The _Common Notions_ of a Deity, strongly rooted in Mens Souls, and meeting with the Apprehensions of _Guiltiness_, are very apt to excite the _Servile_ fear: and when men love their own filthy lusts, that they may spare them, they are presently apt to contrive some other waies of appeasing the Deity and compounding with it. Unhallowed minds, that have no inward foundation of true Holiness to fix themselves upon, are easily shaken and tossed from all inward peace and tranquillity; and as the thoughts of some Supreme power above them seize upon them, so they are struck with the lightning thereof into inward affrightments, which are further encreas’d by a vulgar observation of those strange, stupendious, and terrifying Effects in Nature, whereof they can give no certain reason, as Earthquakes, Thundrings, and Lightnings, blazing Comets and other Meteors of a like Nature, which are apt to terrifie those especially who are already unsetled and Chased with an inward sense of guilt, and, as Seneca speaks, _inevitabilem metum ut supra nos aliquid timeremus incutiunt_. _Petronius Arbiter_ hath well described this business for us, _Primus in orbe Deos fecit Timor, ardua cœlo Fulmina cum caderent, discussaque moenia flammis, Atque ictus flagraret Athos_— From hence it was that the _Libri fulgurales_ of the _Romanes_, and other such volumes of _Superstition_, swelled so much, and that the _pulvinaria Deorum_ were so often frequented, as will easily appear to any one a little conversant in _Livy_, who everywhere sets forth this Devotion so largely, as if he himself had been too passionately in love with it. And though as the _Events_ in Nature began sometimes to be found out better by a discovery of their immediate Natural Causes, so some particular pieces of Superstitious Customs were antiquated and grown out of date (as is well observ’d concerning those _Charms_ and _Februations_ anciently in use upon the appearing of an Eclipse, and some others) yet often affrights and horrours were not so easily abated, while they were unacquainted with the Deity, and with the other mysterious events in Nature, which begot those Furies and unlucky Empusas ἀλάστορας καὶ παλαμναίους δαίμονας, in the weak minds of men. To all which we may adde the frequent _Spectres_ and frightfull _Apparitions_ of Ghosts and _Mormos_: all which extorted such a kind of Worship from them as was most correspondent to such Causes of it. And those Rites and Ceremonies which were begotten by Superstition, were again the unhappy Nurses of it, such as are well described by _Plutarch_ in his _De defect. Oracul._, Ἑορταὶ καὶ θυσίαι, ὥσπερ ἡμέραι ἀποφράδες, καὶ σκυθρωπαί, ἐν αἷς ὠμοφαγίας, &c. _Feasts and Sacrifices, as likewise observations of unlucky and fatall dayes, celebrated with eating of raw things, lacerations, fastings, and howlings, and many times filthy Speeches in their sacred rites_, and frantick behaviour.