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put the devil to flight in the same place, || pleased, and then returned home to and by the same means. their callings.

The ceremony being over, on the same day, the tenth of Dhu'lhajja, the pilgrims slay their victims in the said valley of Mina, of which they and their friends eat part, and the rest is given to the poor. These victims must be either sheep, goats, kine, or camels; males, if of either of the two former kinds, and females if of either of the latter, and of a fit age. The sacrifices being over, they shave their heads and cut their nails, burying them in the same place; after which the pilgrimage is looked on as completed, though they again visit the Caaba, to take their leave of that sacred building.

PIOUS FRAUDS are those artifices and falsehoods made use of in propagating the truth, and endeavouring to promote the spiritual interests of mankind. These have been more particu larly practised in the church of Rome, and considered not only as innocent, but commendable. Neither the term nor the thing signified, however, can be justified. The terms pious and fraud form a solecism; and the practice of doing evil that good may come, is directly opposite to the injunction of the sacred Scriptures, Rom. iii. 8.

PITY is generally defined to be the uneasiness we feel at the unhappiness of another, prompting us to compassionate them, with a desire of their relief.

fallen, and helps them up again; when they have offended, and forgives them; when they are wronged, and rights them. Thus the Lord pitieth them that fear him. Ps. ciii. 13. See COMPASSION OF Gop.

Dr. Johnson gives us some observations on pilgrimage, which are so much to the purpose, that we shall here pre- God is said to pity them that fear sent them to the reader. "Pilgrimage, him, as a father pitieth his children. like many other acts of piety, may be The father, says Mr. Henry, pities his reasonable or superstitious according to children that are weak in knowledge, the principles upon which it is perform- and instructs them; pities them when ed. Long journeys in search of truth they are froward, and bears with them; are not commanded: truth, such as is pities them when they are sick, and comnecessary to the regulation of life, is al-forts them, Isa. lxvi. 13; when they are ways found where it is honestly sought, change of place is no natural cause of the increase of piety, for it inevitably produces dissipation of mind. Yet, since men go every day to view the fields where great actions have been performed, and return with stronger PLASTIC NATURE, an absurd docimpressions of the event, curiosity of the trine, which some have thus described. same kind may naturally dispose us to "It is an incorporeal created substance view that country whence our religion endued with a vegetative life, but not had its beginning. That the Supreme with sensation or thought; penetrating Being may be more easily propitiated in the whole created universe, being coone place than in another, is the dream extended with it; and, under God, of idle superstition; but that some moving matter, so as to produce the places may operate upon our own minds phænomena which cannot be solved by in an uncommon manner, is an opinion mechanical laws: active for ends unwhich hourly experience will justify.known to itself, not being expressly He who supposes that his vices may be conscious of its actions, and yet having more successfully combated in Pales- an obscure idea of the action to be entine, will, perhaps, find himself mis- tered upon." To this it has been antaken; yet he may go thither without swered, that, as the idea itself is most folly he who thinks they will be more obscure, and, indeed, inconsistent, so the freely pardoned, dishonours at once his foundation of it is evidently weak. It is reason and his religion." Johnson's intended by this to avoid the inconveRasselas Enc. Brit. Hume's Hist. of niency of subjecting God to the trouble England. See CRUSADE. of some changes in the created world, and the meanness of others. But it appears, that, even upon this hypothesis, he would still be the author of them; besides, that to Omnipotence nothing is troublesome, nor those things mean, when considered as part of a system, which alone might appear to be so. Doddridge's Lect. lec. 37; Cudworth's Intellectual Syst. p. 149, 172; More's Immor. of the Soul, l. iii. c. 12; Ray's Wisdom of God, p. 51, 52; Lord Mon

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Poor Pilgrims, an order that started up in the year 1500. They came out of Italy into Germany bare-footed, and bare-headed, feeding all the week, except on Sundays, upon herbs and roots sprinkled with salt. They stayed not above twenty-four hours in a place. They went by couples begging from door to door. This penance they undertook voluntarily, some for three, others for five or seven years, as they

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PLATONICS, NEW. See NEW PLATONICS.

