DOCTRINES***


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PAGAN ORIGIN OF PARTIALIST DOCTRINES.

by

REV. JOHN CLAUDIUS PITRAT,

A Member of the University of France; Author of "Jesuits
Unveiled," of "Paul and Julia," etc., and
Formerly a Romish Priest.







Published by the Author.

Cincinnati:
Longley Brothers, Printers,
168 Vine St., Above Fourth.
1857.

Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1857, by
John Claudius Pitrat,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District
of Ohio.




TO BROTHER JOHN A. GURLEY.


_Dear Friend Gurley_,--To you, who have fed me when I was starving,
sheltered me when I was a homeless exile, and befriended me when I was
forlorn, and my life was sought by my persecutors, this volume I
inscribe, as a feeble token of my lasting gratitude and friendship.

     J. C. PITRAT.




PREFACE.


Two arguments can be brought forth to prove that the Partialist
doctrines are not taught in the Scriptures: the one is drawn from the
Scriptures themselves, and the other is drawn from history.

The first argument, drawn from the Scriptures, is this:

The Partialist doctrines are not taught in the Scriptures, if it can be
proved by the Scriptures themselves that the Partialist doctrines are
not contained therein. But it can be proved by the Scriptures themselves
that the Partialist doctrines are not contained therein. Then the
Partialist doctrines are not taught in the Scriptures.

The second argument, drawn from history, is this:

The Partialist doctrines are not taught in the Scriptures, if it can be
proved by history, that the origin of the Partialist doctrines is Pagan.
But it can be proved by history that the origin of the Partialist
doctrines is Pagan. Then the Partialist doctrines are not taught in the
Scriptures.

These two arguments, as he who reflects can easily perceive, not only
corroborate each other, but their respective proving force is such,
that, if considered separately, each one is sufficient to peremptorily
prove that the Partialist doctrines are not taught in the Scriptures.
The former, till now, we Universalists have exclusively used, and it
has been efficacious in causing the scales of early and strong
prejudices to fall from the eyes of thousands. However, it is
unfortunately a fact, confirmed by daily experience, that the
conclusions arrived at through scriptural controversies are striking
only to minds of a particular bent and culture. On the contrary, the
conclusions arrived at through historical facts present themselves to
the mind of _all_, clear, vivid and irresistible. It is for this reason
that the author, in this book, presents to the consideration of the
Universalist denomination, and of the public in general, the second
argument, drawn from history. The vast number of historical facts, of
quotations, extracts, etc., contained in this volume, have been
translated from many languages, with as much accuracy as possible.

May God bless this work, intended to confirm the Universalists in their
beloved faith; and also to break the chain of prejudice which keeps
millions of men in ignorance, in superstition, in perpetual fear, and
thereby in spiritual bondage: "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free."

     THE AUTHOR.




CONTENTS.

  DEDICATION.                                                      iii

  PREFACE.                                                           v

  CHAPTER I.

  TRUE SPIRIT OF PAGAN RELIGIONS.                                    9

  CHAPTER II.

  PAGAN ORIGIN OF MYSTERIES.                                        28

  CHAPTER III.

  PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF A PERSONAL DEVIL.                 58

  CHAPTER IV.

  PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF ORIGINAL SIN.                     68

  CHAPTER V.

  PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF TRINITY.                          80

  CHAPTER VI.

  PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE SUPREME DIVINITY OF
  JESUS CHRIST.                                                     87

  CHAPTER VII.

  PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF ENDLESS HELL.                    111

  ARTICLE I.--Metempsychosis or Transmigration of the Souls.       111

  ARTICLE II.--Tartarus.                                           129

  ARTICLE III.--Did the Christians of the First Centuries
  believe in Endless Hell.                                         136

  ARTICLE IV.--How the Church of Rome borrowed the doctrine
  of Endless Hell from the Pagans; and how, afterwards, the
  self-called Orthodox Protestant Churches borrowed it from
  the Church of Rome.                                              170

  CHAPTER VIII.

  PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF A FIRST JUDGMENT, BY JESUS
  CHRIST, IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE SEPARATION OF THE SOUL FROM
  THE BODY.                                                        182

  CHAPTER IX.

  PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE
  BODY.                                                            190

  CHAPTER X.

  PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF A GENERAL JUDGMENT AT
  THE END OF THE WORLD.                                            205

  CHAPTER XI.

  PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF VICARIOUS ATONEMENT.             229

  VALEDICTORY.                                                     246




  PAGAN ORIGIN
  OF
  PARTIALIST DOCTRINES.




CHAPTER I.

TRUE SPIRIT OF PAGAN RELIGIONS.


IT seems to be an undeniable fact, that, before the coming of Jesus
Christ, nations had immemorially and universally believed, that the
universe, or nature, was an uncreated but animated being, whose vast
body comprised the earth, the sun, the planets and the stars, to which
one great soul impressed motion and life. Also they believed that all
those principal parts, or, in other words, principal members of the body
of the universe, were animated by emanations or irradiations of the
great soul of the universe, or nature. This Pantheistic doctrine we find
recorded by the Chaldean Zoroaster, in his Zend-Avesta; by the
Phoenician Sanchoniaton in his Mythological History; by the author of
the Indian Vedam; and by the Chinese Confucius, in his Theology. Weighty
is the testimony of those authors, who lived, Confucius perhaps
excepted, at about the time of Moses. Also, the above doctrine they
themselves believed and taught. More, we find the same testimony, the
same doctrine, and the same teaching, in nearly all the works of the
celebrated poets, orators and philosophers of posterior ages.

Pliny, the historian and naturalist, writes: "The world, or what we call
the heaven, which, in its vast embrace, encircles all beings, is a God
eternal, immense, uncreated and immortal. To seek any thing beyond it is
beyond man's reach, and is vain labor. Behold, the universe is the Being
truly sacred, the Being eternal, immense, comprising all in himself: he
is all in all, or rather he is himself all. He is the work of nature,
and nature itself."

We read in the sixth book of Eneida, by Virgil: "Know, O my son! that
the heavens and the earth, the deep, the bright globe of the moon, and
all stars are moved by a principle of inly life, which perpetuates its
existence; that it is a great intelligent soul, extending to all the
parts of the vast body of the universe; and which, connected with all,
impresses to all an eternal movement. This soul is the source of the
life of man, of that of flocks, birds, and of all the monsters of the
deep. The bright force that animates them emanates from that eternal
fire that shines in the sky, and which, a captive in the gross matter of
bodies, develops itself only as permitted by the divers mortal
organizations that blunt its force and activity. At the death of each
animal those germs of particular life return to their source, and to the
principle of life that circulates in the starry sphere."

This belief led men to the worship of the universe, or nature, and
became the basis of their mythology. They adored the vast body of
nature, and its great soul, under the name of Supreme Being, of Jupiter,
of Vichnou, of Pan, etc. They adored the earth, the sun, the planets and
the stars under other names. They erected temples, altars, statues and
chapels to those deities, and worshiped them--not the wood, stone, or
marble, as they are unjustly accused of, but the emanations of the great
soul of the universe, which animated all those principal members of the
vast body of nature, whose might and influence impressed them with
wonder, terror or gratitude, and thus attracted their adoration.

