We are informed by Cicero, that the maritime Sidonians adored _fishes_: and by the fragment of Sanchoniathon, that the Tyrians worshipped the element of _fire_, and the _ærial wind_, as gods:—probably having forgotten that the first and last names of the three celestial cherubic emblems, only typified the deity. Ancient history informs us, that Zoroaster, who lived An. M. 3480, made _light_ the emblem of good, and _darkness_ the symbol of evil—he taught an abhorrence of images, and instructed his pupils to worship God, under the figurative likeness of _fire_: but he asserted two contrary original principles; the one of good, and the other of evil. He allowed no temples, but enjoined sacrificing in the open air, and on the top of an hill. The ancient Persians kept up their reputed holy fire, without suffering it to be extinguished; which their pretended successors observe with the {21} strictest devotion, and affirm it has been burning, without the least intermission, several thousand years. But the Indian Americans are so far from the idolatry of the Sidonians, that they esteem fish only as they are useful to the support of human life; though one of their tribes is called the _fish_:—they are so far from paying any religious worship to the aerial wind, like the Tyrians, that they often call the bleak northwind, explicatively, very evil, and accursed; which they probably, would not say, if they derived the great esteem they now have for the divine fire, from the aforesaid idolatrous nations: neither would they wilfully extinguish their old fire, before the annual sacrifice is offered up, if, like the former heathens, they paid religious worship to the elementary fire; for no society of people would kill their own gods, unless the papists, who go farther, even to eat him. The Indians esteem the old year’s fire, as a most dangerous pollution, regarding only the supposed holy fire, which the archi-magus annually renews for the people. They pay no religious worship to stocks, or stones, after the manner of the old eastern pagans; neither do they worship any kind of images whatsoever.[16] And it deserves our notice, in a very particular manner, to invalidate the idle dreams of the jesuitical fry of South-America, that none of all the various nations, from Hudson’s Bay to the Missisippi, has ever been known, by our trading people, to attempt to make any image of the great Divine Being, whom they worship. This is consonant to the Jewish observance of the second commandment, and directly contrary to the usage of all the ancient heathen world, who made corporeal representations of their deities—and their conduct, is a reproach to many reputed Christian temples, which are littered round with a crowd of ridiculous figures to represent God, spurious angels, pretended saints, and notable villains.