424
Defense of an Essay, &c.
Aco.
But let us suppose that, up to the time of this act of great rebellion, they had not forsaken the true God for any false gods; admitting these to be the circumstances of the case, what is the weight of the inference in favor of the fact that each of these groups of rebels would teach their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, generation after generation, to worship the true God? They are rebels punished with a great curse for their rebellion. Such men, we know, do not "like to retain God in their knowledge." On what then are we to base the inference that their descendants, after the lapse of several hundred years, would still retain a knowledge of the true God? Look at those nations which, from their proximity to the chosen family, are men- tioned in the Scriptures, and what does the narrative tell us of their state? What is the state of the Canaanites, Hivites, &c.; of Sodoin and Gomorrah? To keep alive a knowledge of the true God upon the earth, Abraham is thus addressed by God: "Get thee out of thy country, and froin thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee." The reason of this command was, that even in this favored family, the true God had been forgotten, and the worship of false gods set up. “And Joshua said unto the people; Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor; and they served other gods." Josh. xxiv, 2.
Thus we perceive, where we have history to lead us, and are not left to inference, that by the time of Abraham, polytheism had become so prevalent, that to keep alive a knowledge of the true God, he must be separated from his country and his father's house, for there the plague had commenced. If we look too at the proneness of the chosen people to forsake Jehovah their God for strange gods, even after he had made bare His arm on their behalf, and led them out of Egypt through the Red Sea, we shall be convinced, that, with the
father and the vessel out of which he had been born into the post-diluvian world." Faber on Pagan Idolatry, Vol. III, p. 238.
In his first volume, having discussed at length, and with great learning and ability, "the common origination of the various systems of paganism," he sums up his opinion in these words: "Thus, so far as I can judge, it indis- putably appears, that the idolatry, by which all the various nations of the earth were infatuated, was a system originally invented at Babel under the auspices of Nimrod and his Cuthites, and afterwards in the progress of replenishing the world with inhabitants, by the various scattered members of his broken empire, carried off alike to the nearest and to the most remote countries of the globe. Such being the case, though the hypothesis of Mr. Bryant is certainly not affected by this circumstance, all those theories which would deduce the origin of pagan mythology either from Egypt or from Hindustan, er from any other country peopled after the dispersion from Babel, must, according to the Scrip-
ural account of the matter, fall to the ground. Ibid, Vol 1, p 78.