In lamentation over this most shocking outrage against genial Nature,—or rather to celebrate the yearly victory over it, the Sidonian damsels, not wholly without significance, assembled to hail the renovation of the prolific powers of Tammuz, or Adonis, as manifested in their God of summer.
That the Old Testament, as well as the New, is almost wholly allegorical of the sun, the year, and the seasons, is further proved in that apparently heart-felt complaint of St. Paul, 2 Corinthians iii., 15, "But even until this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart."
The moral principles allegorised in the Christian trinity, under the names of Father, the Word, and the Spirit, were metaphorical of human knowledge, reason and the spirit of truth. Similar to these are the interpretations lately given of the moral principles of the ancient trinity, by a philosopher of deep research;* and as they make out a reasonable meaning for the Christian trinity, which is otherwise a jumble of irrational mummeries, they are so far satisfactory. The ancient trinity of physical principles, of which the Sun was second to, and the most eximious representative of, the great All-in-All, was probably of Indian origin: and found its way west into Persia, Chaldea and Greece, where it was remodelled and spiritualised by Plato; but on its being pressed into the service of the Christian fathers, the sublime knowledge which it conveyed under emblems or symbols, was soon lost in ignorance, or abused and set aside by priestcraft; for even the apostolic fathers seemed to have had little or no knowledge of it, with the exception perhaps of St. Hermas, who most likely alluded to the share he had in falsifying those allegories (by adopting the literal in place of the occult meaning), when he declares that he "never spoke a true word in his life, but always lived in dissimulation, and affirmed a lie for truth to all men; and no man contradicted him, but all gave credit to his words" ("Pastor," Book iii., mandat. 3rd). The Pagan priesthood were too wise to apply the word revelation to anything else than the development of the secret meaning of the mysteries, which they made to the initiated; but that only true revelation has been entirely lost to all the successors of St. Hermas in the church called Christian for the last seventeen centuries.
One word more respecting this ancient trinity, the gross and ludicrous perversion of which now forms so prominent a dogma in our superstition.* Those fathers who adopted and interwove it into the Christian system, did either ignorantly or wilfully distort the sense of the allegory (whether astronomical or moral) by turning it into three distinct personages, with human qualities, parts, and passions; but having gone thus far, they found themselves in a dilemma; inasmuch that, though their new polytheism was in a great measure intended as a salvo to reconcile the Pagans, yet it was inconsistent with the Mosaic unity of God, which they were desirous of preserving also; so they bundled up their three distinct personages into one identical person.
Being now knee-deep, and knowing well that the credulity of ignorant man is equal to the most monstrous deceptions, those fabricators thought they might as well plunge over head and ears into absurdity, by settling the pedigree and relationship between these triune parties; and this they did by mingling together a chaos of downright nonsense. Here is a child born, said to be begotten by two supernatural fathers—these fathers are two infinite beings, equal and co-existent from all eternity; and yet this son, begotten by them upon a woman, is as old as either of them! And although thus produced, and to all appearance a child of humanity, he instantly becomes the eternal son of the father, making the third infinite! Such stuff has turned the church called Christian into a domicilium insanorum.
