The theological speculations and mystical reveries of the ancients are still law in a great part of the philosophic world; and being adopted by modern theology, it is heresy to abandon them. They tell us "of aerial beings, of spirits, angels, demons, genii," and other phantoms, which are the object of their meditations, and serve as the basis of _metaphysics_, an abstract and futile science, which for thousands of years the greatest geniuses have vainly studied. Hypothesis, imagined by a few visionaries of Memphis and Babylon, constitute even now the foundations of a science, whose obscurity makes it revered as marvellous and divine. The first legislators were priests; the first mythologists, poets, learned men, and physicians were priests. In their hands science became sacred and was withheld from the profane. They spoke only in allegories, emblems, enigmas, and ambiguous oracles--means well calculated to excite curiosity, and above all to inspire the astonished vulgar with a holy respect for men, who when they were thought to be instructed by the gods, and capable of reading in the heavens the fate of the earth, boldly proclaimed themselves the oracles of the Deity. 200. The religions of ancient priests have only changed form. Although our modern theologians regard their predecessors as impostors, yet they have collected many scattered fragments of their religious systems. In modern Religions we find, not only their metaphysical dogmas, which theology has merely clothed in a new dress, but also some remarkable remains of their superstitious practices, their magic, and their enchantments. Christians are still commanded to respect the remaining monuments of the legislators, priests, and prophets of the Hebrew Religion, which had borrowed its strange practices from Egypt. Thus extravagancies, imagined by knaves or idolatrous visionaries, are still sacred among Christians! If we examine history, we shall find a striking resemblance among all Religions. In all parts of the earth, we see, that religious notions, periodically depress and elevate the people. The attention of man is every where engrossed, by rites often abominable, and by mysteries always formidable, which become the sole objects of meditation. The different superstitions borrow, from one another, their abstract reveries and ceremonies. Religions are in general mere unintelligible rhapsodies, combined by new teachers, who use the materials of their predecessors, reserving the right of adding or retrenching whatever is not conformable to the present age. The religion of Egypt was evidently the basis of the religion of Moses, who banished the worship of idols: Moses was merely a schismatic Egyptian. Christianism is only reformed Judaism. Mahometanism is composed of Judaism, Christianity, and the ancient religion of Arabia, etc. 201.