ginary, or at least, without any Foundation in Reason, and that you have no ground to ascribe to him any Qualities, but what you see he has actually exerted and display'd in his Productions. Let your Gods, therefore, O Philosophers, be suited to the present Appearances of Nature: And presume not to alter these Appearances by arbitrary Suppositions, in order to suit them to the Attributes, which you so fondly ascribe to your Deities.
When Priests and Poets, supported by your Authority, O Athenians, talk of a Golden or a Silver Age, which preceded the present Scene of Vice and Misery, I hear them with Attention and with Reverence. But when Philosophers, who pretend to neglect Authority, and to cultivate Reason, hold the same Discourse, I own, I pay them not the same obsequious Submission and pious Deference. I ask; Who carry'd them into the celestial Regions, who admitted them into the Councils of the Gods, who open'd to them the Book of Fate, that they thus rashly affirm their Deities have executed, or will execute, any Purpose, beyond what has actually appear'd? If they tell me, that they have mounted on the Steps or Scale of Reason, and by drawing Inferences from Effects to Causes, I still insist, that they have aided the Scale of Reason by the Wings of Imagination; otherwise they could not thus change theirManner
