respect, seminaries of learning are of the utmost advantage, and
attended with the most happy effects. Moreover, the passions are
attended with correspondent commotions in animal nature, and,
therefore, the real temper will, of course, be discovered by the
countenance, the gesture, and the voice. Here I might run into a
pleasing enumeration of many instances of this; but, fearing that I
have already trespassed upon your patience, shall desist. Permit me,
however unusual, to close with a wish. May none of those unruly
passions ever captivate any of my audience."



_An Attempt to search the Origin of Idolatry._

"It is altogether impossible to fix exactly the period when idolatry
took its rise. Adam, coming immediately from the hands of God, had
experienced too many manifestations of his power and goodness to be
unacquainted with him, and must have preserved the purest idea of him
in his own family, which, most probably, continued in the branch of
Seth till the deluge. The posterity of Cain, on the contrary (the pure
idea of God gradually wearing away, and by loose men being connected
with sense), fell into idolatry, and every other crime, which brought
on the deluge; a period about which Moses has said but little, and
from what he has said we can draw no just conclusion with respect to
the idolatry of those times.

"A certain author, being persuaded that idolatry did not take its rise
till after the deluge, gives a very singular account of its origin.
According to him, atheism had spread itself over the world. This
disposition of mind, says he, is the capital crime. Atheists are much