The flagellating practices and ceremonies alluded to in this Chapter, are certainly most astonishing facts in the History of Man: and if any thing renders our surprise less than it otherwise would be, it is the consideration that such practices have not been imagined on a sudden, and at once, but have been the result of a long series of slow innovations, introduced by different persons, at different times, and in places remote from one another. Besides, it really seems that there is a secret propensity in Mankind, for arduous modes of worship of all kinds. The observation has been made, that in the Science of Moral, speculatively considered, Men, whatever may be their private conduct, are most pleased with such maxims as are most rigid; and so, with respect to religious rites, do they seem to be most taken with, and most strongly to adhere to, such as are most laborious, and even painful. We see, in fact, that bodily austerities of a cruel kind, performed with religious intentions, have obtained among almost all the Nations in the World; and self-scourgings, in particular, were practised with views of this kind among almost all the Nations of antiquity of whom accounts have been left us: on which the Reader is referred to the sixth Chapter of this Book. The same practice we mention, besides the advantage of its obviousness to recommend it, had in its favour, with Christians, the farther circumstance of its being in a manner sanctified by the History itself of the facts on which their religion is grounded. As a punishment of that kind made express part of the ill treatment which our Saviour underwent, the thoughts of pious persons were naturally directed to a mode of mortification of which so frequent mention was made in books, hymns, sermons, and religious conversations: hence has it happened, that the practices here alluded to, have been much more constantly and universally adopted by Christians, than by the professors of any other Religion.