pposite kind.
I ground my inference specifically and directly on the fact, that these
writers are full, and copious, and explicit, and cogent on the nature
and duty of prayer and supplications, as well for public as for private
blessings; and of intercessions by one Christian for another, and for
the whole race of mankind no less than for mercy on himself; and yet
though openings of every kind palpably offered themselves for a natural
introduction of the subject, there is in no one single instance any
reference or allusion to the {97} invocation of saint or angel, as a
practice either approved or even known.

When indeed I call to mind the general tendency of the natural man to
multiply to himself the objects of religious worship, and to create, by
the help of superstition, and the delusive workings of the imagination,
a variety of unearthly beings whose wrath he must appease, or whose
favour he may conciliate; when I reflect how great is the temptation in
unenlightened or fraudulent teachers to accommodate the dictates of
truth to the prejudices and desires of those whom they instruct, my
wonder is rather that Christianity was so long preserved pure and
uncontaminated in this respect, than that corruptions should gradually
and stealthily have mingled themselves with the simplicity of Gospel
worship. That tendency is plainly evinced by the history of every nation
under heaven: Greek and Barbarian, Egyptian and Scythian, would have
their gods many, and their lords many. From one they would look for one
good; on another they would depend for a different benefit, in mind,
body, and estate. Some were of the highest grade, and to be worshipped
with supreme honours; others were of a lower rank, to whom an inferior
homage was addressed; whilst a third class held a sort of middle place,
and were approached with reverence as much above the least, as it fell
short of the greatest. In the heathen world you will find exact types of
the dulia, the hyperdulia, and the latria, with which unhappily the
practical theology of modern Christian Rome is burdened. Indeed, my
wonder is, that under the Christian dispensation, when the household and
local gods, the heathen's tutelary deities, and the genii, had been
dislodged by the light of the Gospel, saints and angels had not at a
much {98} earlier period been forced by superstition to occupy their
room.

We shall be led to refer to some passages in the earliest Christian
writers, especial