Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1831 edition. Excerpt: ... to produce any thing which was not gross and ordinary. The first of those reasons, respecting the mere form of the Egyptians, has, I am convinced, no foundation in fact: the others must be partly admitted. But it appears to me that the great and insurmountable obstruction to their advancement in art arose out of the character and materials of their religion, wrapt up as it was, struments; such is the nature of man, so prone to corruption, that it was to be expected that this cursed Titanic example of deifying regal families would be imitated by others, in the excesses of their pride and power: and we may judge of the horrid extent to which it was carried by the mandate of the Assyrian king, Nebuchodonozar "to avenge himself on all the earth, to destroy all flesh, that did not obey the commandment of his mouth, to cast down their frontiers, and cut down their groves, for he had decreed to destroy all the gods of the land; that all nations should worship Nebuchodonozor o ily, and that all tongues and tribes should call upon him as God." (Judith, ch. 1. 2.) " and who is god but Nebuchodonozor," (6. 2.) When we reflect upon this horrid state of things, resulting from the gradual and accumulating corruptions of sabaism or stellar worship, identified with these dead and living mortals, which had been thus superinduced on the primitive, traditional, pure theology, it affords a most dreadful exemplary spectacle of degraded (and perhaps in these matters impotent) human reason; and of the deep indelible stain it has imprinted on so many nations of the ancient world, who in other respects were so much celebrated for their genius and skill. The world was happily and mercifully delivered from all this servile, idolatrous worship of deified men, and...