The Chinese adored the heavens under the name of great Tien. The Supreme
Being in the Chou-King is designated by the name of Tien, which means
from heaven, and of Chang-Tien, supreme heaven. They had reared temples
to the sun, to the moon, and to the stars; and also one to the great
being formed of the sky, of the earth and of the elements,--being which
is the universe named by them Tay-ki. They worshiped the heavens at the
time of the two solstices. The Japanese adored the stars and planets
which they supposed to be animated by geniuses or gods. They had a
temple dedicated to the splendor of the sun. They celebrated the feast
of the moon on the 7th of September, and spent the whole night in
rejoicing by her light. The Chinese and the Japanese practice the same
worship even in our days.

The Egyptians adored the sun under the name of Osiris, and the moon
under the name of Iris. To them both they ascribed the government of the
world. They built, to honor Osiris, the City of the Sun, or Heliopolis,
and also a splendid temple in which they placed his statue. They
worshiped all the stars and planets which compose the Zodiac. The
animals consecrated in the Egyptian temples, and religiously revered,
represented the various functions of the supreme cause; and they
referred to the sky, to the sun, to the moon, and to the constellations.

The Phoenicians worshiped the moon and the stars. They adored the sun
under the name of Hercules. The Ethiopians adored the sun and the moon;
and Diodorus informs us, that those of their tribes who inhabited the
country above Meroe adored the sun, the moon, and the universe. They
called themselves the sons of the sun: Persina was the priestess of the
moon, and the king, her husband, was the priest of the sun. All the
Africans who were settled along the coast of Angola, and of Congo,
worshiped the sun and the moon; so the inhabitants of the island of
Teneriffe did. The oldest worship of the Arabs was Sabism, the religion
universally spread in the Orient: the heaven and the stars were objects
of veneration. The moon was more especially adored. The Saracens called
her Cabar, which means great: even now-a-days her crescent adorns the
religious monuments of the Turks. Among the Arabs each tribe was under
the invocation or patronage of a star.

The Sabism was also the religion of the ancient Chaldeans. Even now
there is at Helle, on the ruins of Babylon, a mosque named Meshed
Eschams, or Mosque of the Sun. In this city was the temple of Belus, or
of the sun, the great deity of the Babylonians. To this same god the
Persians reared temples and consecrated images, under the name of
Mithra. They also honored the heaven under the name of Jupiter, the moon
and Venus, the fire, the earth, the air or wind, and water. The fire
ether that circulates in the whole universe, and of which the sun is the
main force, was represented in the Pyrees by the sacred fire kept
incessantly burning by the wizards, or priests. At Tymbree, in Troades,
the sun was adored under the name of Apollo. The island of Rhodes was
consecrated to the sun, to whom the colossal statue, known under the
name of the Colossus of Rhodes, was erected. The Massagetes, the
Abasges, the Derbises, the Tartars, the Moscanians, the Tchouvaches, the
Toungouses, the Huns, all the Scytic nations, the Iberians, the
Albanians, the Colchidians, the Phrygians, and the Laodiceans, worshiped
the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars, under various emblems.

Plato informs us that the ancient Greeks had no other gods than the sun,
the moon, the earth, the stars, water, and fire. Orpheus considered the
sun as the greatest of the gods, and adored him upon mounts at his
rise. Epicharmis, disciple of Pythagoras, called gods the sun, the moon,
the stars, the earth, water and fire. Agamemnon, in Homer, sacrificed to
the sun and to the earth. The choir, in the Oedipus of Sophocles,
invokes the sun as being the first among the gods, and their chief. The
earth was worshiped in the island of Cos. Also the earth had a temple at
Athens and at Sparta; and an altar and oracle at Olympia.

When we read Pausanias, who has described Greece and her religious
monuments, we find everywhere traces of the worship of nature. We see
temples, altars, and statues, consecrated to the sun, to the moon, to
the earth, to the Pleiades, to the celestial auriga, to the goat, to the
bear, or Calisto, to the night, to rivers, etc. The inhabitants of
Megalopolis sacrificed to the wind Boreas, and had planted a grove in
his honor. The Macedonians adored Estia, or fire, and prayed to Bedy, or
water. Alexander, king of Macedonia, sacrificed to the sun, to the moon,
and to the earth. The oracle of Dodone, in all its answers, ordered
sacrifices to the Achelous river. Homer gave the epithet of sacred to
the waters of the Alpheus. Nestor and the Pylians sacrificed a bull to
the same river. Achilles let his hair grow in honor of Sphercius; he
also invoked the wind Boreas and the Zephyrus.

Rivers were reputed as being sacred and divine, because of their utility
to vegetation, to animals, and to commerce; and because nations
considered water as one of the first principles of nature, and one of
the most efficacious agents of the universal life of the Great-Being in
which they believed. In Thessalia a sacred crow was fed in honor of the
sun. This bird is seen yet on the monuments of Mithra, in Persia. The
temples of old Byzantium were consecrated to the sun, to the moon, and
to Venus. Their idols represented them; also the star Arcture, and the
twelve signs of the Zodiac. Rome and Italy had also a vast number of
monuments of worship addressed to nature, and to its principal agents.
Tatius, coming to Rome to share the sceptre of Romulus, erected altars
and temples to the sun, to the moon, to Saturn, to light, and to fire.
The undying fire, or Vesta, was the most ancient object of worship of
the Romans; virgins had the care to perpetuate it in the temple of this
Goddess, as the wizards did in their Pyrees. "It was," Jornandes said,
"an image of the eternal lights which shine in the heavens."

In Rome there was a famous temple called Tellus, or of the earth, in
which the senate often met. The earth was called mother, because it was
considered as a deity as well as the manes. There was in the Latium a
fountain of the sun, and, near it, two altars upon which Aeneas, when
landing in Italy, sacrificed. Romulus established the games of the
circus to honor both the sun, who in his course measures the year, and
the four elements which he modifies by his mighty influence. Aurelian
built at Rome the temple of the sun, and decked it with gold and
precious stones. Augustus, before Aurelian, had ordered the images of
the sun and of the moon to be brought from Egypt, in order to adorn his
triumph over Anthony and Cleopatra. The moon had a temple on the mount
Aventine.

In Sicily oxen were consecrated to the sun; and the island itself was
called the Island of the Sun. The oxen which the companions of Ulysse
ate when they landed, were consecrated to this god. The citizens of
Assora adored the Chrysas river, that bathed their walls. At Enguyum the
people revered the mother-goddesses, the same deities honored in Crete;
namely, the major and minor Ursas. In Spain the people of Betic had
built a temple to the morning star. The Accitans had erected to the god
Sun, under the name of Mars, a statue whose head imitated the rays of
the sun. At Cadix the sun was also adored, under the name of Hercules.
All the nations of northern Europe, called Celtes, worshiped fire,
water, the air, the sun, the moon, the stars, the trees, and the
springs. The conqueror of Gaul, Caesar, writes that the Germans
immemorially adored the visible cause, and its principal agents, the
sun, the moon, fire or Vulcain, and the earth, under the name of Herta.
Near Narbonne, a city of Gaul, a temple was dedicated to the wind
Circius which purified the atmosphere. At Toulouse there was a temple
of the sun. The Franks professed the same religion.