If we may believe our senses, there is indeed a trinity in unity that proves its own existence—is eternal, and comprehends within itself everything which the human intellect can possibly conceive—that is, Time, Matter, and Motion.*
In regard to the true history of our church during the three first centuries, we know nothing whatever, except that which comes through the most polluted channels; for the traditions and fabulous writings of the fathers who lived in those periods, are not deserving of the slightest credit; these men being notorious for nothing but pious frauds and forgeries; yet even in these professional arts they were far excelled in the following century, by the famous Eusebius, bishop of Cæsarea, who had no equal in fitting up and trimming off a "word of God," to suit the general interests of the church. He says of himself "I have related whatever might redound to the glory, and I have suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace of our religion." Baronius, who was a sincere advocate of the Christian faith, branded him as "the great falsifier of ecclesiastical history—a wily sycophant—a consummate hypocrite*—a time-serving persecutor, who had nothing in his known life or writings, to support the belief that he himself believed in the Christian religion." So much for the character of this main pillar of the church. Another father of the fourth century, St. Gregory Nazianzen, was of opinion that "words are sufficient to deceive the vulgar, who admire the more, the less they understand." Again, he says, "Our fathers and teachers have often said, not what they thought, but what circumstances required." To show that the saints of the fourth century had not only improved upon their predecessors in the arts of deception, but had grown bold enough in some instances to avow them, we quote St. Chrysostom, who declares that "miracles are proper only to excite sluggish and vulgar minds; that men of sense have no occasion for them; and that they frequently carry some untoward suspicion with them" Mosheim, than whom a higher authority cannot be quoted, speaking of those times and of such men, says: "The simplicity and ignorance of the generality in those times, furnished the most favorable occasion for the exercise of fraud; and the impudence of impostors in contriving false miracles, was artfully proportioned to the credulity of the vulgar: whilst the sagacity of the wise, who perceived these cheats, were overawed into silence by the dangers that threatened their lives and fortunes, if they should expose the artifice. Thus does it generally happen in human life, that, when danger attends the discovery of truth, and the profession thereof, the prudent are silent—the multitude believe, and impostors triumph"—(Eccles. Hist.)
In the fifth century, the church being backed by the strong arm of imperial power, the hierarchy converted their successful institution into a channel overflowing with riches; whilst their doctrines and dogmas, continually changing, got rid of any vestiges of reason and common sense which they had originally had amongst the Therapeutæ and Essenes. The ignorance of the laity was a secure protection for the clergy in all their tyrannical usurpations, and they in their turn became fierce persecutors.* Nature and her laws were overlooked as objects of no consideration, or rather, proscribed as the deadly enemies, of the theologian, and poor credulous man sunk into slavery and misery. In the following centuries, the infatuated belief in miracles of all sorts and sizes became the order of the day, and the heads of the church, no doubt, founded their regularly organised system of deception upon the authority of St. Paul, who, in his second letter to the Thessalonians, fairly avows that, "for this cause God shall send them strong delusion,** that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believe not the truth"
From this high authority, and from that of the Jew books, proceeded those lying miracles and stupendous prodigies which excited the idiot wonderment of mankind; hence the forged letters of Christ to Abgarus, king of Edessa, and the Apostle Peter; hence the letters of the Virgin Mary to St. Ignatius and the Sicilians, all dated in heaven; hence the 11,000 virgin martyrs of Cologne; hence wood enough of the true cross to build a first-rate man-of-war; hence the two or three heads of St. Ursula; hence the girdle of the Virgin Mary shown in eleven places at the same time; hence the remains of the ass, or asses, which carried Jesus to Jerusalem; hence the head of the Volto Santo, miraculously sent from heaven, and carried in a ship from Joppa to Lucca, without the aid of any human being on board; hence the annually liquefied blood of St. Januarus, imitated from the annual wound of the god Adonis,* in mount Libanus; and hence the flight of the Virgin Mary's cottage, which winged its way from Nazareth to Dalmatia, and thence to Loretto, where it still forms the headquarters of her ladyship.
You object to the above legends on account of their being the invention of the scarlet prostitute, as you call the Church of Rome, observing that the reformed church has given up all such fooleries. Be not deceived, the priesthoods of all religions are essentially and necessarily the same, inasmuch as fraud and delusion, skilfully played off upon ignorance, form the apparatus of all; and were it not that science is now beginning everywhere to grapple with the demon of artificial theology, miracles would be as abundant as ever amongst both Catholics and protestants. The increasing knowledge of the laity curbs and puts to shame all such pretentions in the present day; but do we not see how strenuously all the priests of Christendom uphold the prodigies which they say were performed nearly two thousand years ago? They do this, because, without the delusion of supernatural agency, immediate or remote, their trade could not stand.
