deity, and with the other mysterious events in Nature, which begot those Furies and unlucky Empusas ἀλάστορας καὶ παλαμναίους δαίμονας, in the weak minds of men. To all which we may adde the frequent Spectres and frightfull Apparitions of Ghosts and Mormos: all which extorted such a kind of Worship from them as was most correspondent to such Causes of it. And those Rites and Ceremonies which were begotten by Superstition, were again the unhappy Nurses of it, such as are well described by Plutarch in his De defect. Oracul., Ἑορταὶ καὶ θυσίαι, ὥσπερ ἡμέραι ἀποφράδες, καὶ σκυθρωπαί, ἐν αἷς ὠμοφαγίας, &c. Feasts and Sacrifices, as likewise observations of unlucky and fatall dayes, celebrated with eating of raw things, lacerations, fastings, and howlings, and many times filthy Speeches in their sacred rites, and frantick behaviour.