eat deep
before the creation. And afterwards, in reward of the virtue, fidelity,
and gratitude of Brahma, gave him power to create the universe.

Hesiod's genealogy of the gods, though refined upon by the schools of
Plato, is of the same class with the divine genealogies of the Brahmins.
The Jewish fables, foolish questions and genealogies, reproved by Saint
Paul (epist. Tit.), were probably of this kind, for the Talmudical
legends were not then sprung up. _Binah_, or Understanding, said the
cabalists, begat _Kochmah_, or Wisdom, etc., till at last comes
_Milcah_, the Kingdom, who begat _Shekinah_, the Divine Presence. In the
same manner the Christian Gnostics, of the sect of Valentinus, held
their [Greek: Pleroma], and their thirty AEons. _Ampsiu_ and _Auraan_,
they tell us, _i.e._ Profundity and Silence, begat _Bacua_ and
_Tharthuu_, Mind and Truth; these begat _Ubucua_ and _Thardeadie_, Word
and Life, and these _Merexa_ and _Atarbarba_, Man and Church. The other
conjunctions of their thirty AEons are of similar ingenuity. The
prevalence of the same spirit of mythological allegory in such different
nations, affords the philosopher a worthy field for speculation.

Almost as innumerable as their legends are the dreadful penances to
which the Hindus submit themselves for the expiation of sins. Some hold
the transmigration of souls, and of consequence abstain from all animal
food.{*} Yet, however austere in other respects, they freely abandon
themselves to every species of debauchery, some of them esteeming the
most unnatural abominations as the privilege of their sanctity. The cow
they venerate as sacred. If a dying man can lay hold of a cow's tail,
and expire with it in his hands, his soul is sure to be purified, and
perhaps will enjoy the signal favour to transmigrate into the body of
one of those animals. The temples of India, which are numerous, are
filled with innumerable idols of the most horrid figures. The Brahmins
are allowed to eat nothing but what is cooked by themselves. Astrology
is their principal study; yet, though they are mostly a despicable set
of fortune-tellers, some of them are excellent moralists, and
particularly inculcate the comprehensive virtue of humanity, which is
enforced by the opinion, that Divine beings often assume the habit of
mendicants, in order to distinguish the charitable from the inhuman.
They have several traditions of the virtuous, on these happy trials,
being translated into he