superior existence. But when the gods of their heaven were little better
than their own evil qualities, exalted to the sky to be thence reflected
back upon them invested with Olympian charms and splendors, their ideas of
deity would evidently combine with the causes which made it impossible for
them to conceive a perfect model for human excellence. See the mighty
labor of human depravity to confirm its dominion! It would translate
itself to heaven, and usurp divinity, in order to come down thence with a
sanction for man to be wicked,--in order, by a falsification of the
qualities of the Supreme Nature, to preclude his forming the true idea of
what would be perfect rectitude in his own.

A system which could thus associate all the modes of turpitude with the
most lofty and illustrious forms of existence, would go far toward
vitiating essentially the entire theory of moral good and evil. And it
would in a great measure defraud of their practical efficacy any just
principles that might, after all, maintain their place in the convictions
of the understanding, and assert at times their claim with a voice which
not even all this ruination could silence.

But, how small was the number of pure moral principles, (if indeed any,)
that among the people of the heathen nations _did_ maintain themselves in
the convictions of the understanding. The privation of divine light gave
full freedom, if there was any disposition to take such license, for every
perverse speculation which could operate toward abolishing those
principles in the natural reason of the species. What disposition there
would be to take it may be imagined, when the abolishing of those
principles was evidently to be also the destruction of all intrinsic
authority in the practical rules founded on them, which destruction would
confer an exemption infinitely desirable. The freedom for such thinking
would infallibly be taken, in its utmost extent; and in fact the