PLEASURE, the delight which arises in the mind from contemplation or enjoyment of something agreeable. See HAPPINESS.

PLENARY INSPIRATION. See INSPIRATION.

PLURALIST, one that holds more than one ecclesiastical benefice with cure of souls. Episcopalians contend there is no impropriety in a presbyter holding more than one ecclesiastical benefice. Others, on the contrary, affirm that this practice is exactly the reverse of the primitive churches, as well as the instructions of the apostle, Tit. i. 5. Instead of a plurality of churches to one pastor, they say, we ought to have a plurality of pastors to one church, Acts, xiv. 23.

PNEUMATOLOGY, the doctrine of spiritual existence. See SOUL. POLONES FRATRES. See So

CINIANS.

boddo's Ancient Metaphysics; Young's constitution of nature, and the appaEssay on the Powers and Mechanism rent design of the Deity, but produces of Nature. to the parties themselves, and to the public, the following bad effects: contests and jealousies amongst the wives of the same husband; distracted affections, or the loss of all affection in the husband himself; a voluptuousness in the rich which dissolves the vigour of their intellectual as well as active faculties, producing that indolence and imbecility, both of mind and body, which have long characterized the nations of the East; the abasement of one half of the human species, who, in countrics where polygamy obtains, are degraded into instruments of physical pleasure to the other half; neglect of children; and the manifold and sometimes unnatural mischiefs which arise from a scarcity of women. To compensate for these evils, polygamy does not offer a single advantage. In the article of population, which it has been thought to promote, the community gain nothing (nothing, I mean, compared with a state in which marriage is nearly universal ;) for the question is not, whether one man will have more children by five or more wives than by one; but whether these five wives would not bear the same or a greater number of children to five separate husbands. And as to the care of children when produced, and the sending of them into the world in situations in which they may be likely to form and bring up families of their own, upon which the increase and succession of the human species in a great degree depend, this is less provided for and less practicable, where twenty or thirty children are to be supported by the attention and fortunes of one father, than if they were divided into five or six families, to each of which were assigned the industry and inheritance of two parents. Whether simultaneous polygamy was permitted by the law of Moses, seems doubtful, Deut. xvii. 16. Deut. xxi. 15; but whether permitted or not, it was certainly practised by the Jewish patriarchs both before that law and under it. The permission, if there were any, might be like that of divorce, "for the hardness of their heart," in condescension to their established indulgences, rather than from the general rectitude or propriety of the thing itself.

POLYGAMY, the state of having more wives than one at once. Though this article, (like some others we have inserted,) cannot be considered as strictly theological, yet, as it is a subject of importance to society, we shall here in troduce it. The circumstances of the patriarchs living in polygamy, and their not being reproved for it, has given occasion for some modern writers to suppose that it is not unlawful: but it is answered that the equality in the number of males and females born into the world intimates the intention of God that one woman should be assigned to one man; for (says Dr. Paley) if to one man be allowed an exclusive right to five or more women, four or more men must be deprived of the exclusive possession of any; which could never be the order intended. This equality, indeed, is not quite exact. The number of male infants exceeds that of females in the proportion of 19 to 18, or thereabouts; but this excess provides for the greater consumption of males by war, seafaring, and other dangerous or unhealthy occupations. It seems also a significant indication of the divine will, that he at first created only one woman to one man. Had God intended polygamy for the species, it is probable he would have begun with it; especially as by giving to Adam more wives than one, the multiplication of the human race would have proceeded with a quicker progress. Polygamy not only violates the

