The Select Works of Jonathan Swift Author:Jonathan Swift Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: sourer the better, and swallowed with infinite consolation by their meagre devotees. And to render these yet more complete ; because the breath of man's life is ... more »in his nostrils, therefore the choicest, most edifying, and most enlivening belches were very wisely conveyed through that vehicle, to give them a tincture as they passed. The gods were the four winds, whom they worshipped, as the spirits that pervade and enliven the universe, and as those from whom alone all inspiration can properly be said to proceed. However, the chief of these, to whom they performed the adoration of latria, was the almighty North ; an ancient deity, whom the inhahitants of Megalopolis in Greece had likewise in the highest reverence: Omnium tlerorum Boream maxima celebrant.) This god, though endued with uhiquity, was yet supposed by the profounder JDolists to possess one peculiar hahitation, or (to speak in form) a calum empyraum, wherein he was more intimately present. This was situated in a certain region, well known to the ancient Greek, by them called KoXm, or the land of darkness. And although' many controversies have arisen upon that matter ; yet so much is undisputed, that from a religion of the like denomination the most refined ./Eolists have borrowed their original; from whence, in every age, the zealous among their priesthood have brought Latria is that worship which is paid to the Suprem Being. t Painau 1. . nier their choicest inspiration; fetching it with their own hands from the fouutain head, in certain bladders, and disploding it among the sectaries in all nations; who did, and do, and ever will, daily gasp and pant after it. Now, their mysteries and rites were performed in this manner. It is well known among the learned, that the virtuosos of former ages had a contrivance...« less