DIVINITY,
(Pagan Notions of).

What Montaigne observes of the ancient Pagans is very true; the idea they annexed to the word God did no ways resemble the divine nature, but was infinitely remote from it; so that the Athenians were not the only people to whom St Paul might have said, that they erected altars to the unknown God. All their altars deserved the same inscription, and I cannot think of the distinction they made at Athens between the known and unknown Gods; I cannot, I say, think of it, without remembering the distinction that was made, in the schools of Aristotle, between occult and manifest qualities. Among the peripatetics there is no other difference between manifest and occult qualities than this, that they have a word to denote manifest qualities,calor, frigus, humiditas, siccitas, &c. and they have none to denote the qualities of the load-stone. Just so among the Athenians there was no other difference between Gods, known, and unknown, than that they had a name for some of them, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Venus, &c. and they knew not what to call the others. If the divine

nature which they adored was not, like the quintessence of Aristotle, as void of a name, as of an idea, it was at least as little known. The inhabitants of Marseilles openly professed to worship the unknown Gods, and they found that even this inspired them with a greater fear for their Deities. Apply here what Tacitus says, “ Arcebantur aspectu quo venerationis plus inesset. They were removed from the sight to enhance their devotion.” Hist. lib. 4, cap. 45. ¹⁰³ They worshipped them afar off, not approaching to the place where their statues were. The priest did not approach them without trembling, and dreaded their appearing to him, that is to say, he dreaded knowing them. Lucan imagines, that because in other places the gods were adored under figures exposed to the eyes of the public, there was a great difference between the Marsilians, and other people; for, says he, the Marsilians, not knowing their gods, had the greater fear of them. Therefore he imagined that in Greece and Italy the Deity was better known than at Marseilles: but he was much deceived; he ought only to have said, that in those countries they knew better under what figure the statuaries and painters represented it.

- - - simulacraque mœsta Deorum
Arte carent, cæsisque extant informia truncis.
Ipse situs, putrique facit jam robore pallor
Attonitos: non vulgatis sacrata figuris
Numina sic metuunt: tantum terroribus addit
Quos timeant non nosse Deos.
⁕ ⁕ ⁕ ⁕ ⁕ ⁕ ⁕ ⁕ ⁕ ⁕ ⁕
Non ilium cultu populi propiore fréquentant
Sed cessere Deis. Medio cum Phoebus in axe est,
Aut cœlum nox atra tenet, Pavel ipse sacerdos
Accessus, dominumque timet deprendere luci. Lucan. Pharsal. lib. 3, ver. 412. ¹⁰⁴

Old images of forms mishapen stand,
Rude and unknowing ot the artist's hand.

With hoary filth begrim’d, each ghastly head
Strikes the astonish’d gazer’s soul with dread.
No Gods who long in common shapes appear’d,
Were e’er with such religious awe rever’d.
But zealous crowds in ignorance adore
And still the less they know, they fear the more.
* * * * * * * *
The pious worshippers approach not near,
But shun their Gods, and kneel with distant fear:
The priest himself, when or the day or night
Rolling have reach’d their full meridian height,
Refrains the gloomy path with weary feet,
Dreading the daemon of the grove to meet.

The Pagans could not retort this observation on Christianity, under pretence that its professors are required to captivate their understandings to the obedience of faith; and that faith is by some said to be better defined by ignorance, than by knowledge; and that people are to be determined, not by the way of examination, but by the way of authority, and are to adore the mysteries without comprehending them. This retortion, I say, would be unjust upon Christianity in general, since the Protestant Communions reject not the way of examination, and are not afraid, like the priest of Marseilles, that the object of their faith should be manifested.

According to La Bruyere, the doctrines of the New Mystics or Quietists, is not very distinct from those of the old. “ The perfection of contemplation according to these enthusiasts, does not consist in knowing God more intimately than others, but innot knowing him. The freely contemplative person, they assert, forms no idea of God to himself, nor pretends to any distinct knowledge of his attributes. He knows him not by ideas, reflection or reasoning, but by an obscure, general, and confused faith, without distinction of perfections, attributes, or persons. True and perfect contemplation has the essence of God for its sole object, considered under the most

possible abstract idea. The soul ought to be persuaded, that the creatures are too gross to serve for a master and guide in the knowledge of God. Therefore love is to go before and leave the understanding behind. The soul loves God as he is in himself, and not as the imagination represents him. If the soul cannot know him, such as he is, it must love him without knowing him, under the obscure veil of faith, almost as a child who never saw its father, and who, trusting to those that speak of him, loves him as much as if he had seen him. All that the holy scriptures say of God must pass only for figure, and to stop there, would be to stop at the superficies, because as God cannot be comprehended by the mind, so neither can he be explained by words, and when we would thereby raise ourselves to him, we fall still lower. God has caused those books to be writ only to give us a high opinion of his greatness, that if we love him in what is said of him, we may love him yet much more in himself. But if the soul should love God as he is represented in the scriptures, it would love a phantom, or the mask of God, and not God as he really is. God is nothing of what reason conceives, because all that we know can be comprehended, but God is incomprehensible. When we pretend to know God, we idolatrously change the creature into God, and abase God to the creature. While the soul knows any thing by images or similitudes of what nature soever, even though infused and supernatural, it does not know God. The idea St Paul gave of God to the Athenians adoring an unknown God is false, in that it does not represent God as he is, for he cannot be either comprehended or known. We are obliged to make use of terms proportioned to our weakness in speaking of him: but those expressions have nothing worthy of him, and the ideas they form in us are not the true idea of God. It may be said of God, that he is just, gracious, a re warder, an avenger, &c. but none of that is God; faith beholds him not in this manner, having no other object than an unknown omnipresent God.”

We see in the preceding quotation the maxims of the new Mystics; but we must observe here, that they pretend they are as ancient as Mystical divinity; for they cite the words of St Dionysius. “ As for you, my dear Timothy, set yourself seriously to Mystical contemplations, forsake your senses, the operations of your mind, all sensible and intelligible objects, and generally all things that are, and that are not; in order to raise yourself as much as man can do, and that you may be united in an unknown and inexpressible manner to him, who is above all being, and all knowledge.” There are some philosophers who think, that what the Quietists say of the falsity of the notions, under which the Deity is commonly represented, is very reasonable, and that the images, made use of by the sacred writers to exhibit him to us, want rectification.—Art.Dioscorides.