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El beneficia in egentissimos quosqae prsecipuS conferens , Arte divina medendi Sibi ipse , cura Dei Eregit monumentum aere perennius /'
Quinetiam Maria , praecedentisconjux , religione efc domestica fortitudine ditata , filii et filiae cordi carissima , eheu ! mortua est . llle obo A . D . 1796 , set . 42 ; Ilia ob . 181 O , set . 49 . Mors ultima linea rerum est ; Gratia autern Dei , aeterna vita *
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The Nonconformist . No . IV . On the general Prevalence of Superstition . T % / TAN in an uncivilized state of MAN in an uncivilized state of
society is always addicted to idolatry or superstition . In the infancy of a people , idolatry has generally been the prevailing religion ; and whenever a nation has been
induced to relinquish its idolatrous practices , an anxiety has usually been evinced for the introduction of something that should be cognizable by the senses , and not dependent on reason alone for its reception . Hence the origin of ritual observances , and
the prevailing attachment to a religion of splendid ceremony , in preference to one which inculcates moral duty , and the silent worship of the heart . From the beneficent character of the Deity , it is reasonable to suppose that our first parents were either ushered into the world with an intuitive
knowledge of their duty and interests - or that they were immediately instructed therein by a special messenger from heaven . Thus informed , it was not likely that they or their descendants would soon degenerate into idolatry . * Accordingly , we have no account in
* The great a ^ e which Antediluvians attained , very much tended to preserve the knowledge of the true God among-them . Adam lived 930 years , and Methuselah , who spent 243 years of his long * life contemporary with Adam , lived
also 600 years with Noah , the last of the old world . It is impossible , therefore , that Noah and his three sons and their wives , who went with him into the ark , should not have been informed of the proper Unity of God , and of the duty and destination of man .
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the sacred history of ^ any such falling off from the worship of the true Godr before , or for a long period after the deluge . It appears ., however , that idolatry had obtained a considerable
establishment in the world in the time of Terah , who was the father of Abraham , and was born within about £ 80 years after the flood . For we are expressly told in Scripture that Terah served other gods ; and from the language of Joshua , who called upon the
people of Israel saying , " Choose you this day whom ye will serve ; whether the God which your fathers served , or the gods of the Amorites , in whose land ye dwell , 11 * it is evident that idolatry had long been the established religion of the Amorites .
These people resided iti a mountainous district , lying west of the Dead Sea , and it is remarkable that this was the very country in which Terah and Abraham originally resided . Some commentators have ., indeed , asserted that Abraham was expelled from his own country for his aversion to that
gross idolatry which prevailed in it ; and Josephus tells us * that this patriarch was the first person who openly taught the doctrine of the Unity of God , and that , on this account , the inhabitants of Chaldearose up against him , and that he fled to the land of Canaan to avoid their outrage .
It seems to me very extraordinary , that the Sacred Writers should have given no historical account of the establishment of idolatry any where , for many ages after the flood , because , from the solemn denunciations of the
servants of God , against this folly and impiety , andfrom other circumstances , we have reason to believe that , in the time of Moses , idolatry had overspread the gleatest part of the known world , and that the speciea of idolatry which mankind first fell into , was the adoration of the sun , of the moon , and
© f some other of the heavenly bodies . ' * If , " says Moses , ** there be found among you man or woman that hath served other gods , and worshiped them , either the sun or moon or any of the host of heaven , then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman unto thy gates , and » h& 1 t stone them * Joshna xxiv . 15 . f Antiq , Book i . Chap . vii .
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260 On the general Prevalence of Superstition
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1818, page 260, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2475/page/36/
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