would by no means prefume to eat with a man of another tribe, nór

even to touch or come near him.

It is probable that the inftitution of thefe four claffes was imitated by the Egyptians; because it is, in fact, very probable, or rather certain, that Egypt was but indifferently peopled, or policed, till long after India. It was a work of ages to fubdue the Nile, to divide it into diftinct channels, and conftruct buildings above its inundations; whilft India enjoyed, in the mean time, every thing that was neceffary to the fubfiftence of life.

We find all the greatness and all the weakness of the human mind exhibited in the ancient Brachmans, and in the Bramins their fucceffors. On one hand, the most obftinate virtue fupported by the fevereft abftinence; a fublime though fantastic philofophy, under the veil of ingenious allegories; an abhorrence of bloodshed, and an invariable charity to mankind and the animal creation. On the other hand, fuperftition, the moft contemptible in its kind; that calm but atrocious fanaticifm which has taught them, through innumerable ages, to encourage the voluntary murder of fo many young widows who have thrown themfeves into the barning piles of their deceased hufbands. This horrid extravagance of religion and magnanimity ftill fubfifts with that famous maxim of the Bramin faith, that God requires nothing from us but charity and good works. But the whole world is governed by contradictions.

• Mr. Scrafton adds, They are perfuaded, it is the pleasure of the .Supreme Being that different nations should have different modes of worhip. Such a perfuafion might feem to promote indifference ; nevertheless they have as much enthusiasm in their religion, as if they thought it the only true one, the only one that had been inftituted by the deity.

The greater part of them live in a kind of effeminate apathy. Their great axiom, taken from their ancient books, is, that it is better to fit than to walk, to lie than to fit, to fleep than to wake, and to die than to live. Yet we fee many of them on the coaft of Coromandel, who rife out of this lethargy into active life. Some of them take part with the French, others with the English. They learn their language, and ferve them as interpreters and brokers. There is not a merchant of any confideration upon the coaft who has not his Bramin. They are in general faithful, but fly and cunning. Thofe who have had no commerce with ftrangers, preferve the ancient virtue and fimplicity of their ancestors.

Mr. Scrafton and others have feen in the hands of fome Bramins, ephemerides of their own compofition, in which eclipfes were calculated for many thousands of years. They have good mathematicians and aftronomers; yet they retain the abfurdities of aftrology, and carry that extravagance as far as the Chinese and the Perfians. At this, however, we have no reafon to be furprised. It is not two centuries fince our own Princes had the fame follies, and our aftrono❤ mers the fame quackery. The Bramins, who poffeffed thefe epheme rides, must have been men of science at leaft. They are philofophers and priests, like the Brachmans of old. The people, they fay, ought to be deceived and kept in ignorance. In confequence, they give out that the nodes of the moon, in which the eclipfes happen, and

M m 2

which

which the first Brachmans expreffed by the hieroglyphics of the head and tail of a dragon, are the actual efforts of a dragon who attacks the fun and the moon. The fame filly notion is adopted in China. In India, you fee thousands of men and women plunging into the Ganges during the continuance of an eclipfe, or making a prodigious noise with inftruments of various kinds, to release the captive luminaries from the clutches of the dragon. Upon fuch principles as thefe the whole world has been governed, [the Author adds] in every respect. Many Bramins have treated with miffionaries concerning the interefts of the India Companies; but religion was never in the queftion. Yet many miffionaries there have been who, the moment they arrived in India, were induftrious in writing to their respective fo cieties, that the Bramins undoubtedly worshipped the devil, but that they would all shortly be converted to the faith. Nevertheless it is afferted, that no European monk ever once attempted to convert a Bramin, and that no Indian ever worshipped the devil, of whose exiftence they are wholly ignorant. The rigid Bramins have conceived an inexpreffible averfion to the monks, on account of their obvious indulgence in the contents of the fhambles and the cellar, and of their taking young girls upon their laps during confeffion. Our practices appeared to them to be crimes, though theirs have been confidered only as ridiculous idolatries.

