Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

An Invader and Oppressor of his Neighbours, and reputed the Introducer of a new Worship, and being the first that built Cities after the flood, (as Cain was the first Builder of them before the flood,) built also Idolatry with them. And erected a new Worship, and was so far from strengthening that Notion the people had of God, that he endeavoured to corrupt it; The first Idolatry in common Histories being noted to proceed from that part of the World; the Ancientest Idol being at Babylon, and supposed to be first invented by this Person: Whence by the way perhaps ⟨p. 13⟩Rome is in the Revelations called Babylon, with respect to that similitude of their Saint-Worship, to the Idolatry first set up in that place.^* Tis evident Politicians have often changed the Worship of a Nation, but it is not upon record that the first thoughts of an object of Worship ever entered into the minds of people by any trick of theirs.

An Invader and Oppressor of his Neighbors, and reputed the Introducer of a new Worship, and being the first that built Cities after the flood, (as Cain was the first Builder of them before the flood,) built also Idolatry with them. And erected a new Worship, and was so far from strengthing that Notion the people had of God, that he endeavoured to corrupt it; The first Idolatry in common Histories being noted to proceed from that part of the World; the Ancientest Idol being at Babylon, and supposed to be first invented by this Person: Whence by the way perhaps ⟨p. 13⟩Rome is in the Revelations called Babylon, with respect to that similitude of their Saint-Worship, to the Idolatry first set up in that place.^* Tis evident Politicians have often changed the Worship of a Nation, but it is not upon record that the first thoughts of an object of Worship ever entred into the minds of people by any trick of theirs.

1. *Or if we understand it as some think that he defended his invasions under a pretext of the preserving Religion, it assures us that there was a notion of an object of Religion before, since no Religion can be without an object of Worship.