Temples were erected to all the passions, fears, and diseases to which humanity is subject.

Their supreme god, Jupiter, was an adulterer, Mars a murderer, Mercury a thief, Bacchus a drunkard, Venus a harlot; and they attributed other crimes to their gods too horrible to be mentioned.

Such gods were worshiped, with appropriate ceremonies, of lust, drunkenness, and bloodshed.

Their most sacred mysteries, carried on under the patronage of these licentious deities, were so abominable and infamous, that it was found necessary, for the preservation of any remnant of good order, to prohibit them.
It may be supposed that the human race is grown wiser now than in the days of Socrates and Cicero, and that such abominations are no longer possible.

Turn your eyes, then, to India, and behold one hundred and fifty millions of rational beings, possessed of "spiritual faculties," "insight," and "the religious sentiment," worshiping three hundred and thirty millions of gods, in the forms of hills, and trees, and rivers, and rocks, elephants, tigers, monkeys, and rats, crocodiles, serpents, beetles, and ants, and monsters like to nothing in heaven or earth, or under the earth.