One of the most confiderable mißionary jefuits, whofe name was Lalane, wrote in 1709, "there is no doubt but the Bramins are real idolaters, because they are worshippers of ftrange gods." (Lettres Edifiantes, tom. x. p. 14.) And he fays, p. 15. "the following is one of their prayers, which I have tranflated literally.

"I worship that Being who is expofed to no inquietude, and subject to no change; that Being, who in his nature is indivifible, in his fpiritual effence incapable of compounded qualities; that Being who is the origin and the cause of exiflence, and who, in excellence, furpaffes all that does exift; that Being who is the fupport of the univerfe, and the fource of power."

This is what the miffionary calls idolatry!

What is really astonishing is, that we can neither in the books of the ancient Bramins, nor in thofe of the Chinese, nor in the fragments of Sanconiathon, nor in thofe of Berofus, nor in the Egyptian of Manethon, nor among the Greeks, nor the Tufcans, find the leaft trace of that facred Jewish history which is our facred hiftory. Not a fingle word of Noah, whom we look upon as the reftorer of the human race; not a word of Adam, the father of that race, nor of any of his first defcendants How came it to pafs that all nations loft the names of this great family; that no one has tranfmitted to pofterity a fingle action, a fingle name, of thefe his ancestors } How came all the ancient world to be ignorant of this? And how came a little upftart generation alone to know it? This extra ordinary circumftance might feem to merit attention, if one could poffibly come at the bottom of it. All India, China, Japan, Tartary, and three parts of Africa, have ever been ignorant of the exiftence of fuch men as Cain, Jared, and Methuselah, who, nevertheIefs, lived almost a thousand years. And other nations were unacquainted with their names till after the time of Conftantine. But

thofe

thofe questions which arife in the department of philosophy, have nothing to do with hiftory.'

Nothing more eafy than to refute this bagatelle, and to prove that thofe very nations have had their Adam and their Noah, whom the Author reprefents as ignorant of their exiftence. But we have no time to enter into controverfies of this kind.

Since writing the above article, we have met with an Englifh tranflation of this book, which appears to be fufficiently faithful and correct.

AR T. IV.

L'Evangile Du Jour.-The Gospel of the Day. Vol. X*. London.

WE

4773

ERE it not owing to that wonderful zeal and attachment which Mr. Voltaire profeffes for every thing that has the air of religion, this volume had never come by its Chriftian name; for with as much propriety might it have been called the Gardener's Calendar, or the Complete Country Housewife, or a Differtation on Clear-ftarching-Paffing the title, however, which, like the number affixed to the front of your house, ferves only to diftinguish it from your neighbour's, the first article that prefents itfeif is a new old tragedy, called THE LAWS of MINOS. This, Mr. V tells us, appeared in fuch a miferable trim, patched as it was, and stitched and taylored all over by a knave of a bookseller, that, in juftice to himfelf, and in compaflion to his offspring, he thought proper to fend it into the world in its prefent form.

The purport of the tragedy is to prove, that it is neceffary to abolish laws when they are unjust; and the laws of Minosenjoined human facrifices.

Ancient history (that is to say fable) informs us, that this great lawgiver, Minos, the fon of Jupiter, on whom the divine Plato has lavished fuch high encomiums, certainly instituted fuch facrifices.

This wife legiflator facrificed annually feven young Athenians; at least fo Virgil fays,

In foribus Lethum Androgeo tum pendere Panas

Cecropida juffi, miferum feptena quotannis

Corpora natorum.

Thefe facrifices are rather uncommon with us now-a-days, and the reafon, no doubt, is, that variety of opinions which the fage commentators have entertained refpecting the exact number

For our accounts of the former volumes, fee Appendixes for feveral years palt.

Mm 3

1 of

of victims, and the time of the year when they were offered to the Cretan monfter, called the Minotaur.

Whatever might be the origin of this fable, it is more than probable, from many circumftances, that human facrifices were ufed in Crete as well as in other countries. Sanchoniathon, quoted by Eufebius in his Gofpel Preparation, fays, that this religious act had fubfifted time immemorial. Now, Sanchoniathon flourished long before the epocha at which we place Mofes, and eight hundred years after Thot, one of the legiflators of Egypt, whom the Greeks afterwards called Mercury. Vide Monde Primitif, &c. par M. Court de Gebelin.

