SECTION IV. THE WORSHIP OF GOD. RELIGENTEM ESSE OPORTET, RELIGIOSUM NEFAS. Incerti Autoris apud AUL. GELL. It is of the last importance to season the paffions of a child with Devotion, which feldom dies in a mind that has received an early tincture of it. Though it may seem extinguished for a while by the cares of the world, the heats of youth, or the allurements of vice, it generally breaks out and difcovers itself again, as foon as difcretion, confideration, age, or misfortunes have brought the man to himself. The fire may be covered and overlaid, but cannot be entirely quenched and fmothered. A ftate of temperance, fobriety, and justice, without devotion, is a cold, lifeless, infipid condition of virtue; and is rather to be ftyled Philosophy than Religion. Devotion opens the mind to great conceptions, and fills it with more fublime ideas than any that are to be met with in the moft II. When in the fultry glebe I faint, Tho' in the paths of death I tread, Tho' in a bare and rugged way, Through devious lonely wilds I ftray, SECTION SECTION IV. THE WORSHIP OF GOD. RELIGENTEM ESSE OPORTET, RELIGIOSUM NEFAS. Incerti Autoris apud AUL. GELL. IT is of the last importance to season the paffions of a child with Devotion, which feldom dies in a mind that has received an early tincture of it. Though it may seem extinguished for a while by the cares of the world, the heats of youth, or the allurements of vice, it generally breaks out and discovers itself again, as soon as difcretion, confideration, age, or misfortunes have brought the man to himself. The fire may be covered and overlaid, but cannot be entirely quenched and fmothered. A state of temperance, fobriety, and juftice, without devotion, is a cold, lifeless, infipid condition of virtue; and is rather to be ftyled Philofophy than Religion. Devotion opens the mind to great conceptions, and fills it with more fublime ideas than any that are to be met with in the moft moft exalted science; and at the fame time warms and agitates the foul more than senfual pleasure. It has been observed by fome writers, that man is more diftinguished from the animal world by Devotion than by Reason, as feveral brute creatures difcover in their actions fomething like a faint glimmering of reason, though they betray in no fingle circumftance of their behaviour any thing that bears the least affinity to devotion. It is certain, the propenfity of the mind to religious worship, the natural tendency of the foul to fly to fome fuperior Being for fuccour in dangers and diftreffes, the gratitude to an invifible Superintendent, which arifes in us upon receiving any extraordinary and unexpected good fortune, the acts of love and admiration with which the thoughts of men are fo wonderfully tranfported in meditating upon the Divine perfections, and the univerfal concurrence of all the nations under heaven, in the great article of adoration, plainly fhew that devotion or religious worship must be the effect of a tradition from fome firft founder founder of mankind, or that it is conformable to the natural light of reafon, or that it proceeds from an instinct implanted in the foul itself. For my part, I look upon all these to be the concurrent causes; but whichever of them shall be affigned as the principle of Divine Worship, it manifeftly points to a Supreme Being, as the first author of it. I may take some other opportunity of confidering those particular forms and methods of devotion, which are taught us by Christianity; but I shall here observe into what errors even this Divine Principle may fometimes lead us, when it is not moderated by that right reason, which was given us as the guide of all our actions. The two great errors, into which a miftaken devotion may betray us, are Enthufiasm and Superftition. There is not a more melancholy object than a man, who has his head turned with religious enthufiafm. A perfon that is crazed, though with pride or malice, is a fight very mortifying to human nature: but when the diftemper arifes from any |