hy, his transport on this magnificent view,
which he has represented in the colors of such bold and lively poetry,
is overcast with a shade of secret dread and horror:

His ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas
Percipit, atque horror; quod sic natura, tua vi
Tam manifesta patens, ex omni parte retecta est.

But the Scripture alone can supply ideas answerable to the majesty of
this subject. In the Scripture, wherever God is represented as appearing
or speaking, everything terrible in nature is called up to heighten the
awe and solemnity of the Divine presence. The Psalms, and the
prophetical books, are crowded with instances of this kind. _The earth
shook,_ (says the Psalmist,) _the heavens also dropped at the presence
of the Lord._ And what is remarkable, the painting preserves the same
character, not only when he is supposed descending to take vengeance
upon the wicked, but even when he exerts the like plenitude of power in
acts of beneficence to mankind. _Tremble, thou earth! at the presence of
the Lord; at the presence of the God of Jacob; which turned the rock
into standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters!_ It were
endless to enumerate all the passages, both in the sacred and profane
writers, which establish the general sentiment of mankind, concerning
the inseparable union of a sacred and reverential awe, with our ideas of
the divinity. Hence the common maxim, _Primus in orbe deos fecit timor_.
This maxim may be, as I believe it is, false with regard to the origin
of religion. The maker of the maxim saw how inseparable these ideas
were, without considering that the notion of some great power must be
always precedent to our dread of it. But this dread must necessarily
follow the idea of such a power, when it is once excited in the mind. It
is on this principle that true religion has, and must have, so large a
mixture of salutary fear; and that false religions have generally
nothing else but fear to support them. Before the Christian religion
had, as it were, humanized the idea of the Divinity, and brought it
somewhat nearer to us, there was very little said of the love of God.
The followers of Plato have something of it, and only something; the
other writers of pagan antiquity, whether poets or philosophers, nothing
at all. And they who consider with what infinite attention, by what a
disregard of every perishable object, through what long habits of piety
and contemplation it is that any man i