Charles Buck Theological Dictionary: PAGANISM The religious worship and discipline of Pagans, or the adoration of idols and false gods. The theology of the Pagans according to themselves, as Scxvola and Varrs, was of three sorts. The first of these may well be called fabulous, as treating of the theology and genealogy of their deities, in which they say such things as are unworthy of deity; ascribing to them thefts, murders, adulteries, and all manner of crimes; and therefore this kind of theology is condemned by the wiser sort of heathens as nugatory and scandalous: the writers of this sort of theology were Sancho-niatho, the Phoenician; and of the Grecians, Orpheus, Hesiod, Pherecyde, &c. The second sort, called physic, or natural, was studied and taught by the philosophers, who, rejecting the multiplicity of gods introduced by the poets, brought their theology to a more natural and rational form, and supposed that there was but one Supreme God, which they commonly make to be the sun; at least, an emblem of him, but at too great a distance to

ORDINATION
ORIGENISTS
ORIGIN OF EVIL
ORIGINAL SIN
ORTHODOXY
OSIANDRIANS
OSSENIANS
PACIFICATION
PAEDOBAPTISTS
PAGANISM The religious worship and discipline of Pagans, or the adoration of idols and false gods. The theology of the Pagans according to themselves, as Scxvola and Varrs, was of three sorts. The first of these may well be called fabulous, as treating of the theology and genealogy of their deities, in which they say such things as are unworthy of deity; ascribing to them thefts, murders, adulteries, and all manner of crimes; and therefore this kind of theology is condemned by the wiser sort of heathens as nugatory and scandalous: the writers of this sort of theology were Sancho-niatho, the Phoenician; and of the Grecians, Orpheus, Hesiod, Pherecyde, &c. The second sort, called physic, or natural, was studied and taught by the philosophers, who, rejecting the multiplicity of gods introduced by the poets, brought their theology to a more natural and rational form, and supposed that there was but one Supreme God, which they commonly make to be the sun; at least, an emblem of him, but at too great a distance to
PAGODA
PALM SUNDAY
PANTHEISM
PANTHEOLOGY
PAPIST
PARABLE
PARACLETE
PARADISE The garden of Eden, in which Adam and Eve were placed. It is also used to denote heaven, Luk_23:1-56. As to the terrestrial paradise, there have been many inquiries about its situation. It has been placed in the third heaven, in the orb of the moon, in the moon itself, in the middle region of the air, above the earth, under the earth, in the place possessed by the Caspian sea, and under the arctic pole. The learned Huetius places it upon the river that is produced by the conjunction of the Tigris and Euphrates, now called the river of the Arabs, between this conjunction, and the division made by the same river before it falls into the Persian sea. Other geographers have placed it in Armenia, between the sources of the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Araxes, and the Phasis, which they suppose to be the four rivers described by Moses. But concerning the exact place, we must necessarily be very uncertain, if, indeed, it can be thought at all to exist at present, considering the many changes which have taken
PARAPHRASE

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