Page:Four Dissertations - David Hume (1757).djvu/66

 God and St. Nicholas go hand in hand, in all the prayers and petitions of the Muscovites.

the deity, who, from love, converted himself into a bull, in order to carry off Europa; and who, from ambition, dethroned his father, Saturn, became the Optimus Maximus of the heathens. Thus, notwithstanding the sublime ideas suggested by Moses and the inspired writers, many vulgar Jews seem still to have conceived the supreme Being as a mere topical deity or national protector.

than relinquish this propensity to adulation, religionists, in all ages, have involved themselves in the greatest absurdities and contradictions.

, in one passage, calls Oceanus and Tethys the original parents of all things, con-