angels, the permitted agents of
such evil as it was his will should be inflicted upon, or suffered by,
the children of men. This proposition comprehends, of course, the
acknowledgment of the truth of miracles during this early period, by
which the ordinary laws of nature were occasionally suspended, and
recognises the existence in the spiritual world of the two grand
divisions of angels and devils, severally exercising their powers
according to the commission or permission of the Ruler of the universe.

Secondly, wise men have thought and argued that the idols of the heathen
were actually fiends, or, rather, that these enemies of mankind had
power to assume the shape and appearance of those feeble deities, and to
give a certain degree of countenance to the faith of the worshippers, by
working seeming miracles, and returning, by their priests or their
oracles, responses which "palter'd in a double sense" with the deluded
persons who consulted them. Most of the fathers of the Christian Church
have intimated such an opinion. This doctrine has the advantage of
affording, to a certain extent, a confirmation of many miracles related
in pagan or classical history, which are thus ascribed to the agency of
evil spirits. It corresponds also with the texts of Scripture which
declare that the gods of the heathen are all devils and evil spirits;
and the idols of Egypt are classed, as in Isaiah, chap. xix. ver. 2,
with charmers, those who have familiar spirits, and with wizards. But
whatever license it may be supposed was permitted to the evil spirits of
that period--and although, undoubtedly, men owned the sway of deities
who were, in fact, but personifications of certain evil passions of
humanity, as, for example, in their sacrifices to Venus, to Bacchus, to
Mars, &c., and therefore might be said, in one sense, to worship evil
spirits--we cannot, in reason, suppose that every one, or the thousandth
part of the innumerable idols worshipped among the heathen, was endowed
with supernatural power; it is clear that the greater number fell under
the description applied to them in another passage of Scripture, in
which the part of the tree burned in the fire for domestic purposes is
treated as of the same power and estimation as that carved into an
image, and preferred for Gentile homage. This striking passage, in which
the impotence of the senseless block, and the brutish ignorance of the
worshipper, whose object of adoration is the work