In America the Incas of Peru called themselves the sons of the sun: they
dedicated temples and altars to this god, and had instituted feasts in
his honor. The moon was associated to his worship, and was considered as
the mother of all the sublunar productions; and as the spouse and sister
of the sun. In Peru, the star Venus was adored, and also the meteors,
the thunder, and Iris, or rainbow. Virgins had the care of keeping alive
the perpetual fire. In Mexico the same religion existed. The inhabitants
of the Isthmus of Panama, of Brazil, of Florida; the Indians of the
coast of Cumana, the Floridians, Virginians, and the Canadians believed
that there was a god in the heavens, and that this god was the sun, the
spouse of the moon. They worshiped them as the two supreme causes which
ruled the world.

The above historical facts lead us to the conclusion that the adoration
of the vast body of nature, together with the great soul which was
supposed to animate it; and of its principal parts or members, together
with the multifarious emanations of the great soul, which was supposed
to animate them, was the former and universal religion of mankind,
before the coming of Jesus Christ. Therefore the heathens did not
worship the idols themselves, to which they had given such and such
forms to represent the objects of their adorations; but they worshiped
what in their mind they represented, the universe taken collectively,
as in the idol of Pan; and the universe taken separately; namely, the
important parts of the universe, as in their innumerable idols of the
planets, stars, rivers, etc.

As we wish to leave no doubt in the minds of the reader in regard to the
certainty of these two great facts, which are a key to the origin of the
dogma of endless misery, and of others which we are to trace out, we
will bring forth other proofs from the religious and political monuments
of ancient peoples; from their celebrations, and from the opinions of
their philosophers.

The famous labyrinth of Egypt was dedicated to the sun. It formed twelve
palaces, representing the twelve signs of the Zodiac. There were in
Heliopolis, or City of the Sun, twelve columns adorned with symbols
relating to the elements, and to the twelve signs. These gigantic piles
had a pyramidal shape to better represent the rays of the sun, and the
form of his rising blaze. The statue of Apollo Agyeus was pyramidal. In
Egypt, artists were not entrusted with determining the form of the
images and statues of the gods. It was one of the prerogatives of the
Hierophants, or priests, who were more familiar with astronomy. This
fact explains why the number seven, which represented the number of
planets, and the number twelve, which represented the number of the
signs, were sacred numbers, and were reproduced under all kinds of
forms. So the twelve altars of Janus; the twelve works of Hercules or
sun; the twelve shields of Mars; the twelve brothers Arvaux; the twelve
gods Consentes; the twelve rays of light; the twelve governors in the
Manichean system; the twelve adeetyas of the Indians; the twelve azes of
the Scandinaves; the twelve wards of the city planned by Plato; the four
tribes of Athens subdivided into three _frateries_ according to Cecrops'
division; the twelve cushions on which the creator sits, in the theogony
of the Japanese; the twelve cantons of the Etruse league, and their
twelve Lucumons, or chiefs of cantons; the confederation of the twelve
cities of Ionia, and that of the twelve cities of Eolia; the twelve
Tcheou into which Chun divided China; the twelve countries into which
the Coreans divided the world; the twelve officers chosen to draw the
coffin at the funeral of the King of Tunquin; the twelve horses; the
twelve elephants, etc., used in that ceremony.

It was the same with the number seven representing the planets. So the
seven divisions of the city of Ecbatane; the seven gates of the cavern
of Mithra, or sun; the seven floors of the tower of Babylon, with
another representing the heaven, and also the temple of Jupiter; the
seven gates of the city of Thebes, called each one by the name of a
planet; the seven piped flute placed in the hands of the god Pan who
represented the universe; the seven stringed lyre of Apollo, or sun;
the book of fate composed of seven memorandums; the seven prophetic
rings of the Brachmanes, on which the name of a planet was engraved; the
seven stones dedicated to planets in Laconia; the immemorial division
into seven tribes adopted by the Egyptians and the Indians; the seven
idols pompously carried every year by the Bonzes into seven different
temples; the seven mystical vowels which formed the sacred formula in
the temples of the planets; the seven Pyrees or altars of the monument
of Mithra; the seven Amshaspands, or great geniuses, invoked by the
Persians; the seven Archangels of the Chaldeans; the seven sounding
towers of old Byzantium; the week in all nations, or the period of seven
days consecrated each one to a planet, as can be illustrated. For
instance, in French, Monday is called Lundi, which is derived from the
latin Luna, meaning moon. Tuesday is called Mardi, meaning Mars.
Wednesday is called Mercredi, meaning Mercury. Thursday is called Jeudi,
meaning Jupiter. Friday is called Vendredi, meaning Venus. Saturday is
called Samedi, meaning Saturn. It could also be illustrated by other
languages derived from the Latin.

The number three hundred and sixty, which is that of the days of the
year, not comprising, however, the epagomenes or complementary days, was
also retraced by the three hundred and sixty days comprised in the
theology of Orpheus; by the three hundred and sixty cups of the water of
the Nile, of which one was poured every day, by the Egyptian priests,
in a sacred cask, in the city of Achante; by the three hundred and sixty
Eons, or geniuses of the Gnostics; by the three hundred and sixty idols
placed in the palace of the Dairi in Japan; by the three hundred and
sixty saints, or geniuses, who, the <DW7>s believe, preside to each day
of the year, (as seen in their almanacs,) dogma borrowed from the
heathens; by the three hundred and sixty minor statues which surrounded
that of Hebal, or the god sun, Belus, adored by the ancient Arabs; by
the three hundred and sixty chapels built around the mosque of Balk,
erected by the care of the chief of the family of the Barmecides; by the
three hundred and sixty temples built on the mountain Louham, in China;
by the wall of three hundred and sixty stadiums with which Semiramis
encompassed the city of Belus, or of the sun, the famous Babylon. In
fine, the division of the Zodiac into twenty-seven parts, which express
the stations of the moon, and into thirty-six which is that of the
_decans_, was also the object of the political and religious
distributions.

Not only the divisions of the heaven, but the constellations themselves
were represented in the temples, and their images consecrated among the
religious monuments, and on the medals of the cities. The bright star
Capella, in the constellation Auriga, had a statue of brass gilt in the
city of the Phliassians. To the constellation Auriga statues and other
monuments had been erected in Greece under the names of Myrtile, of
Hippolyte, of Spheroeus, of Cillas, of Erectee, etc. There were seen,
also, the statues and tombs of the Atlantides. Near Argos was seen a
mound, which was said to cover the head of the famous Medusa, whose type
is in the heaven, under the feet of Perseus. The moon, or Diana of
Ephesus, was adorned with the figure of the Cancer, which is one of the
twelve signs, and the mansion of this planet. The Ursa, adored under the
name of Calisto, and the Bootes, under that of Arcas, had their tombs on
Arcadia, near the altars of the sun. To the same Bootes a statue was
erected at Byzantium, and also to Orion, the famous Nembrod of the
Assyrians.

