Before the Christian religion had, as it were, humanized the idea of the Divinity, and brought it somewhat nearer to us, there was very little said of the love of God.
The followers of Plato have something of it, and only something; the other writers of pagan antiquity, whether poets or philosophers, nothing at all.

And they who consider with what infinite attention, by what a disregard of every perishable object, through what long habits of piety and contemplation it is that any man is able to attain an entire love and devotion to the Deity, will easily perceive that it is not the first, the most natural, and the most striking effect which proceeds from that idea.

Thus we have traced power through its several gradations unto the highest of all, where our imagination is finally lost; and we find terror, quite throughout the progress, its inseparable companion, and growing along with it, as far as we can possibly trace them.

Now, as power is undoubtedly a capital source of the sublime, this will point out evidently from whence its energy is derived, and to what class of ideas we ought to unite it.
SECTION VI.
PRIVATION.
ALL _general_ privations are great, because they are all terrible; _vacuity_, _darkness_, _solitude_, and _silence_.

With what a fire of imagination, yet with what severity of judgment, has Virgil amassed all these circumstances, where he knows that all the images of a tremendous dignity ought to be united at the mouth of hell! Where, before he unlocks the secrets of the great deep, he seems to be seized with a religious horror, and to retire astonished at the boldness of his own design: Dii, quibus imperium est animarum, umbraeque _silentes_! Et Chaos, et Phlegethon! loca _nocte silentia_ late! Sit mihi fas audita loqui! sit numine vestro Pandere res alta terra et _caligine_ mersas! Ibant _obscuri_, _sola_ sub _nocte_, per _umbram_, Perque domos Ditis _vacuas_, et _inania_ regus.
"Ye subterraneous gods! whose awful sway The gliding ghosts, and _silent_ shades obey: O Chaos hoar! and Phlegethon profound! Whose solemn empire stretches wide around; Give me, ye great, tremendous powers, to tell Of scenes and wonders in the depth of hell; Give me your mighty secrets to display From those _black_ realms of darkness to the day." PITT.
"_Obscure_ they went through dreary _shades_ that led Along the _waste_ dominions of the _dead_." DRYDEN.
SECTION VII.
VASTNESS.
Greatness[17] of dimension is a powerful cause of the sublime.