Any attempt to rouse the ignorant, uncultivated mind to free inquiry, is almost a hopeless task, and it is altogether so when besotted religious prejudice stands in the way; but we ask the man who has got a vestige of mind he can call his own, whether his evidence is as satisfactory that Nature has been put out of her course by the working of miracles, as it is, on the contrary, that such violations of her laws have never in truth taken place! Has any such thing happened in his own, his father's, his grandfather's, or his great grandfather's time? He must answer in the negative, and thus far he has evidence from experience, we shall say, for 150 years, giving a succession of proof, which rests on the immutable order of things; and will he abandon that invariable director for the worthless and self-convicted testimony of a few strolling vagabonds, known only as the lawless disturbers of the peace in the countries where they were vagrants, and who lived nearly two thousand years ago? When legends and traditions are found inconsistent with nature, common sense, and experience, does their antiquity alone prove their truth against all these guides? On the contrary, antiquity can never be divested of the mantle of fable. We know that besides the marks of falsehood which the stories alluded to bore at the time of their fabrication, the true characters of the propagators were so well known to men of sense and education among the Pagans, that their impostures were utterly despised; and as the Jew books called the "Testaments," abundantly show that they were compiled throughout by men of similar character, to credit them is to give up all confidence in our senses, and to give the lie to natural light and reason.
Whence comes the anomaly that it is in supenaturals alone we find man departing totally from the common rules of evidence, and the respect which he owes to himself? In this case, denying as he does the authority of his own senses, and the reason which arises from them, he has rendered himself inferior to all other animals, and this is evidently owing to his not being allowed the exercise of his intellectual powers, priestcraft having decoyed him into the regions of non-reality and delusion, where everything congenial to his nature, where all entities, or things comprehensible, can have no admittance: there theological deception holds her dominion under the dark mask of mystery;* and out of the fears of ignorance forges mental chains for the human race, as they come into existence, the child succeeding to the woful inheritance of the father.
Men, says a modern philosopher, blindly follow the paths their fathers trode; they believe, because in infancy they were told they must believe; they hope, because their progenitors hoped; and they tremble, because they trembled. If by chance a young man examines his religion, he does it with partiality, or without perseverance; he is often disgusted with a single glance of the eye, on contemplating an object so revolting. In old age, the faculties are blunted; habits become incorporated with the machine, the senses are debilitated by time and infirmity, and we are no longer able to penetrate back to the source of our opinions; besides, the fear of death then renders an examination, over which terror commonly presides, very liable to suspicion. Civil authority also flies to the support of the prejudices of mankind; compels them to ignorance by forbidding inquiry; and holds itself in continual readiness to punish all who attempt to undeceive them.**
The morality which is derived from the religion of nature, and the social intercourse of man, is everywhere the same, and unchangeable; whereas that which is built upon priest-created theology is variable, impure, and always pernicious, inasmuch as it is made to square with the interests and power of the sacerdotal orders. This theology, from its being linked with political governments, has been enabled to insinuate its usurpations into every institution of society, where it has been the fruitful source of endless contention and sorrow. The innocent and necessary liberties of mankind are, by conventional laws of its procuring, converted into crimes; the freedom of the moral energies is crushed, and almost every pursuit that is conducive to, or connected with human happiness, is discouraged and blasted, through the influence and intrigues of this cunping and demoralising pest*—the natural enemy of everything that is natural.
Are we told that the fires of the inquisition, with all its accompanying abominations, have been swept away by the reformation; and that the spirit of our religion is changed from that of the raging wolf, to the mildness of the lamb? We positively deny that its spirit is either changed or capable of change: the light of science, and a partial exercise of reason is at present keeping it in check; but it anxiously awaits and looks forward to the return of that congenial element—the intellectual darkness and ignorance which prevailed in the eleventh century. This blessed consummation would effectually restore its power; and thus armed, the demon would quickly show, in the strongest sect, whether Catholic or Protestant, its immutable spirit of tyranny and persecution,—the human mind would again be prostrated, and all the horrors of those times would again cover the face of Christendom.
We shall conclude this lecture by asking a few questions.
What is it that has, for the last fifteen centuries, obscured the light of Nature, put human reason out of her chair, and, as much as possible, prevented the development of all scientific truths?