The Syrians had consecrated in their temples the images of Pisces,
(fishes,) one of the signs. The constellations Nesra, or Eagle, Aiyuk,
or Goat, Yagutho, or Pleiades, and Suwaha, or Alhouwoa, and the
Serpentarius were objects of idolatry among the ancient Sabians. These
names are found even now in Hyde's commentary on Ulug-Beigh. Lucian
writes that the whole religious system of the Egyptians was taken from
the heaven. The most of the cities were founded and built under the
inspection and protection of one of the signs of the Zodiac. Their
horoscope was drawn; hence the images of stars on their medals. The
medals of Antioch represent the Ram, (Aries) with the crescent of the
moon; those of the Mamertines the image of the Bull, (Taurus); those of
the kings of Comargene, the image of the Scorpion; and those of Zeugma
and of Anazarba, the image of the Goat, (Capricornus). Nearly all the
signs are found on the medals of the Antonines. The star Hesperus was on
the national seal of the Locrians, of the Ozoles, and of the Opuntians.

Likewise we shall remark that the ancient feasts, or celebrations, were
connected with the principal epochs of nature, and with the heavenly
system. Everywhere the solsticial and equinoxial celebrations are found;
even in our days the Catholics celebrate the beginning of each season of
the year by fasting and abstaining from meat. Fohi, one of the most
ancient emperors of China, ordered sacrifices to be offered to the gods
at the commencement of each season. Four pavilions were erected to the
moons of the four seasons. The ancient Chinese, Confucius says,
established a sacrifice in honor of Chang-Ty, at the winter solstice,
and one in the spring. The emperor alone has the privilege to preside at
these two ceremonies, as being the son of heaven. The Greeks and the
Romans did the same for like reasons.

The Persians have their Neurouz, or feast of the sun, when this king of
the day passes under the Ram, or under the sign of the equinox of the
spring. It is even now one of the greatest festivities in Persia. At the
winter's solstice the ancient Egyptians led the sacred cow seven times
around the temple; and at the equinox of the spring they solemnly
celebrated the coming of the sun to once more vivify nature. The
celebration of the triumph of fire and light took place in the city of
the sun, in Assyria, and was called the celebration of wood-piles. The
Catholic Church has borrowed this celebration from the heathen, and has
fixed it on the Saturday before Easter.

The feasts celebrated by the Sabians to honor the planets, were fixed
under the sign of their exaltation; sometimes under that of their
mansion; so the feast of Saturn was celebrated by the Romans in
December, under the Capricornus (Goat), mansion of this planet. All the
celebrations of the old calendar of the Pontiffs were connected with the
rise or setting of some constellation or star, as can be ascertained by
reading the _Fastes_ of Ovide. The religious genius of the Romans, and
the relations of their celebrations with nature, are more especially
seen in the games of the circus. The sun, the moon, the planets, the
elements, the universe and its principal parts, were represented with
emblems analagous to their nature. In the Hippodrome the sun was seen
with steeds which imitated its course in the heavens.

The fields of Olympia were represented by a vast arena consecrated to
the sun. In the middle there was a temple of this god, crowned with his
image. The limits of the course of the sun, the Orient and the Occident,
were traced, and marked by limits placed at the extremities of the
circus. The races took place from the east to the west seven times,
because of the seven planets. The sun, the moon, Jupiter and Venus, had
each one a chariot. The Aurigae or drivers, wore garments representing
the colors of the elements. The chariot of the sun was drawn by four
steeds, and that of the moon by two. The Zodiac was represented in the
circus by twelve gates; and also the revolution of the major and minor
Ursas. The sea, or Neptune, the earth, or Ceres, and the other elements,
were personified in actors who contended for the prize.

The phases of the moon were also celebrated, and particularly the
neomeny or new-moon; for temples images and mysteries had been dedicated
to the god Month, or Mensis. All the ceremonial of the procession of
Isis, described in Apuleo, refers to nature and its parts. The sacred
hymns of the ancients had the same object, if we may judge of them by
those of Orpheus. Chun, one of the most ancient emperors of China,
ordered many hymns to be composed to honor the sun, the moon, the stars,
etc. All the prayers contained in the books Zends had the same objects.
The poetical chants of ancient authors, who have transmitted to us the
theogonies of Orpheus, of Linus, of Hesiod, etc., relate to nature and
its agents. Hesiod thus addresses the Muses: "Sing the gods immortal,
sons of the earth and of the starry sky; gods born from the bosom of
night, and nursed by the Ocean; the bright stars, the immense vault of
the firmament, and the gods sprung from them; the sea, the rivers, etc."

The songs of Iopas, in the banquet offered by Dido to the Trojans,
contain the lessons of the learned Atlas about the course of the sun and
of the moon; about the origin of men, of animals, etc. In the Pastorals
of Virgil, the old Silene sings the chaos and the organization of the
world. Orpheus does the same in the Argonautics of Apollonius. The
cosmogony of Sanchoniaton, or of the Phoenicians, conceals under the
veil of allegories the great secrets of nature which were taught to
those initiated. The philosophers who succeeded to the poets called all
the parts of the universe divine. In the opinion of Pythagoras the
celestial bodies were immortal and divine. The sun, the moon, and all
the stars superabundantly contained heat, or principle of life. He
placed the substance of the deity in the ethereal fire, of which the
sun, he said, was the main focus.

Parmenides imagined a halo around the world, and called it the substance
of the deity; the stars partook of the nature thereof. Alimeon of
Crotona taught that the sun, the moon, and the stars were the gods.
Antisthenes acknowledged but one deity, nature. Plato attributed
divinity to the world, to the sky, to the stars, and to the earth.
Xenocrates and Heraclides admitted eight great gods, the seven planets
and the heaven of the fixed stars. Theophrastes called the stars and the
celestial signs first causes. Zenon said that the ether, the stars, time
and its parts were gods. Cleanthes admitted the dogma of the divinity of
the universe, and more especially of the ethereal fire that envelops
the spheres, and penetrates them. Diogene, the Babylonian, related the
whole mythology to nature. Chrysippus held that the world was God. He
placed the divine substance in the ethereal fire, in the sun, in the
moon, in the stars, in one word, in nature and its principal parts.
Anaximandre, Anaximenes and Zenon had the same belief.

From this exposition of the religious and political monuments of ancient
peoples, of their celebrations, and of the opinions of their
philosophers; and also of the historical facts brought forth before, we
draw these two logical and vital conclusions:--

1st. Therefore the adoration of the vast body of nature, together with
the great soul which was supposed to animate it; and of its principal
parts and members, together with the multifarious emanations of the
great soul which was supposed to animate them, was the former and
universal religion of mankind (excepting the Hebrews) before the coming
of Jesus Christ.

2d. Therefore the heathens did not worship the idols themselves, to
which they had given such and such forms to represent the objects of
their adorations, but they worshiped what in their mind they
represented, the universe taken collectively, as in the idol of Pan; and
the universe taken separately, namely, the important parts of the
universe, as in their innumerable idols of the planets, stars, rivers,
etc.