The state of manners in Judea had probably undergone a reformation in this respect before the time of Christ; for in the New Testament we meet with no trace or mention of any such practice being tolerated. For which reason, and because it was likewise forbidden

amongst the Greeks and Romans, we own punishment with it; and how ducannot expect to find any express law bious and equivocal those passages are upon the subject in the Christian code. in which it appears to have the sanction The words of Christ, Matt. xix. 9. may of the divine approbation; when to these be construed by an easy implication to reflections we add another, respecting prohibit polygamy; for if "whoever the limited views and temporary nature putteth away his wife, and marrieth an- of the more ancient dispensations and inother, committeth adultery;" he who stitutions of religion-how often the immarrieth another without putting away perfections and even vices of the patrithe first is no less guilty of adultery; archs and people of God in old times are because the adultery does not consist in recorded, without any express notificathe repudiation of the first wife (for tion of their criminality-how much is however unjust or cruel that may bè, it|| said to be commanded, which our reis not adultery,) but entering into a se- verence for the holiness of God and his cond marriage during the legal existence law will only suffer us to suppose were and obligation of the first. The several for wise ends permitted; how frequentpassages in St. Paul's writings which ly the messengers of God adapted themspeak of marriage, always suppose selves to the genius of the people to it to signify the union of one man whom they were sent, and the circumwith one woman, Rom. vii. 2, 3. 1 Cor. stances of the times in which they lived; vii. 12, 14, 16. The manners of different above all, when we consider the purity, countries have varied in nothing more equity, and benevolence of the Christian than in their domestic constitutions. law, the explicit declaration of our Less polished and more luxurious na- Lord and his apostle Paul respecting tions have either not perceived the bad the institution of marriage, its design effects of polygamy, or, if they did per- and limitation; when we reflect, too, on ceive them, they who in such countries the testimony of the most ancient fapossessed the power of reforming the thers, who could not possibly be ignolaws, have been unwilling to resign their rant of the general and common pracown gratifications. Polygamy is retain- tice of the apostolic church; and, ed at this day among the Turks, and finally, when to these considerations we throughout every part of Asia in which add those which are founded on justice Christianity is not professed. In Chris-to the female sex, and all the regula tian countries it is universally prohi-tions of domestic economy and national bited. In Sweden it is punished with death. In England, besides the nullity of the second marriage, it subjects the offender to transportation or imprisonment and branding for the first offence, and to capital punishment for the second. And whatever may be said in behalf of polygamy, when it is authorized by the law of the land, the marriage of|| a second wife, during the life-time of the first, in countries where such a second marriage is void, must be ranked with the most dangerous and cruel of those frauds by which a woman is cheated out of her fortune, her person, and her happiness." Thus far Dr. Paley. We shall close this article with the words of an excellent writer on the same side of the subject.

policy, we must wholly condemn the revival of polygamy." Paley's Moral Philosophy, vol. i. p. 319 to 325; Madan's Thelyphthora; Towers's, Wills's, Penn's, R. Hill's, Palmer's, and Haw eis's Answers to Madan, Mon. Rev. vol. lxiii. p. 338, and also vol. Ixix.; Beattie's El. of Mor. Science, vol. ii. p. 127–129.

POLYGLOT, (ToλuyAwrros,) having many languages. For the more commodious comparison of different versions of the Scriptures, they have been sometimes joined together, and called Polyglot Bibles. Origen arranged in different columns a Hebrew copy, both in Hebrew and Greek characters, with six different Greek versions. Elias Hutter, a German, about the end of the "When we reflect," says he, "that sixteenth, century, published the New the primitive institution of marriage li- Testament in twelve languages, viz. mited it to one man and one woman; Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Latin, Italian, that this institution was adhered to Spanish, French, German, Bohemian, by Noah and his sons, amidst the de- English, Danish, Polish; and the whole generacy of the age in which they lived, Bible in Hebrew, Chaldaic, Greek, and in spite of the examples of polyga- Latin, German, and a varied version. my which the accursed race of Cain had But the most esteemed collections are introduced; when we consider how those in which the originals and ancient very few (comparatively speaking) the translations are conjoined; such as the examples of this practice were among Complutensian Bible, by cardinal Ximthe faithful; how much it brought itsenes, a Spaniard; the king of Spain's

