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The importance of this doctrine, though few of these days will contradict it, compels us to some brief mention of ancient books and men, whereby it may appear that this truth is not one of sectarian discovery or adoption.

It is the assumed policy of a class of theologians to encourage a saying which the masses have neither curiosity nor learning to dispute, that the Romans, Greeks, Brahmins, Persians, Chinese, and others were, in the absence of Christianity, idolaters and worshippers of a plurality of gods.

Truly we cannot deny that in all nations there have been images of various features; nor shall we care to deny that there have been minds so base as to worship or pray to an image as a god. Nor shall we hesitate to agree that there have been men in all nations who knew almost nothing at all—a fact as clear to the intelligent of their generation as is any fact to us of modern times. Nevertheless we detect in these animadversions a tendency to exalt Christianity by dispraising the want of it, rather than by praising the possession of it.—As for idolaters, we must be allowed to say that when man first dreams of worship, be he never so barbarous, he is not an idolater. For before an image can be worshipped it must be created: and he that hews the block cannot imagine that the thing he is creating first created him, but he rather believes that he is creating an image of that by which he was himself created. Only time and teaching can make this image a god to the mind of any man; for first its origin must be forgotten.—We see there must be theists before there can be