CHAPTER II.

PAGAN ORIGIN OF MYSTERIES.


WHETHER the word mystery is derived from the Greek _muo_, I close, or
from _mueo_, I teach, is not an important question, for the word mystery
has always implied the double idea of secrecy and of instruction. Kings,
emperors, and even the most liberal of the legislators, seem to have
believed, from the very cradle of nations, that people ought to be
governed with fables, because they are too weak minded, and too ignorant
to understand and bear the truth. Of all the errors which have
enshrouded the human race, none has been more injurious to progress,
virtue, and happiness among men. Even in our days, of all the existing
governments, there is but one, if any at all, which does not place its
strength upon the erroneous basis that the people, being not able to
understand and bear the truth, are more easily ruled by being kept in
their ignorance and superstition. This great error gave birth to
mysteries.

When men constituted themselves into national bodies, they chose men,
and vested them with the power of administering their interests. Those
men forfeited their mandate, and became the tyrants of their
constituents. In order to secure and perpetuate their sway, they
associated to their personal interests hierophants, priests of all
kinds, astronomers, philosophers, and poets, who composed fables,
intended to have a moral bearing upon the people, and to make their
masses believe them as being the truth. Those fables they called
mysteries.

Egypt had her initiations, known under the name of mysteries of Osiris
and Isis; from which those of Bacchus and Ceres were mostly copied. When
we compare the courses and adventures of the Ceres of the Greek, with
those of the Egyptian Isis, we can not but see the filiation of these
two fables. The poems whose Bacchus is the hero, and the history of the
Osiris, the ceremonies practiced to honor these two deities, and the
identity of both acknowledged by the ancients, evidently prove that the
mysteries of the latter have given birth to the former. Cybele and Atys
had their initiations, and the Cabires also.

The Chinese had and still have mysteries on Foe, and Pousa; the Japanese
upon Xaca and Amida; the Siamois on Sommonacodom; the Indians on Brama
and Rudra; the Parsis upon Ormuzd and Ahriman. The Selles studied the
mysterious words of the doves of Dodone; Persia, Ethiopia, Scythia,
Gaul, and Scandinavia, had their caverns, their holy mounts, their
sacred oaks, where the brahmanes, the astrologers, the gymnosophists
and the druids, pronounced the inexplicable oracle of the immortals. The
Mahomedans have mysteries on the miracles of Mahomet.

We hope to interest and instruct the reader in translating the following
extract from the Voyage of Anacharsis, a reliable work. Anacharsis is
supposed to have traveled in Greece, in the fourth century before the
Christian era. He thus relates the mysteries of Eleusis:

"I shall speak of the most important point of the religion of the
Athenians, of those mysteries whose origin is lost in the night of ages;
whose ceremonies inspire no less terror than veneration; and whose
secret has never been revealed, except by a few persons who were
immediately devoted to death, and to public execration; for the law not
only pronounces against them the confiscation of their property and the
loss of their life, but it orders that a column be erected, to
perpetuate the rememberance of their crime and of their punishment.

"Of all the mysteries established in honor of the gods, none were more
celebrated than those of Ceres. This goddess herself, it is said,
regulated them, while she was wandering on the earth for the purpose of
finding Proserpine, ravished by Pluto, she arrived in the plain of
Eleusis. Pleased with the welcome extended to her by the inhabitants,
she presented them with two signaled blessings, agriculture, and
initiation to a sacred doctrine. It is added, that the minor mysteries
which are preparatory to the major, were instituted to the honor of
Hercules.

"People believe, that, wherever the Athenians established the mysteries
of Eleusis, the spirit of union and humanity became more general;
because they free the soul from ignorance and stains; procure the
particular assistance of the gods; the means of arriving at the
perfection of virtue; the sweets of a holy life; the hope of a peaceable
death, and of an endless bliss. Those initiated will occupy a
distinguished place in the Elysian fields; they will enjoy a pure light,
and they will dwell in the bosom of the Deity; whereas, those who are
profane will dwell hereafter in abodes of darkness and of horror.

"In order to avoid such an alternative the Greeks flocked from
everywhere to Eleusis to find the promised bliss. Though young, the
Athenians are admitted to the ceremonies of the initiation; and those
who never participated to them ask this favor before they die; the
menaces and the pictures of the sufferings of another life, before
considered as a subject of derision, cause a more vivid impression on
the mind; and then terror generates weakness. However, there are
enlightened men who do not believe that there is any need for them to be
initiated in order to be virtuous. Socrates constantly declined joining
the mysteries; and, one day, Diogenes being solicited, in my presence,
to ask for initiation, answered: 'Pataecion, a famous thief, was
initiated; Epaminondas and Agesilas never asked for it. Can I believe
that the former will go to the Elysian fields and the latter to the
Tartarus.'

"All the Greeks can aspire to participate to the mysteries: an ancient
law excludes the foreigners. The major mysteries are celebrated every
year on the fifteenth of the month of Boedromion. The celebration of the
minor mysteries is also annual, and takes place six months before.
During the celebration of the major mysteries the tribunals are closed.
The day following, the senate pronounces the penalty of death against
those who have willfully disturbed the ceremonies. This severity is
required to maintain order among the immense multitude of people. In
time of war the Athenians send to their foes safe conducts to induce
them to assist at the celebration.

"On the fourteenth of Boedromion, in the second year of the one hundred
and ninth Olympiad, I left Athens with several of my friends. The gate
through which the Athenians pass to go to Eleusis is called sacred. The
space between these two cities is of about one hundred stadiums. After
crossing a high hill decked with rosy laurels, we entered the territory
of Eleusis; and we arrived on the banks of two small brooks consecrated,
the one to Ceres, and the other to Proserpine. I mention them because
the priests of the temple are the only ones who are permitted to fish in
them; and because their waters are salted, and are used in the
ceremonies of initiation. Farther, on the bridge of a river named
Cephize, we had to bear the mockeries of a numerous populace, who stand
there to criticize the comers, and more especially the most
distinguished men of the Republic. It is an old tradition that Ceres had
been welcomed on this very spot by an old woman, called Yambe.

"At a short distance from the sea there is a high and long hill, at the
eastern end of which the famous temple of Ceres and Proserpine has been
reared. Further down is the small city of Eleusis. In the vicinity, and
on the hill itself, there are chapels and altars, and rich
country-seats. The temple, built under the care of Pericles, on the bare
rock, is of pantelic marble; and is turned towards the Orient. It is so
vast as magnificent; its enclosure at the south is of about three
hundred and eighty-four feet, and at the east of three hundred and
twenty-five. The most celebrated artists have adorned this temple with
master-pieces of art.