What was it that first occasioned the shedding of human blood, on account of supernatural speculations, and imaginary existence?
What was it that spread war, devastation, and bloodshed over Europe, (agreeably to the New Testament denunciation,)* for more than thirteen hundred years?
What is it that still divides Europe into opposing sects; and keeps alive those deadly animosities about chimeras, for which men formerly cut each other's throats?
What is it that most generally sets the father's heart against the son, and makes the son abhor the presence of his father?
What is the thing which, cherished by ignorance, and sheltered by tyranny, has usurped one-tenth of the proceeds of man's industry; and in wringing this from starving poverty, is supported by cannon, bayonets, and sabres?
What is it that has, to serve its own ends, and wholly unsupported by New Testament authority, appropriated to itself one-seventh of the laboring man's time; compelling him to spend that time, either in houses of idolatry, or in idleness and vice at the ale-house, to the utter ruin of his family?
What is it that has poisoned love amongst the human species, and rendered the simple union of the sexes an unnatural bond of tyranny and slavery,** which, in nine cases in every ten, entails life-lasting misery upon the victims of the indissoluble marriages of Christian superstition!
All these questions are answered in five words:—the artificial religion of priestcraft.
So shall the priest-ridden world go on, till
[Publishers' Note.]—Since this was written vast changes have been made in England in the laws relating to marriage and divorce, and if Logan Mitchell could rewrite this he would probably be satisfied with such increased facilities for divorce as exist now in the State of Massachusetts, coupled with more complete recognition by the law of the parental rights of the mother.
It has constantly been assumed by church chronologists that the Jewish sect of Galileans, who afterwards took the old Pagan appellation of Christian, had writings of their own as early as the first century; but this is mere gratuitous assumption, and rests only on the authority of men entirely undeserving of credit. As for this new Christian Theogony, and how it came to receive the first stitches of its patchwork during the second and third centuries, we know nothing about the matter, except what we have on the authority of Eusebius (see preceding lecture), Bishop of Cæsarea, a man who was confessedly the most notorious of all the Church historians for forgery and every other species of pious falsehood.* In getting up his history, he confesses that he entered upon "a solitary and untrodden way" that he could nowhere find as much as the bare steps of those who had passed the same path before him; that he had "not found any ecclesiastical writer which unto this day hath in this behalf employed any diligence."
These confessions from such a man are ample proof that he had no authentic matter to found his "history" upon; but he could call to his aid, legends, fables, and traditions, all very plastic and convertible materials, and in the use of them he has certainly shown himself a consummate workman. The rest of that class of men who are generally denominated the "Fathers of the Church," some of whom lived before, and others after the time of Eusebius, were persons equally addicted to holy frauds and forgeries (with perhaps one or two exceptions), but most of them were much inferior to him in zeal and industry. As habitual lying and deception were charged upon most of them by the learned of their Pagan contemporaries, and also by the candid and impartial amongst their modern successors in the church, it is proper to notice what some of the latter have written of them. In this delineation of character we find that a large majority of the vices and crimes which are found among the worst of mankind, have been fixed upon, them; viz., avarice, faction, ignorance, sedition, persecution of each other, lying, perjury, Clogherism* (the crime of the Church in all ages), cruelty, and murder. And some writers have gone so far as to declare that early ecclesiastical history is nothing but a compendium of their evil deeds.
In times still earlier, the grossest vices are acknowledged to have been common, if not habitual, among the "faithful;" for Paul, in his epistle to the Roman Christians, chapter first, charges, his friends and followers, and even the women amongst them, as guilty of the unnatural crime. In chapter vi., 19, he evidently alludes to it again. St. Barnabas, indeed, calls the first Christians, "the most wicked of all the wicked." Some of the fathers of the second century, such as Papias, and his admirer, Irenæus, were actuated by follies so absurd, that they seem rather to have deserved the name of madmen; witness the romances about the grape vines, and others of a similar nature, which are not exceeded by the wildest fictions of ancient or modern times. Such being the soil, Christians, out of which your religion sprung from old roots, we need not wonder that the fruit it has borne has been rather bitter. The historians of the Popes confess that many of them were condemned by their own general councils for adultery, dogherasty, simony, sorcery, and Atheism.
