it is her Business and Employment to gain Adorers.  For this Reason your Idols appear in all publick Places and Assemblies, in order to seduce Men to their Worship.  The Play-house is very frequently filled with Idols; several of them are carried in Procession every Evening about the Ring, and several of them set up their Worship even in Churches.  They are to be accosted in the Language proper to the Deity.  Life and Death are in their Power:  Joys of Heaven and Pains of Hell are at their Disposal:  Paradise is in their Arms, and Eternity in every Moment that you are present with them.  Raptures, Transports, and Ecstacies are the Rewards which they confer:  Sighs and Tears, Prayers and broken Hearts, are the Offerings which are paid to them.  Their Smiles make Men happy; their Frowns drive them to Despair.  I shall only add under this Head, that Ovid’s Book of the Art of Love is a kind of Heathen Ritual, which contains all the forms of Worship which are made use of to an Idol.

It would be as difficult a Task to reckon up these different kinds of Idols, as Milton’s was [3] to number those that were known in Canaan, and the Lands adjoining.  Most of them are worshipped, like Moloch, in Fire and Flames.  Some of them, like Baal, love to see their Votaries cut and slashed, and shedding their Blood for them.  Some of them, like the Idol in the Apocrypha, must have Treats and Collations prepared for them every Night.  It has indeed been known, that some of them have been used by their incensed Worshippers like the Chinese Idols, who are Whipped and Scourged when they refuse to comply with the Prayers that are offered to them.

I must here observe, that those Idolaters who devote themselves to the Idols I am here speaking of, differ very much from all other kinds of Idolaters.  For as others fall out because they Worship different Idols, these Idolaters quarrel because they Worship the same.

The Intention therefore of the Idol is quite contrary to the wishes of the Idolater; as the one desires to confine the Idol to himself, the whole Business and Ambition of the other is to multiply Adorers.  This Humour of an Idol is prettily described in a Tale of Chaucer; He represents one of them sitting at a Table with three of her Votaries about her, who are all of them courting her Favour, and paying their Adorations:  She smiled upon one, drank to another, and trod upon the other’s Foot which was under the Table.  Now which of these three, says the old Bard, do you think was the Favourite?  In troth, says he, not one of all the three. [4]