"Among the numerous priests who officiate in the temple, there are four
principal. The first is the Hierophant; his name designates the one who
reveals the sacred things, and his main office is to initiate the
postulants to the mysteries. He appears with a distinguished tunic; his
forehead is decked with a diadem, and his hair is floating on his
shoulders. His age must be mature enough to correspond with the gravity
of his ministry, and his voice fine enough to be pleasing to the ears.
His priesthood is for life; and he is obliged to keep celibacy. The
second priest carries the sacred flambeau in the ceremonies, and
purifies the candidates; he has also the privilege of wearing a diadem.
The two others are the sacred herald, and the assistant at the altar.

"The holiness of their ministry is rendered even more respectable by
their noble birth. The Hierophant is chosen in the family of the
Eumolpides, one of the most ancient of Athens; the sacred herald in that
of the Ceryces, which is a collateral branch of the other; the two other
priests belong also to illustrious families. These four priests have
under their command other ministers, such as the interpreters, the
singers, and other officers, who have the direction of the processions
and other ceremonies. Also there are at Eleusis priestesses consecrated
to Ceres and to Proserpine. They have the privilege of initiating
certain persons on particular days, and to offer sacrifices.

"The celebrations are presided by the second of the Archontes, whose
duty is to keep order, and to prevent any change or alteration in the
worship. They last several days. Sometimes those initiated interrupt
their sleep to continue their pious exercises: we saw them during the
night crossing the enclosure, walking in silence two by two, and holding
each one a lighted torch. When they reentered the sacred asylum they
hastened their march; and I learned that they were going to figure the
courses of Ceres and of Proserpine; and that, in their rapid evolutions,
they shook their torches, and handed them to each other. The light which
springs out, it is said, has the virtue of purifying the souls, and
becomes the symbol of the light which ought to instruct them.

"One day games were celebrated in the honor of the two goddesses. Famous
champions had come from various parts of Greece, and the prize was a
measure of barley, raised in the neighboring plain, whose inhabitants
hold from Ceres the art of cultivating this sort of wheat. On the sixth
day, the most brilliant of all, the priests of the temple, and those
initiated, carried from Athens to Eleusis, the statue of Iacchus, said
to be the son of Ceres or of Proserpine. The god, crowned with myrtle,
held a flambeau. About thirty thousand people followed, making the air
resound with the name of Iacchus. The march, led by the sound of
instruments and the singing of hymns, was sometimes suspended to perform
dances and sacrifices. The statue was introduced in the temple of
Eleusis, and then taken back in his own, with the same splendors, and
the same ceremonies.

"Many of those who composed the procession had been initiated only to
the minor mysteries, annually celebrated in a small temple, situated
near the Illissus. There a priest examines and prepares the candidates;
he excludes them if they are guilty of enormous crimes, and particularly
if they have committed murder, even without purpose. He imposes upon
the others frequent expiations, and teaches them the first rudiments of
the sacred doctrine. This noviciate sometimes lasts several years, but
generally one only. During the time of probation, the candidates assist
at the celebration of the major mysteries; but they remain at the door
of the temple.

"The initiation to the great mysteries had been appointed for the night
following. One of the preparatory ceremonies was the offering of
sacrifices, for the prosperity of the state, presided by the second of
the Archontes. The novices were crowned with myrtle. Their robes seem to
contract such a holiness that many of them wear them until they are worn
out; others make of them swaddling-clothes for their children, or hang
them in the temple. We saw them enter in the sacred hall; and, on the
next morning, one of my friends, who had been newly initiated, related
to me many of the ceremonies which he had witnessed.

"He told me, 'We found the ministers of the temple dressed in their
pontifical robes. The Hierophant, who, in that moment, represents the
author of the universe, had symbols which designated the power supreme.
The flambeau-bearer and the assistant to the altar appeared with the
attributes of the sun and of the moon; and the sacred herald with those
of Mercury. We had just taken our seats when the herald exclaimed: 'Away
from here ye profane and impious men, and all those whose souls are
contaminated with crimes!' The penalty of death was decreed against
those who had the temerity of remaining in the temple without being
entitled to it, after this admonition. The second of the priests ordered
that the skins of the victims be spread beneath our feet; and he
purified us anew. The rituals of initiation were loudly read, and hymns
in the honor of Ceres were sung.

"Soon after a roar was heard. The earth seemed to shake. Amid lightning
and thunder phantoms and spectres were seen roaming in darkness. They
filled the holy hall with soul-rending groans and howlings. Sufferings,
cares, diseases, poverty, and death, under hideous forms, struck our
gaze. The Hierophant explained these various emblems, and his vivid
pictures added to our terror. However, guided by a feeble light, we were
advancing towards the regions of the Tartarus, where the souls get
purified before they reach the abode of bliss. Amidst sorrowful voices
we heard the bitter regrets of those who had committed suicide. They are
punished, the Hierophant said, because they have deserted the posts
assigned to them by the gods.

"He had scarcely pronounced these words, when brass gates were thrown
open before us with a frightful roar, and then we saw the horrors of the
Tartarus. It resounded with the rattle of chains, and the yells of its
unfortunate inmates. Learn from us, did they say, to respect the gods,
and to be just and grateful. We saw the furies, armed with whips,
unmercifully torturing the criminals. These frightening pictures, made
more so by the sonorous and imposing voice of the Hierophant, who seemed
to exercise the ministry of divine vengeance, filled our soul with
terror. In fine, we were introduced in delightful thickets; in enameled
meadows; fortunate abodes, image of the Elysean fields, where a pure
light shone, where charming voices were heard. We passed into the
sanctuary, where we saw the statue of the goddess resplendent with
brightness, and dressed in the richest attire. In this sanctuary our
trials ended; there our eyes saw, and our ears heard, what we are
forbidden to reveal. I will simply confess that in the delirium of a
holy joy we sung hymns of joy.'

"Such was the recital of the newly-initiated. Another told me a
circumstance which the other omitted. One day, during the celebrations,
the Hierophant uncovered the mysterious baskets, which are carried in
the procession, and which are the object of the public veneration. They
contained the sacred symbols, whose sight is prohibited to those
uninitiated, and which are but cakes of various forms, grains of salt,
and other objects, which relate to the history of Ceres, and to the
dogmas taught in the mysteries. When those initiated have taken them
from a basket, and put them in another, they say that they have fasted
and drank the Ciceon.

"I often met with men who were not initiated, and who freely expressed
their opinions about the secret doctrines taught in the mysteries. One
of the disciples of Plato said: 'It seems to be certain that the
Hierophant teaches the necessity of pains and rewards beyond the grave;
and that he represents to the postulants the various destinies of men
here below and hereafter. Also it seems to be certain that he teaches
them, that, among the great number of deities adored by the multitude,
the ones are pure spirits, who, ministers of the will of the god
supreme, regulate under his command the motion of the universe; and the
others have been simple mortals, whose tombs are kept yet in several
parts of Greece. Is it not natural to think, that, in order to give a
more accurate idea of the Deity, the institutors of mysteries endeavored
to maintain, and to thus perpetuate a dogma, whose vestiges are more or
less visible in the opinions, and ceremonies, of nearly all
nations--that of a God, who is the principal and end of all things? Such
is, in my opinion, the august secret revealed to those initiated.'