In the third and fourth centuries, the fathers had arrived at higher tact and skill, and became adepts in trimming up all kinds of pious deceptions and falsifications, and some of them were avowed forgers on principle and by profession. But it frequently happened that as hostilities grew up between the leaders of contending sects, they were useful in exposing the nefarious inventions of each other, which led to deadly animosities amongst their followers. It was, probably, a late knowledge of the utter fallaciousness of his newly adopted religion, and the perpetual contentions which he saw to be inseparable from such a system, that eventually disgusted Origen, and caused him, as is well known, to abandon Christianity, recur to Paganism, and sacrifice to idols, publicly denying his lord and master, Jesus Christ. This appears in his own writings, but more fully in his life, written in Greek by Suidas.
Episcopius says of the Council of Nice, and others of that early period, "that they were led on by fury, faction, and madness;" and this is corroborated by another author, who relates, that at the second Synod of Ephesus, Dioscorus, Bishop of Alexandria, "knocked and kicked Flavianus, Patriarch of Constantinople, with such fury, that within three days after he died." The philosopher Ammianus Marcellinus, complains that "no beasts were such deadly enemies to men as the more savage Christians were to each other." What better could be expected, when the example was shown by the leaders of sects, the fathers themselves, who were constantly quarrelling about the smallest as well as the greatest points, and for the smallest as well as the greatest they damned one another.*
In a former lecture, it has been observed that the famous passage which we find in Josephus about Jesus Christ, was never mentioned nor alluded to in any way whatever by any of the fathers of the first, second, or third centuries; nor until the time of Eusebius, "when it was first quoted by himself." The truth is, none of these fathers could quote or allude to a passage which did not exist in their times, but was, to all points short of absolute certainty, forged and interpolated by Eusebius, as suggested by Gibbon and others. Even the redoubtable Lardner has pronounced this passage to be a forgery.
That most ingenuous and fair dealing son of the Church, Mosheim, whose authority and unimpeachable veracity have never been questioned, even by divines, certifies as follows:—"The Platonists and Pythagoreans held it as a maxim, that it was not only lawful, but praiseworthy to deceive, and even to make use of the expedient of a lie in order to advance the cause of truth and piety.** The Jews, who had lived in Egypt, had learned and received this maxim from them (the Pythagoreans and Platonists) before the coming of Christ, as appears incontestably from a multitude of ancient records; and the Christians were infected from both these sources with the same pernicious error, as appears from the number of books attributed falsely to great and venerable names." The above extract refers to the second century only, when numerous gospels, epistles, etc., were fabricated and falsely fathered in the manner stated by Mosheim; but in the fourth century there were few exceptions to the standard maxim, that it was an act of the highest merit to deceive and lie, whenever the interests of the priesthood might be promoted thereby.
The writings of the most virtuous and meritorious authors among the Pagans, if they inculcated good morals alone, and condemned all vulgar superstitions, were reckoned superlatively dangerous by these fathers; for even the amiable Plutarch did not escape their wasteful malice, there being upwards of a hundred of his opuscula, or moral treatises destroyed. But while they indulged in this prudent destruction, they took care to preserve such extracts from the writings of Porphyry, Celsus, Hierocles, and others, as they could fit up by contortion, and press into the service of their new superstition, inserting, at the same time, concessions which were never made by these philosophers, whose works were exceedingly obnoxious, on account of the reason and good sense which they contained. Nay, it has even been known that some of the finest of these literary productions have, in certain parts, been entirely obliterated by these, falsifying priests, and their own knavish jargon substituted on the same parchment.
Daille freely avers, "that the writings of the fathers are in great part forged, either anciently or in latter times, full of frauds, both pious and malicious, against Pagan learning, mutually witnesses against each other, and are absolutely not to be believed. They would forge whole books to serve the ends of the priesthood."
