CONFERENCE IL 459 tions of truth and honesty. They make no scruple tobreak the Most solemn engagements and alliances, when it is for their interest. Falsehood, and deceit, and cheating is almost an uni- versal custom and principle among them, where they can do it safely. And Sçheffer's history ofLapland informs us, that if the tribes of the Laplanders, who are more" uncultivated, are yet more honest, it is because they haveno such store-houses and safe custody "for their goods or properties, and that if they were false Or 'thievish, there could he no safety or sechrity to any of them in their possessions. It is mere self-preservation, and not a sense Of duty; that Makes honesty the custom of their country. But whatsoever degrees of honesty they have, yet as for the religion ofthe Lapps, it is half or more than half heathen ; for though they have received some notions of the true God, and of Jesus Christ, and his apostles, yet they worship their old gods, Thor and Stor-junkar still : Thor is the god of thunder and lightning, who has power over life and death, and mankind, and is their chief deity ; and Stor-junkar is god of the cattle, fish and birds, and gives them successin hunting and fishing : And these are Worshippedunder wretched images and rude figures, and anointed with theblood and fat of their sacrifices their figures are drawn on their magical drums, andChrist andhis apostles among them ; and their superstitions are many, and extremely ridiculous. The custom of their ancestors is their highest, their most sacred and Unalterable reason for all their follies, and even for their virtues too. What shall we say nowof these worshippers ofSt. Nicholas and his images, or of Thor and Stor-junkar, these idolatrous Lapps, these national cheats ofNorth Russia ? Can we suppose, that any of these gross idolaters, or these devout and knavish, Nicholaites, who neither pay what is due to the trueGod, or to man on earth, are lit for the presence ofGod and the blessedness ofheaven ? Their own reason lets them go on obstinately in these idolatries and knaveries from age to age, and from one end of a nation to the other, without remorse, repentance, or reformation. If their reason be sufficient to guide them, why are there no instances of recovery from these national vices and madnesses ? It is true, some of them pretend to pieces and scraps of christi- anity ; but even with these hints of twilight and glimmering assist- ances from the gospel, what has their reason done to recover them to virtue or real piety ? Let us travel from Northern Europe to the southern part of Americ. What has this self-sufficient reason done for the natives ofPeru ? And what for the inhabitants of Mexico, which though it lies north of Peru, yet is much more to the south than thewild nations I have been before describing ? They maintained such horrid customs and practices amongst them,which passed for reli- gion, when the Spaniard, came first to make a prey of them,
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