"No doubt political ends encouraged the institution of this religious
association. Polytheism was generally spread, and was pleasing the
people, but on account of the multiplicity of the gods it was dangerous
to society. It was thought wiser not to destroy this belief, but to
counterbalance it by a purer religion. As the people are more restrained
by the laws than by abstract principles of morals, the legislators
contrived to harmonize the superstition of the people with purer
religious and moral principles, which they should simultaneously teach.
'Thus,' the disciple of Plato added, 'you understand why the gods are
represented on the theatre of Athens: the magistrates who do not believe
the false doctrines of Polytheism are very careful not to repress a
superstition and a license, which amuse the people, and whose repression
would indispose them.

"'Also you understand how two religions, though opposed in their dogmas,
conjointly exist in peace and harmony in the same cities. The reason of
it is, that, though their dogmas are different, these religions use the
same language, and that the truth has for the error the same tolerance,
and courtesy, which the truth should obtain from the error. Externally
the mysteries present but the worship adopted by the people. The hymns
sung in public, and the most of the ceremonies retrace to the masses
many circumstances of the rape of Proserpine, of the courses of Ceres,
of her arrival and sojourn at Eleusis. The vicinity of this city is full
of monuments reared in the honor of the goddess, and the priests show,
as yet, the stone upon which, tradition relates, she rested when
exhausted with fatigue. Thus, on one hand, the ignorant people believe
appearances as if they were realities; and on another hand, those who
have been initiated, having a clear sight of the spirit of the
mysteries, think they are right on account of the purity of their
intentions.'

"Whatever it may be of the supposition I have related, the initiation is
now but a vain ceremony. Those who have been initiated are not more
virtuous than the others; every day they violate their pledge of
abstaining from fowl, from fish, from pomegranates, from beans, and
several other kinds of fruits, and of vegetables. Several have
contracted this sacred engagement through unworthy means; for, not long
ago, we have seen the government permitting the sale of the privilege of
participating to the mysteries; and, for a long while, women of ill fame
have been admitted to initiation."

As it would require volumes to describe the ceremonies of all these
Pagan mysteries, we shall only examine their general character; show
forth their end; group together their common features, and glance at the
means used by political and religious leaders, to give a full scope to
this powerful governmental engine.

The mysteries of Eleusis, and in general of all mysteries, aimed at the
amelioration of mankind, at the reformation of morals, and at taking
hold of the souls of men with more power than through the means of the
laws. If the means used was not lawful, we must however confess that the
aim was laudable, not in the minds of kings, emperors, hierophants and
other priests, but in itself. Cicero, the illustrious Roman orator,
said, that the institution of mysteries was one of the most useful to
humanity; at least the mysteries of Eleusis, whose effects, he added,
have been to civilize nations; to soften the barbarous and ferocious
habits and morals of the first societies of men; and to make known the
most important principles of morals, which initiate man to a sort of
life that is worthy of his nature.

The same was said of Orpheus, who introduced in Greece the mysteries of
Bacchus. Poets wrote of him, that he had tamed tigers and lions; and
that he attracted even trees and rocks with the melodious strains of his
lyre. Mysteries aimed at the establishment of the reign of justice and
of religion, in the system of the rulers, who, from policy, maintained
the one by the other. This double end is contained in this verse of
Virgil:--"Learn from me to respect justice and the gods;" this was the
great lesson given by the Hierophant when the postulants were initiated.

Those initiated learned in those profound sanctuaries, under the dark
and deep veil of fables, their duties towards their fellow men;
pretended duties which they were taught to the gods, and, more
unfortunately yet, pretended duties towards their political and
religious leaders, or rather tyrants.

Rulers used all imaginable means to give a supernatural character to
their laws, and to make the people believe that they had this character.
The imposing picture of the universe, and the poetry of mythological
conceptions, gave to the legislators the subject of the varied and
wonderful scenes which were represented in the temples of Egypt, of
Asia, and of Greece. All that can produce illusion, all the resources of
witchcraft and of theatrical exhibitions, which were but the secret
knowledge of the effects of nature, and the art of imitating them; the
brilliant pomp of festivities; the variety and riches of decorations and
costumes; the majesty of the ceremonial; the captivating power of music;
the choirs; the chants; the dances; the electrifying sounds of cymbals,
calculated to produce enthusiasm and delirium, and more favorable to
religious exaltation than the calm of reason, all was brought to action
to attract the people to the celebration of the mysteries; and to create
in their souls a want, a desire for them.

Under the charms of pleasure, of rejoicings and of celebrations,
legislators and other rulers oftentimes concealed a salutary aim; and
they treated the people like a child, which can never be more
efficaciously instructed, than when he thinks that his preceptor intends
only to amuse him. They resorted to great institutions to shape society;
to form habits; and to direct public opinion and morals.

How magnificent was the procession of those initiated advancing to the
temple of Eleusis! The banners, the sacred chants, the music, the
costumes, and the dances, had a rapturous effect on the masses. They
thronged an immense temple; we say immense, for if we judge the number
of those initiated by the number of those who assembled in the plains
of Thriase, when Xerxes went to Attic, they were more than thirty
thousand. The costly and glowing ornaments which decked the vast hall,
the symbolic statues, which were master-pieces of sculpture, and the
mysterious pictures which were symmetrically arranged in the rotunda of
the sanctuary, filled the soul with amazement, and with a religious
respect.

All that was seen in the temple, the decorations, costumes, ceremonies,
splendor; and all that was heard, the sacred chants, the melody of
instruments, the mythological teaching, the elevating poetry and the
eloquence of orators, struck the spectators with wonder, produced and
left in their souls the most profound impressions. Not only the universe
was presented to their gaze under the emblem of an egg divided into
twelve parts, representing the months of the year, but also the division
of the universe into cause active and cause passive, and its division
into the Principle of light, or good god, and the Principle of darkness,
or bad god.

Varron informs us that the great gods adored at Samothrace were the
heaven and the earth, considered, the first as the cause active, and the
second as the cause passive of generation. In other mysteries the same
idea was retraced by the exposition of the Phallus and of the Cteis. It
is the Lingham of the Indians.

The same was done in regard to the division of the world into two
Principles, the one of light, or good god, and the other of darkness,
or bad god. Plutarch writes, that this religious dogma had been
consecrated in the initiations, and in the mysteries of all nations; and
the example which he puts forth, extracted from both the theology of the
Chaldeans, and from the dogma of the symbolic egg produced by these two
Principles, is a proof of it. In the temple of Eleusis there were scenes
of darkness and of light, which were successively presented to the eyes
of the candidates to initiation: those scenes retraced the combats of
the Principle of light, or good god, and of the Principle of darkness,
or bad god.

In the cavern of the god Sun, or Mithra, the priests had represented,
among the mysterious pictures of the initiation, the descent of the
souls to the earth, and their return to the heavens through the seven
planetary spheres. Also were exhibited the phantoms of invisible powers,
which chained them to bodies, or freed them from their bonds. Several
millions of men witnessed those various spectacles, of which they were
most severely forbidden to speak before the public. However the poets,
the orators, and the historians give us in their writings some idea of
what were those scenes, formulas, ceremonies, fables, and morals,--as,
for instance, in what they have written about the adventures of Ceres,
and of her daughter. There was seen the chariot of this goddess drawn by
dragons; it seemed to hover above the earth and the seas. It was a true
theatrical exhibition. The variety of the scenes was pleasing, and the
play of machines was attractive. Grave were the actors, majestic the
ceremonial, and passion-stirring the fables and representations.

