Here is a manifest, and in all likelihood a surreptitious combination of two of the figures in the cherubic emblem, which, without some prototype, and a prototype already associated with the religion which was to be renounced, perverted, and counterfeited, would not be likely to occur, or to be easily brought into use and favor. An existing and familiar prototype might be copied exactly--as altars, sacrifices, incense, and various rites appear to have been--or with some modifications, and yet be readily adopted. In this view it would be obvious to argue, that as Jehovah often appeared on earth in the similitude of man, and thereby taught and virtually anticipated his future predicted incarnation; and as that form was associated with others in the cherubic emblem, therefore that emblem might be taken as representative of the Intelligence to be worshipped, and as teaching the doctrine of his incarnation not merely in the form and nature of man, but also in birds, four-footed beasts, and all other creatures brought into existence by him. Such pantheism undoubtedly resulted. But had the first forms of images been wholly an original device of the idolaters, they would naturally have selected not complex, but simple ones. They would have copied nature. They would in all probability have selected first the human form; but they would have taken that as it visibly appears, without a mysterious and inexplicable combination of inferior natures with it. Next, they would very likely select the bird--the eagle--whose flight transcends the clouds, and whose eye endures the blaze of solar light; and next, the most docile and most useful, and then the most powerful and sagacious quadrupeds; in all instances, as is held by Warburton and others, and is highly probable in itself employing images and pictures long before they idolized the animals themselves. A progress and an analogy of this kind--notwithstanding that the whole subject of idolatry, its origin, its nature, its rationale, its import as an antagonism to the revealed religion, and as involving the reason and an intelligible and ample justification of the jealousy, wrath, indignation, judgments, retributions, and finally of exterminating vengeance against it, has been mystified and misrepresented, under the rabbinical and figurative systems formerly adverted to--might be traced, and indefinitely illustrated, by reference to the Sphinxes, Centaurs, Pans, &c., of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans; the Brahmas, the Vishnus, the Sivas, and the incarnations and transmigrations of India, and the Boodism and Lamaism of the whole Eastern world.