_Tremble, thou earth! at the presence of the Lord; at the presence of the God of Jacob; which turned the rock into standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters!_ It were endless to enumerate all the passages, both in the sacred and profane writers, which establish the general sentiment of mankind, concerning the inseparable union of a sacred and reverential awe, with our ideas of the divinity.

Hence the common maxim, _Primus in orbe deos fecit timor_.
This maxim may be, as I believe it is, false with regard to the origin of religion.

The maker of the maxim saw how inseparable these ideas were, without considering that the notion of some great power must be always precedent to our dread of it.

But this dread must necessarily follow the idea of such a power, when it is once excited in the mind.

It is on this principle that true religion has, and must have, so large a mixture of salutary fear; and that false religions have generally nothing else but fear to support them.