weakness. We are impressed
by what is outward, while the inner essence of things requires
consideration of such a kind as few persons are fitted to give. As true
piety consists in principles and practice, the outward forms of religion
imitate these, and are of two kinds: the one kind consists in ceremonial
practices, and the other in the formularies of belief. Ceremonies resemble
virtuous actions, and formularies are like shadows of the truth and
approach, more or less, the true light. All these outward forms would be
commendable if those who invented them had rendered them appropriate to
maintain and to express that which they imitate--if religious ceremonies,
ecclesiastical discipline, the rules of communities, human laws were always
like a hedge round the divine law, to withdraw us from any approach to
vice, to inure us to the good and to make us familiar with virtue. That was
the aim of Moses and of other good lawgivers, of the wise men who founded
religious orders, and above all of Jesus Christ, divine founder of the
purest and most enlightened religion. It is just the same with the
formularies of belief: they would be valid provided there were nothing [50]
in them inconsistent with truth unto salvation, even though the full truth
concerned were not there. But it happens only too often that religion is
choked in ceremonial, and that the divine light is obscured by the opinions
of men.

The pagans, who inhabited the earth before Christianity was founded, had
only one kind of outward form: they had ceremonies in their worship, but
they had no articles of faith and had never dreamed of drawing up
formularies for their dogmatic theology. They knew not whether their gods
were real persons or symbols of the forces of Nature, as the sun, the
planets, the elements. Their mysteries consisted not in difficult dogmas
but in certain secret observances, whence the profane, namely those who
were not initiated, were excluded. These observances were very often
ridiculous and absurd, and it was necessary to conceal them in order to
guard them against contempt. The pagans had their superstitions: they
boasted of miracles, everything with them was full of oracles, auguries,
portents, divinations; the priests invented signs of the anger or of the
goodness of the gods, whose interpreters they claimed to be. This tended to
sway minds through fear and hope concerning human events; but the great
future of another life was scarce envisaged;