These examples were too interesting and praiseworthy not to be followed, as far as possible, by the English clergy. They falsified, again and again, says Hume, the rolls of Parliament to serve their own dominion, taking care to publish only the articles that were favorable to themselves. And they were guilty of another imposture in adding one to the number—(See the first edition of Hume).
Jortin, in his remarks on ecclesiastical history, charges the fathers with perverting, misquoting, defaming, defacing and destroying the works of their adversaries, and even those of each other.
Blondel, when speaking of the second century, says, "whether you consider the immediate impudence of impostors, or the deplorable credulity of believers, it was a most miserable period, and exceeded all others in pious frauds; there was more aversion to lying, and more fidelity among profane, than among Christian, authors."
Bishop Fell confesses, that "in the first ages of the Church, so extensive was the license of forging, so credulous were the people in believing, that the evidence of transactions was grievously obscured." Casaubon complains as follows:—"I am much grieved to observe, in the early ages of the Church, that there were very many who deemed it praiseworthy to assist the divine word with their own fictions; that their new doctrine might find a readier admittance among the wise men of the Gentiles." This is confirmed by Scaliger, who declares that, so inefficacious did they deem their "word of God," that they distrusted the success of Christ's kingdom, "without the aid of lying."*
Bishop Burnet has shown that the Athanasian creed was a forgery of the eighth century.
To the testimony and authority of the above seven highly respectable divines, we might add that of a host of other theologians, which shows that it has generally been the sons of the Church themselves who have most fully exposed the utterly worthless and deceitful characters of the fabricators of our religion: but for the present we shall only cite the "Free Inquiry" of the ingenuous and learned Dr. Middleton, who, in quoting the authority of St. Cyprian as to the frauds of the Christians in the third century, observes as follows:—"From all these considerations taken together, it must, I think, be allowed that the forged miracles of the fourth century give us just reason to suspect the pretensions of every other age, both before and after it. My argument would be much the same if it were grounded on the allowed forgeries of any later age." Again, he says; "So far I agree with them both (Drs. Chapman and Berriman) and own their defence to be true, that the earlier miracles rest on no better foundation, nor are supported by any better evidence than the latter." It is true that elsewhere Dr. Middleton seems to concede the truth of the New Testament and apostolic miracles, but who does not see that this was a shift to ward off persecution and ruin?
It has elsewhere been observed, that according to the confessions of the apostolic father, St. Hermas, which we have in his book called "The Pastor," he was a liar upon principle and avowed profession. Beausobre says of, him: "His principle was, that faith was only fit for the rabblement."
"Saint Augustine, one of the most veracious, and the least given to lying of all the Fathers, declares in his 33rd sermon, and stakes his eternal salvation to the truth of the fact, which he said was as true as the Gospel, that while he was bishop of Hippo Regiup, he preached the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to a whole nation of men and women, who had no heads, but had their eyes in their bosoms; and in countries still more southerly, he preached to a nation amongst whom each individual had but one eye, and that situate in the middle of the forehead!" What a glorious field this affords the "long-eared rout" for the exercise of their faith!
That falsehood was quite the order of the day amongst the Fathers, witness the maxim of Tertullian, "Credo quia impossibile est;" upon which unerring rule he founded his implicit belief in the resurrection and other such miracles, that is, he believed them true, because they were utterly impossible. Saint Jerome accuses not only St. Paul, but Jesus Christ, of frauds.
Justin Martyr speaks of the fable of the Phoenix as an incontrovertible truth. Tertullian affirms, in his usual manner, that when the Christians cast out devils, they (the devils) acknowledged themselves to be the heathen deities, Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, etc., etc. These, and such as these, are our Christian authorities!
At the head of all these Fathers of the Church, in point of rank and pre-eminence in wickedness, stands the imperial assassin, the Emperor Constantine. As a forger and falsifier, it was not in his line to equal his protégé Eusebius; but in all the arts of dissimulation he seems not to have been his inferior. As a cool family murderer, Nero and Caligula may hide their diminished heads in his presence. He drowned his wife in boiling water; put to death his son Crispus; murdered the two husbands of his sisters, Constantia and Anastasia; murdered his own father-in-law, Maximiam Hercules; murdered his nephew, his sister Constantia's son, only twelve years of age; with some others, not so nearly related, amongst whom was Sapator, a pagan priest, who refused absolution for the crimes of the royal assassin.
