Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/32

 20 On the defcent of the American Indians from tie Jews..

And alfo when we refieft, that the very learned, and moft polite of the an cient Romans, believed (not by any new-invented mythology of their own) that the fun was drawn round the earth in a chariot. Their philofophic fy- ftem was not very diffimilar to that of the wild Americans -, for Cicero tells us, Epicurus thought the fun to be lefs than it appeared to the eye. And. Lucretius fays, 'Tantillus ilk fol, " a diminutive thing." And, if the Ifrael- kes had not at one time thought the fun a. portable god, they would not have thought of a chariot for it. This they derived from the neighbouring heathen \ for we are told, that they had an houfe of the fun, where they danced in honour of him, in circuits, and had confecrated fpherical figures - t. and that they, likewife, built a temple to it ; for " they purified and fanfti- fied themfelves in the gardens, behind the houfe, or temple of Achad." In Ifa. xvii. 8, we find they had fun-images, which the Hebrews called chum- manim y made to reprefent the fun, or for the honour and worfhip of it : and the Egyptians met yearly to worfhip in the temple of Beth-Shemefh, a houfe dedicated to the fun. Moil part of the old heathens adored all the celeftial orbs, efpecially the fun ; probably they firfl imagined its enlivening rays im mediately JiTued from the holy fire, light, and fpirit, who either refided in^. or was the identical fun. That idolatrous ceremony of the Jews., Jofiah utterly abolifhed about 640 years before our chriftian asra. The facred text fays, " He took away the horfes, which the kings of Judah had given to the fun, and he burned the chariots of the fun with fire." At Rhodes,, a neighbouring ifland to Judsea, they confecrated chariots to the fun, on acr count of his glorious fplendour and benign qualities. Macrobius tells us^ that the Aflyrians worfhipped Adad, or Achad, an idol of the fun ; and Strabo acquaints us, the Arabians paid divine homage to the fun, &c. But the Indian Americans pay only a civil regard to the fun : and- the more in telligent fort of them believe, that all the luminaries of the heavens are moved by the ftrong fixt laws of the great Author of nature,

In 2 Kings xvii. 30, we read that the men of Babylon built Succoth-Bs- noth, " tents for young women ;" having confecrated a temple to Venus,, they fixed tents round it, where young women proftituted themfelves in ho nour of the goddefs. Herodotus, and other authors, are alfo fufficient witnefies on this point. Now, were the Amercains originally heathens, cr not of Ifrael, when they wandered there from captivity, in queft of'

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