another, to oblige it to receive their particular creeds; which the old
men who regulated them, declared would infallibly win them the favor of
their tutelary deities: thus very often to conciliate their favor, the
victorious party immolated on the altars of their gods, the bodies of
their unhappy captives; frequently they carried their savage barbarity
the length of exterminating whole nations, who happened to worship gods
different from their own: thus it frequently happened, that the friends
of the serpent, when victorious, covered his altars with the mangled
carcases of the worshippers of the stone, whom the fortune of war had
placed in their hands: such were the unformed, the precarious elements
of which rude nations every where availed themselves to compose their
superstitions: they were always a system of conduct invented by
imagination: conceived in ignorance, organized in misfortune, to render
the unknown powers, to whom they believed nature was submitted, either
favorable to their views, or to, induce them to cease those afflictions,
which natural causes, for the wisest purposes, were continually heaping
upon them; thus some irascible, at the same time placable being, was
always chosen for the basis of the adopted superstition; it was upon
these puerile tenets, upon these absurd notions, that the old men or the
priests rested their doctrines; founded their rights; established their
authority: it was to render these fanciful beings friendly to the race
of man, that they erected, temples, raised altars, loaded them with
wealth; in short, it was from such rude foundations, that arose the
magnificent structure of superstition; under which man trembled for
thousands of years: which governed the condition of society, which
determined the actions of the people, gave the tone to the character,
deluged the earth with blood, for such a long series of ages. But
although these superstitions were originally invented by savages, they
still have the power of regulating the fate of many civilized nations,
who are not less tenacious of their chimeras, than their rude