Bible, directed by Montanus, &c. the Paris Bible of Michael Jay, a French gentleman, in ten huge volumes, folio, copies of which were published in Holland under the name of pope Alexander the Seventh; and that of Brian Walton, afterwards bishop of Chester. The last is the most regular and valuable. It contains the Hebrew and Greek originals, with Montanus's interlineary version; the Chaldee paraphrases, the Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syrian and Arabic Bibles, the Persian Pentateuch and Gospels, the Ethiopian Psalms, Song of Solomon, and New Testament, with their respective Latin translations; together with the Latin Vulgate, and a large volume of various readings, to which is ordinarily joined Castel's Heptaglot Lexicon. See BIBLE, No. 29, 30.

POLYTHEISM, the doctrine of a plurality of gods, or invisible powers superior to man.

either the doctrine of polytheism must be true theology, or this instinct or sense is of such a nature as to have, at different periods of the world, misled all mankind. All savage tribes are at present polytheists and idolaters; but among savages every instinct appears in greater purity and vigour than among people polished by arts and sciences; and instinct never mistakes its objects. The instinct or primary impression of nature which gives rise to self-love, affection between the sexes, &c. has, in all nations and in every period of time, a precise and determinate object, which it inflexibly pursues. How, then, comes it to pass that this particular instinct, which, if real, is surely of as much importance as any other, should have uniformly led those who had no other guide, to pursue improper objects, to fall into the grossest errors, and the most pernicious practices?

For these and other reasons, which might easily be assigned, they suppose that the first religious principles must have been derived from a source different as well from internal sense as from the deductions of reason; from a source which the majority of mankind had early forgotten; and which, when it was banished from their minds, left nothing behind it to prevent the very first principle of religion from being perverted by various accidents or causes; or, in some extraordinary concurrence of circumstances, from being,

That there exists beings, one or many, powerful above the human race, is a proposition," says lord Kaims, "universally admitted as true in all ages and among all nations. I boldly call it universal, notwithstanding what is reported of some gross savages; for reports that contradict what is acknowfedged to be general among men, require more able vouchers than a few illiterate voyagers. Among many savage tribes there are no words but for objects of external sense: is it surprising || that such people are incapable of ex-perhaps, entirely obliterated. pressing their religious perceptions, or any perception of internal sense? The conviction that men have of superior powers, in every country where there are words to express it, is so well vouched, that, in fair reasoning, it ought to be taken for granted among the few tribes where language is deficient." The same ingenious author shows, with great strength of reasoning, that the operations of nature and the government of this world, which to us loudly proclaim the existence of a Deity, are not sufficient to account for the universal belief of superior beings among savage tribes. He is therefore of opinion that this universality of conviction can spring only from the image of Deity stamped upon the mind of every human being, the ignorant equal with the learned. This, he thinks, may be termed the sense of Deity.

This

source of religion every consistent theist must believe to be revelation. Reason could not have introduced savages to the knowledge of God, and we have just seen that a sense of Deity is clogged with insuperable difficulties. Yet it is undeniable that all mankind have believed in superior invisible powers; and, if reason and instinct be set aside, there remains no other origin of this universal belief than primeval revelation corrupted, indeed, as it passed from father to son in the course of many generations. It is no slight support to this doctrine, that, if there really be a Deity, it is highly presumable that he would reveal himself to the first men; creatures whom he had formed with faculties to adore and to worship him. To other animals the knowledge of the Deity is of no importance, to man it is of the first importance. Were we totally igThis sense of Deity, however, is ob-norant of a Deity, this world would apjected to by others, who thus reason: All nations, except the Jews, were once polytheists and idolaters. If, therefore, his lordship's hypothesis be admitted,

pear to us a mere chaos. Under the government of a wise and benevolent Deity, chance is excluded, and every event appears to be the result of es

