account of circumstances, which had then become partially obscured by time, and abused by superstition. The formless watery Chaos, and the Etherial substance of the heavens, enfolding and passing over its surface as a mighty wind, are the first principles both of the sacred and profane cosmogonies. By Moses they are reclaimed, as the materials created by the immediate agency of a superior Almighty Power: but Heathenism was a Pantheistic system, and by the Gentiles, they were regarded as two primeval principles of the nature of Male and Female, as Mind and Matter, which had independently existed, of themselves, from all eternity; and, which before the reorganization of a new world, lay motionless, as a watery Chaos, boundless and without form, over which the Ether hung in darkness, as the ancient night, or Erebus of the poets; but which, upon the reorganization of the world, were held to constitute, in mystic

union, the great Hermaphroditic deity of the Heathens, the One, the Universe itself.

The first operation which occurred according to the Sacred historian, was, "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters; and God said, Let there be Light, and there was Light." But according to the heathen accounts, from the dark Ether, which lay motionless above the Chaos, the Light sprung forth; and the Chaos assumed under its plastic Power, the form of an Egg, or Globe. This light was the Brahma, Phanes, Horus, Phthah, or Mithras, of the Heathens. And it has been well suggested, by many of the old writers, that the meaning of the Hebrew passage is, that God caused the overhanging Ether, or mixture of all the Etherial

* Erebus signifies Evening and Mixture; and is so applied iu Sanchoniatho: and, indeed, it signified the dark etherial mixture in all the Heathen Theologists.

elements to assume a motion, circulating round the chaotic mass, and that from this motion, the Light was not created, but beamed forth; and was used by the Creator as the material instrument, by which his subsequent operations were carried into execution, and the earth arranged in all its forms and beauty.

We are then instructed, that in the Heavens was set a tabernacle for the sun, or solar fluid, from which it thenceforth proceeded as from a centre. In the Heathen accounts, the Phanes, who had hitherto appeared but in the character of Light, becomes the Sun, the soul, and ruler of the world; which, while the ancient Ether was passed over, according to some systems, in silent meditation, was the great object of the Heathen worship, and was venerated in the triple capacity of Fire at its orb, of Light proceeding from it, and of Spirit, or Ether,

returning to it.* And hence the Phanes appears both as Light and as the Triad.

Such was the original system of the Heathens: nor was it altogether a vain

imagination for that, which they wor

:

shipped as their triad, was but the type, the visible sign, by which things invisible were conveyed. It is, indeed, manifest from the Old Testament, and particularly from the original Hebrew, that the Persons of the Holy Trinity are constantly shadowed forth, physically, by the same natural powers, which constituted the triad of the Gentiles; and

As I have elsewhere, in a Metaphysical Inquiry, examined at large the Philosophy involved in this hypothesis, which was revived and maintained by Hutchinson in the last century, it is unnecessary for me here further to advert to that part of the subject. But see his very curious observations on the Triad of the Gentiles, and the Cherubim, in which he deduced, as it were à priori from Scripture, tenets very similar to those here obtained by Induction.

spiritually, not as the mere attributes, or faculties of a supreme mind, as represented in the Heathen triads, but as distinct persons, claiming such peculiar attributes, or respectively condescending, in the covenant of grace, to address themselves to such faculties of man. The FATHER is continually typified as a Fire, accepting the atonement and sacrifices, consuming and punishing the guilty, as the Lord of all power, and might, and justice, the fountain of Divinity, approached and known to us only through the mediation of the Son,-the Son as Light, as a Mediator, and a Teacher, enlightening the understanding, addressing himself more particularly to the Intellect, pointing out the distinctions of good and evil-the SPIRIT, as Spirit, or Air, a rushing mighty Wind, operating upon the affections, feelings, or emotions. We are commanded by the Christian faith to look to the Son for knowledge, to obey his instructions, and to accept the conditions of