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dogmas respecting the origin of the world, the nature of God, the
revelation of his laws, the manifestation of his person, are but
recitals of astronomical facts, figurative and emblematical narratives
of the motion and influence of the heavenly bodies. The very idea
itself of the divinity, which is at present so obscure, abstracted, and
metaphysical, was in its origin merely a composite of the powers of the
material universe, considered sometimes analytically, as they appear
in their agents and their phenomena, and sometimes synthetically, as
forming one whole, and exhibiting an harmonious revelation in all its
parts. Thus the name of God has been bestowed sometimes upon the wind,
upon fire, water, and the elements; sometimes upon the sun, the stars,
the planets, and their influences; sometimes upon the universe at large,
and the matter of which the world is composed; sometimes upon abstract
and metaphysical properties, such as space, duration, motion, and
intelligence; but in every instance, the idea of a Deity has not flowed
from the miraculous revelation of an invisible world, but has been
the natural result of human reflection, has followed the progress and
undergone the changes of the successive improvement of intellect, and
has had for its subject the visible universe and its different agents.

"It is then in vain that nations refer the origin of their religion
to heavenly inspiration; it is in vain that they pretend to describe a
supernatural state of things as first in order of events; the original
barbarous state of mankind, attested by their own monuments, belies all
their assertions. These assertions are still more victoriously refuted
by considering this great principle, _that man receives no ideas but
through the medium of his senses_: for from hence it appears that every
system which ascribes human wisdom to any other source than experience
and sensation, includes in it a ysteron vroteron, and represents the
last results of understanding as earliest in the order of time. If
we examine the different religious systems which have been formed
respecting the actions of the Gods, and the origin of the world, we
shall discover at every turn an anticipation in the order of narrating
things, which could only be suggested by subsequent reflection. Reason,
then, emboldened by these contradictions, hesitates not to reject
whatever does not accord with the nature of things, and accepts nothing
for historical truth t