“He observes that I begin my charge with the use of _incense_ as the most notorious proof of their Paganism, _and like an artful rhetorician, place my strongest argument in the front_. Yet he knows I have assigned a different reason for offering that the first; because it is _the first thing_ that strikes the sense, and surprises a stranger upon his entrance into their churches. But it shall be my strongest proof, if he will have it so, since he has brought nothing, I am sure, to weaken the force of it. He tells us that there was _an altar of incense in the temple of Jerusalem_, and is surprised, therefore, how I can call it _heathenish_; yet it is evident, from the nature of that institution, that it was never designed to be perpetual, and that during its continuance, God would have never approved _any other altar_, either in _Jerusalem_ or any where else. But let him answer directly to this plain question: Was there ever _a temple in the world, not strictly heathenish_, in which there were _several altars, all smoking with incense, within our view, and at one and the same time_? It is certain that he must answer in the negative; yet it is as certain that there were many such temples in _Pagan_ Rome, and are as many in _Christian Rome_; and since there never was an example of it, but what was _Paganish_, before the time of _Popery_, how is it possible that it could be derived to them from any other source? or when we see so exact a resemblance in the copy, how can there be any doubt about the original? “What he alleges, therefore, in favour of _incense_ is nothing to the purpose: ‘That it was used in the Jewish, and is of great antiquity in the Christian churches, and that it is mentioned with honour in the Scriptures,’ which frequently _compare it to prayer_, and speak of its _sweet odours ascending up to God_, &c., which figurative expressions, he says, ‘would never have been borrowed by sacred penmen from heathenish superstition;’ as if such allusions were less proper, or the thing itself less sweet, for its being applied to the purposes of idolatry, as it constantly was in the time of the _same penmen_, and, according to their own accounts, on the _altars of Baal_, and the other _heathen idols_: and when _Jeremiah_ rebukes the people of _Judah_ for _burning incense to the queen of heaven_ (Jer. xliv. 17), one can hardly help imagining that he is prophetically pointing out the worship paid now to the _virgin_, to whom they actually _burn incense_ at this day under that very title.(96)