The paffage from Sanchoniathon, tranflated by Philo, is as follows:

"Amongst the ancients it was ufual, in great public calamities, to purchase the general fafety, by facrificing to the avenging deities the dearest of their children. Ilous (or, according to the Greeks, Chronus, or Saturn, whom the Phoenicians called Ifraël, and afterwards deified) facrificed his own fon in a cafe of public danger. This fon was named Jeüd, which fignifies the first born." This is the Erft offering to the Supreme Being on human record, and this offering was parricide.

It is difficult to ascertain precisely whether the Bramins had this cuftom prior to the Phoenicians and Syrians. But it is unhappily true that, in India, thefe facrifices are of the highest antiquity, and that they are not even now abolished, notwithftanding all the efforts of the Mahometans.

The English, the Dutch, the French, who go to traffic and cut their throats in thefe precious climates, have frequently feen rich, hand fome young widows throw themselves headlong into the funeral piles of their hufbands, regardless of the imploring hands and cries of their children entreating them to live for their protection. It is not long fince the lady of Ad. miral Ruffel was a fpectator of this horrid fcene on the banks of the Ganges.

Tantum relligio potuit fuadere malorum.

The Egyptians would very ceremoniously throw a daughter into the Nile, if they were apprehenfive that the river would not rife to the requifite height.

This execrable cuftom continued till the reign of Ptolemy Lagus, and it was, probably, as ancient as their religion and their temples. We mention not thefe cuftoms of antiquity for the parade of learning; we figh to think that they appear fomething like instinct in human nature, and fee the indifpenfable neceffity of the exercise and interpofition of reason,

Lycaon and Tantalus, who ferved up their children to the gods, were two fuperftitious fathers, who committed parricide out of piety; and the doctrine of the mythologists, that the

gods,

gods, instead of being pleased with the oblation, punished them, for their crime, did honour to their reafon..

If there be any real dependence to be placed on ancient hiftory, the Jews were not altogether exempt from this crime. Adopting the language, the cuftoms and ceremonies, of their neighbours, they not only facrificed their enemies to the different divinities whom they worthipped, even fo low down as their return from Babylon, but even their children. And this may be believed, for, to fay the truth, they themselves acknowledge it,

In the Effai fur l'Hiftoire de l'Esprit, et des Moeurs des Nations, we find that the Gauls and Teutons, thofe Teutons of whofe native honefty and fimplicity Tacitus fpeaks fo tenderly, had thefe execrable facrifices very common.

This deteftable fuperftition of offering up human victims, feems to be fo natural to the favage part of our species, that Procopius tells us, one Theodebert, grandson of Clovis, offered human facrifices for his fuccefs upon a marauding expedition into Lombardy.

Thefe facrifices of Theodebert were, probably, a remnant of the ancient fuperftition of the Franks, his ancestors. We know but too well to what a pitch this execrable cuftom prevailed amongst the ancient Welchis, whom we call Gauls, when the Druids offered their diabolical infant facrifices.

The favages on the banks of the Rhine had a kind of Drui deffes, religious hags, whofe devotion confifted in folemnly cutting the throats of little boys and girls in large bafons of ftone, fome of which are in being at this day, and drawings of which may be feen in Profeffor Schellin's Alfatia Illuftrata. Such are the monuments of this part of the world! fuch are our antiquities! A Phidias, a Praxiteles, a Scopas, and a Miron, have left us monuments of a different kind,

When Julius Cæfar had conquered thefe favages, he fought to civilize them. He forbade the Druids to exercife their acts of devotion upon pain of being burnt themselves, and cut down the forefts where thefe religious murders had been perpetrated. But the priests perfifted in their rites. They facrificed children in private, faying, that it was better to obey God than men; that Cæfar was high priest no where but at Rome; that Druidifm was the only true religion, and that there was no fuch thing as falvation without burning or cutting the throats of children.

Our favage ancestors having left in these regions the remembrance of fuch cuftoms, the Inquifition found the lefs difficulty in renewing them. The piles it lighted were for real human Sacrifices. The moft magnificent ceremonies of religion, pro

M m 4

ceffions,