There is nothing easier to conceive than the eagerness with which such tyrants as Constantine, and his son Constantins, would embrace so convenient a religion as the one newly vamped. The Pagan priest, Sapator, was put to death for expressing horror at the crimes of the former, which were readily absolved by the Christian priests; and when the latter wanted to commit similar murders, he found a ready assistant in the Bishop of Nicomedia, a holy father of the fourth century, who forged a fatal deed, which he affirmed to be the testament of the deceased emperor; in which his son Constantius was enjoined and conjured to murder his two uncles (one of whom was his father-in-law), Optatus, the husband of his aunt, and seven cousins german, one of whom was his brother-in-law. These were the first imperial patrons of Christianity! The good bishop no doubt justified Constantine in the bloody injunction laid in his forged will, by the example of David, who, with his last breath, enjoined his son Solomon to murder his faithful general, Joab, and Shimei, though he had sworn not to harm the latter; in like manner Constantius had pledged his solemn oath for the security of his kinsmen.
When the foregoing sketches and opinions are considered as proof specimen of the true characters and conduct of a few of the men called "the Fathers," an estimate of the general worthlessness and fraudulent motives of the whole may easily be formed; yet such were the men who systematized Christianism, headed by St. Paul, who afforded them a notable example in all the arts of mystery or fraud, these two terms being synonymous. His justification of lying is as follows:—"For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory, why yet am I also judged as a sinner?" Rom. iii., 7. It ought not, therefore, to excite any surprise, that from so foul a source should emanate those unsightly and revolting dogmas, which, sooner or later, must bring this superstition into utter contempt, before the tribunal of reason and science. The root of all these dogmas is distinctly traceable to the astro-theology of the ancient Pagans; but the whole has been hideously perverted by the fabricator of our religion, either by knavishly teaching the exoteric, or literal sense, though they knew the esoteric, or hidden meaning; or by adopting the former through ignorance of the mythological mysteries. The fable of the fall of man, the garden of Eden, the serpent and Eve, etc., are clearly astronomical allegories;* and the most learned of the early fathers held them to be so; but they were abused by others, and taken in the literal sense, in order that they might serve as tenterhooks, upon which to stretch the New Testament dogmas of original sin and redemption.
That these fables have allusion to the signs of the zodiac, the solar system, the elements and seasons, has been shown by Volney, Dupuis, and others. Many of the apparently gross absurdities of the Bible are easily explained by the key of ancient astronomy. Indeed, all the principal personages of that book, as well as those of remote pagan antiquity, whether, ranking as deities or men, were either personifications of constellations, planets, seasons, or other natural objects, or their affects; and whenever miraculous powers were ascribed to those fanciful creations, all men who understood the mysteries, such as Herodotus, Philo, Origen, etc., knew that the literal sense could not be true; and that the right interpretation was allegorical. The ancient languages of the East having no neuter gender, the host of celestial existences were denominated in the masculine or feminine. Amongst these, their grand immaculate chieftain, the sun, in all the eastern theogonies, and under a thousand different names, was always adored as the omnipotent Creator and Regulator. "O Sun," cried the great prophet of Persia, "thou art powerful in thy blaze! glorious in thy lustre! the burster of darkness! head of the world! king of stars! mightiest of beings above!"
That those polytheisms of the East, from which emanated Judaism and Christianity, had their root in astronomy, is proved from the most authentic sources. "The Egyptians," says Plutarch, "inserted nothing into their worship without a reason, nothing merely fabulous, nothing superstitious, as many suppose; but their institutions have either a reference to morals, or to something useful in life; and many of them bear a beautiful resemblance of some appearance in nature." Chæremon, the Egyptian philosopher, says: "What is said of Osiris and Isis,* and all the sacred fables, may be resolved into the stars—their occultations and risings—into the course of the Sun through the zodiac; or the nocturnal and diurnal hemispheres."