As to the circumstances which led to polytheism, it has been observed, that taking it for granted that our original progenitors were instructed by their Creator in the truths of genuine theism, there is no room to doubt but that those truths would be conveyed pure from father to son as long as the race lived in one family, and were not spread over a large extent of country. If any credit is due to the records of antiquity, the primeval inhabitants of this globe lived to so great an age, that they must have increased to a very large number long before the death of the common parent, who would of course, be the bond of union to the whole society; and whose dictates, especially in what related to the origin of his being, and the existence of his Creator, would be Jistened to with the utmost respect by every individual of his numerous progeny. Many causes, however, would conspire to dissolve this family, after the death of its ancestor, into separate and independent tribes, of which some would be driven by violence, or would voluntarily

tablished laws. Good men submit to || tion, that we find it extremely difficult whatever happens without repining, to conceive any being without assigning knowing that every event is ordered by to him a form and a place. Hence biDivine Providence: they submit with shop Law supposes that the earliest geentire resignation; and such resignation nerations of men (even those to whom is a sovereign balsam for every misfor- he contends that frequent revelations tune or evil in life. were vouchsafed) may have been no better than Anthropomorphites in their conceptions of the Divine Being. Be this as it may, it is easy to conceive that the members of the first colonies would quickly lose many of the arts and much of the science which perhaps prevailed in the parent state; and that, fatigued with the contemplation of intellectual objects, they would relieve their overstrained faculties by attributing to the Deity a place of abode, if not a human form. To men totally illiterate, the place fittest for the habitation of the Deity would undoubtedly appear to be the sun, the most beautiful and glorious object of which they could form any idea; an object from which they could not but be sensible that they received the benefit of light and heat, and which experience must soon have taught them to be in a great measure the source of vegetation. From looking upon the sun as the habitation of their God, they would soon proceed to consider it as his body. Experiencing the effects of power in the sun, they would naturally conceive that luminary to be animated as their bodies were animated; they would feel his influence when above the horizon; they would see him moving from east to west; they would consider him, when set, as gone to take his repose; and those exertions and intermissions of power being analogous to what they experienced in themselves, they would look upon the sun as a real animal. Thus would the Divinity appear to their untutored minds to be a compound being like a man, partly corporeal and partly spiritual; and as soon as they imbibed such notions, though perhaps not before, they may be pronounced to have been absolute idolaters. When men had once got into this train, their gods would multiply upen them with wonderful rapidity. The moon, the planets, the fixed stars, &c. would become objects of veneration. Hence we find Moses cautioning the people of Israel against worshipping the hosts of heaven, Deut. iv. 19. Other objects, however, from which benefits were received or dangers feared, would likewise be deified; such as demons, departed heroes, &c. See IDOLATRY.

wander to a distance from the rest. From this dispersion great changes would take place in the opinions of some of the tribes respecting the object of their religious worship. A single family, or a small tribe, banished into a desert wildernesss (such as the whole earth must then have been) would find employment for all their time in providing the means of subsistence, and in defending themselves from beasts of prey. In such circumstances they would have little leisure for meditation: and, being constantly conversant with objects of sense, they would gradually lose the power of meditating upon the spiritual nature of that Being by whom their ancestors had taught them that all things were created. The first wanderers would, no doubt, retain in tolerable purity their original notions of Deity, and they would certainly endeavour to inpress those notions upon their children; but in circumstances infinitely more favourable to speculation than theirs could have been, the human mind dwells not long upon notions purely intellectual. We are so accustomed to sensible objects, and to the ideas of space, exten- From these accounts given us by the sion, and figure, which they are per- best writers of antiquity, it seems that petually impressing upon the imagina-though the polytheists believed heaven,

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