Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/41

 Their religious cherubic emblems. 29-

Induced the ancients by degrees, to divide them, and make images of the divine perfons, powers, and actions, which they typified, and to efteem them gods. They confecrated the bull's head to the fire, the lion's to light, and the eagle's to the air, which they worfhipped as gods. And, in pro portion as they loft the knowledge of the emblems, they multiplied and compounded their heads with thofe of different creatures. The Egyptians commonly put the head of a lion, hawk, or eagle, and fometimes that of a ram, or bull, to their images ; fome of which refernbled the human body. Their Apis, or Ofiris, gave rife to Aaron's, and apofiate- IfraePs, golden calf: and their fphynx had three heads. Diana of Ephefus was triformis ; Janus of Rome, biformis, and, fometimes, quadriformis j and Jupiter, Sol, Mercury, Proferpine, and Cerberus, were triple-headed.

Hefiod tells us, the ancient heathens had no lefs than thirty thoufand gods. It is well known that the ancient heathens, efpecially the Greeks and. Romans, abounded with male and female deities ; and commonly in human effigy. As they imagined they could not fafely truft themfelves to the care of any one god, they therefore chofe a multiplicity. They multiplied and" changed them from childhood to old age. The Romans proceeded fo far, as to make Cloacina the guardian goddefs of each houfe-of-office. The hea thens in general, appointed one god to prefide over the land, and another over the water ; one for the mountains, and another for the valleys. And'- they were fo diffident of the power of their gods, that they chofe a god, or goddefs, for each part of the body ; contrary to the religious fyftem of their bed poets and philofophers, and that of the prefent favage Americans : the former affirmed, fapiens dommabitur aftris^ &c. ; " A wife, good man, will: always be ruled by divine reafon ; and not pretend to be drawn to this or that, by an over-bearing power of the ftars, or fortune :" and the latter afiert, " that temporal good or evil is the neceflary effect of their own con- dud ; and that the Deity prcfides over life and death."

If the firft inftitution of the cherubic emblems was not religious, nor de rived from the compounded figures of the fcripture cherubim, how is it that fo many various nations of antiquity, and far remote from each other, mould 1 have chofen them as gods, and fo exactly alike ? Is it not moft reafonable- o fuppofe, that as they loft the meaning of thofe fymbolical. figures,., andi

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