divines of all ages have been more to blame than the people, since they conducted them to the adoration of creatures: that they might be able to discourse longer, and to distinguish themselves from the crowd, they have disguised religion with obscure terms, emblems and symbols, as if they were alive; as if they were persons; and have dressed them up like men and women. This has trained up and encouraged the people in their carnal notions. They thought that they might devote themselves to the symbols, which were furnished with a wondrous efficacy, and treated of more than the Deity himself. Whereas they ought to give the people the simplest ideas of God, and talk soberly of him: they embellish, they enrich, and magnify their ideas of him, and this is what has corrupted religion in all ages, as is manifest from the instance of the Egyptians. By veiling religion under pretence of procuring it respect, they have buried and destroyed it.”
Though the labour which I have gone through in the production of this volume of my work has been very great, yet it has been sweetened by many circumstances, but by none so much as the conviction, that in laying open to public view the secret of the mythoses of antiquity, I was performing one of the works the most valuable to my fellow-creatures which was ever completed,—that it was striking the hardest blow that ever was struck at the tyranny of the sacerdotal order,—that I was doing more than any man had ever done before to disabuse and enlighten mankind, and to liberate them from the shackles of prejudice in which they were bound.
Another thing which sweetened the labour was, the perpetual making of new discoveries,—the whole was a most successful voyage of discovery.
No doubt, in order to prevent females from reading the following work, it will be accused of indecency. Although I have taken as much care as was in my power to remove any good grounds for the charge, it is certainly open to it, in the same way as are many works on comparative anatomy. But these, in fact, are indecent only to persons of indecent and filthy imaginations—to such persons as a late Lord Mayor of London, who ordered the Savoyard statue-dealers out of the city, until they clothed their Venus de Medicis with drapery.
In all cases brevity, as far as clearness of expression would admit, has been my object; and I can safely say, though the reason for many passages may not be obvious to a reader who has not deeply meditated on the subject as I have done, yet I believe scarcely one is inserted in the book which has not appeared to me at the time to be necessary to elucidate some subject which was to follow.
It has been observed, that persons who write a bad style, generally affect to despise a good one. Now whatever may be thought of mine, I beg to observe, that I regret it is not better; I wish I had been more attentive to it in early life; but I must freely confess, that my mind has been turned to the discovery of truth almost to the entire neglect of style.
I fear some repetitions will be found which would not have occurred had I been better skilled in the art of book-making; but in many cases I do not know how they could
