Page:Four Dissertations - David Hume (1757).djvu/65

 when every strain of flattery has been exhausted towards arbitrary princes; when every human quality has been applauded to the utmost; their servile courtiers represent them, at last, as real divinities, and point them out to the people as objects of adoration. How much more natural, therefore, is it, that a limited deity, who at first is supposed only the immediate author of the particular goods and ills in life, should in the end be represented as sovereign maker and modifier of the universe?

where this notion of a supreme deity is already established; tho' it ought naturally to lessen every other worship, and abase every object of reverence, yet if a nation has entertained the opinion of a subordinate tutelar divinity, faint, or angel; their addresses to that being gradually rise upon them, and encroach on the adoration due to their supreme deity. The virgin Mary, ere checkt by the reformation, had proceeded, from being merely a good woman to usurp many attributes of the Almighty :