ans and Magians, of the Jews and
Christians, were disseminated from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. In
a remote period of antiquity, Sabianism was diffused over Asia by
the science of the Chaldaeans and the arms of the Assyrians. From the
observations of two thousand years, the priests and astronomers of
Babylon deduced the eternal laws of nature and providence. They adored
the seven gods or angels, who directed the course of the seven planets,
and shed their irresistible influence on the earth. The attributes
of the seven planets, with the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the
twenty-four constellations of the northern and southern hemisphere, were
represented by images and talismans; the seven days of the week were
dedicated to their respective deities; the Sabians prayed thrice
each day; and the temple of the moon at Haran was the term of their
pilgrimage. But the flexible genius of their faith was always ready
either to teach or to learn: in the tradition of the creation, the
deluge, and the patriarchs, they held a singular agreement with their
Jewish captives; they appealed to the secret books of Adam, Seth, and
Enoch; and a slight infusion of the gospel has transformed the last
remnant of the Polytheists into the Christians of St. John, in the
territory of Bassora. The altars of Babylon were overturned by the
Magians; but the injuries of the Sabians were revenged by the sword of
Alexander; Persia groaned above five hundred years under a foreign yoke;
and the purest disciples of Zoroaster escaped from the contagion of
idolatry, and breathed with their adversaries the freedom of the desert.
Seven hundred years before the death of Mahomet, the Jews were settled
in Arabia; and a far greater multitude was expelled from the Holy Land
in the wars of Titus and Hadrian. The industrious exiles aspired to
liberty and power: they erected synagogues in the cities, and castles
in the wilderness, and their Gentile converts were confounded with
the children of Israel, whom they resembled in the outward mark of
circumcision. The Christian missionaries were still more active and
successful: the Catholics asserted their universal reign; the sects
whom they oppressed, successively retired beyond the limits of the
Roman empire; the Marcionites and Manichaeans dispersed their _fantastic_
opinions and apocryphal gospels; the churches of Yemen, and the princes
of Hira and Gassan, were instructed in a purer creed by the Jacobite and
Nestori