XVII. What shall we say to the countenance, that has been given to Turpitude, by various nations? In Malabar, the women may marry as many husbands as they please. In the Island of Ceylon, when a woman marries, she is common to all the brothers of her husband, and the consorted parties may divorce themselves and contract a fresh alliance whenever they please. In the kingdom of Bengal, all the new-married women, those of the first rank not excepted, before they are allowed to be enjoyed by their husbands, are delivered up to the lust of the bramins or priests. In Mingrelia, a province of Georgia, where the people are Schismatic Christians, among the compound of various errors prevailing there, adultery is considered as a thing indifferent, and it is very rare, that any of their sex are faithful to their consorts; it is true, that the husband in case of catching the wife in the act of adultery, has a right by way of compensation, to demand of her paramour a pig, which is considered as ample amends, and the criminal person is generally invited to partake of it. SECT. VI. XVIII. Was I to recite the extravagant superstitions prevailing in various places, the labour would be immense. It is very well known, that the antient Gentiles worshiped the most despicable and vile animals. The goat was the deity of one nation, the tortoise of another, the beetle of another, and the fly of another. Even the Romans, who were esteemed the most polished people in the world, were extremely ridiculous in matters of religion; St. Austin, in many parts of his Treatise, called The City of God, upbraids them with it; and the most remarkable of their absurdities in this respect was, their adopting such an innumerable quantity of deities, to separate and distinct charges; the protection of the harvest, and the grain, belonged to twelve different Gods, each of whom had his particular department. To guard the door of the house, they had no less than three; the God Lorculos had the care of the wood, the Goddess Cordea that of the hinges, and the God Limentius looked after the pediment. St. Austin jocosely remarks to them, that if each individual would appoint a porter, they would find him capable of doing much more than any one of their Gods, for he would be able to execute this whole business, better than three of them, and with greater security. Pliny (who runs into the opposite extreme of denying a Deity or a Providence, or at least of affecting to doubt there is a Supreme Being) in giving an account of the superstitious faith of the Romans, estimates the number of their deities to exceed the number of their people. _Quam ob rem major cœlitum populus, etiam quam hominum intelligi potest_ (Lib. 1. cap. 6.) The computation is not aggravated, as every man according to his fancy, appointed himself Household Gods, to each of whom, he consigned a particular charge, and besides this, worshiped all the established Gods.