The hierophants, or priests, profoundly versed in the knowledge of the
genius of the people, and in the art of leading them, availed of the
minutest circumstances to create in them the desire to be initiated to
their mysteries. Night seems to be the mother of secrecy and the emblem
of mystery; it is favorable to prestige and illusion; in consequence
they celebrated their mysteries in the night. The fifth day of the
celebration of the mysteries of Eleusis was renowned by the superb
torchlight procession, in which those initiated, holding each one a
bright torch, walked two by two wearing enigmatic emblems.

It was during the night, that the Egyptians solemnly and processionally
went to the shore of a lake; they embarked, and landed in an island
beautifully situated in the middle of the lake; and there they
celebrated the mysteries of the passion of Osiris. At other times those
celebrations took place in vast and dark grottos, or in retired and
shady thickets. Even now, in France, are seen caverns where the Druids
celebrated their mysteries; and forests where the Gauls assembled at
midnight; hung the heads of their vanquished enemies; immolated a young
virgin on the altar of Teutates; and celebrated their mysteries under
the leadership of the Druids.

The ceremonial of the mysteries was ordained, particularly among the
civilized and populous nations, in such a manner that it could not fail
to excite the curiosity of the people, who naturally eagerly desire and
seek to know what is held in secrecy. Legislators and hierophants
rendered this curiosity more intense by the extremely stringent law of
secrecy imposed upon those initiated. Thus the profane, namely, those
uninitiated, were the more desirous to be acquainted with the mysteries,
and thus they joined them in large numbers. Legislators gave to this
spirit of secrecy the most specious pretext. It was proper, they said,
to imitate the gods who concealed themselves from man's gaze, for the
purpose of creating in his soul the desire to find them; and who have
made the phenomena of nature a profound secret to them, in order to
stimulate them to the study of the universe. Those initiated were not
permitted to speak of the mysteries except among themselves. The penalty
of death had been decreed against the one who would have revealed them,
even without purpose; and also against any one who would have entered
the sacred temple before having been previously initiated.

Aristoteles was accused of impiety by the hierophant Eurymedon, for
having sacrificed to the manes of his wife, according to the rite
practiced in the worship of Ceres. He had to flee, and to retire at
Chalcis to save his life; and in order to clear his name from this stain
he ordered his heirs to erect a statue to Ceres. Eschyles, having been
charged with having written about mysterious subjects, saved his life
only by proving that he had never been initiated. The entry of the
temple of Ceres, and the participation to her mysteries, were prohibited
to the slaves, and to those whose birth was not legal; to women of ill
fame, to the philosophers who denied a Providence, such as the
Epicureans, etc. This interdiction was considered as a great
deprivation, for it was generally believed among the people that
initiation was the greatest blessing.

In fact, those initiated were taught that they belonged to a class of
privileged beings, and were the favorites of the gods. The priests of
Samothrace credited their initiation by promising favorable winds, a
speedy and safe navigation to travelers who were candidates to their
mysteries. Those initiated to the mysteries of Orpheus believed that
they were no longer under the rule of the evil principle; that
initiation made them holy, and secured to them future happiness. After
the ceremonies of the initiation the candidate thus answered to the
priest: "I have rejected the evil and found the good." After that he
considered himself, and was considered by his fellows, wholly purified.

Those who were initiated to the mysteries of Eleusis believed that the
sun shone brighter and purer to their eyes than to the sight of other
men; also that the goddesses inspired and gave them counsels from the
heaven, as seen by the example of Pericles. Initiation was considered as
freeing the soul from the darkness of error; as preventing misfortunes;
and as securing happiness on earth.

One of the greatest blessings and privileges of the initiation, the
hierophant and other priests taught, was to secure here below a direct
communion with the gods, and more especially beyond the grave. According
to Cicero, Isocrates, and the rhetor Aristides, when he who had been
initiated departed from this earthly life he inhabited meadows enameled
with flowers of a celestial beauty, and lighted with a sun brighter and
purer than the one we see. In that charming abode he was to live
centuries, and long preserve his youth. When arrived at an old age, he
was to become young again. There was no labor, no sorrow, but all was
rapture and delight.

In the Greek and Roman mysteries the unity and also the trinity of God
were consecrated dogmas. Jupiter was adored as the father of the gods
and of men, and as filling the whole universe with his power. He was the
supreme monarch of nature: the names of gods ascribed to the other
deities were more of an association in the title than in the nature of
their power, for each one of them had a particular work to perform under
the command of the supreme God. In the mysteries of the religion of the
Greeks, a hymn expressing the unity of God or Jupiter was sung; and the
High Priest, turning towards the worshipers, said: "Admire the master
of the universe; he is one; he is everywhere." It was acknowledged by
Eusebius, St. Augustine, Lactance, Justin, Athenagoras, and many other
Fathers of the Church, that the dogma of the unity of God was admitted
by ancient philosophers, and was the basis of the religion of Orpheus,
and of all the mysteries of the Greeks.

The Platonicians believed in the unity of the archetype, or model on
which God formed the world; also they believed in the unity of
demiourgos, or god-forming, by a consequence of the same philosophical
principles, namely, from the unity itself of the universe, as can be
seen in Proclus, and in the writings of the Platonician authors.

Trinity also, (see chapter fifth) was taught in the mysteries.
Pythagoras, and many other philosophers, explained the unity and trinity
of God by the theory of numbers. They called the monade cause, or
principle. They expressed by the number one, or unit, the first cause,
and they concluded to the unity of God from mathematical abstractions.
Next to this unity they placed triades, which expressed faculties or
powers emanated from them, and also intelligences of a second order. The
triple incarnation of the god Wichnou into the body of a virgin was one
of the doctrines taught in the mysteries of Mithra.

So much for the mysteries of Paganism; however, we shall, in the course
of this work, refer to them several times. Let us now examine the
origin of the mysteries, which, the Partialists say, Jesus Christ has
taught. Mysteries suppose secrecy; but Jesus Christ preached his Gospel
in the open air to his apostles, to his disciples, to crowds of people,
and to all who were willing to hear his doctrines. He urged upon his
disciples to preach above the roofs what he taught them. When, after his
death, his apostles spread his gospel, they spoke in open air,
everywhere, to masses of people; Paul to the Areopagus, to thousands in
Jerusalem, etc. How then can it be supposed that Jesus Christ taught
mysteries? Indeed, he did not, but afterwards several Christian churches
did.

The Protestant historian, Mosheim, cites in his History of the Church,
several authors, who state, that, in the second century, several
Christian churches imitated the mysteries of Paganism. The profound
respect, they say, that the people entertained for those mysteries, and
the extraordinary sacredness ascribed to them were for the Christians a
motive sufficient to give a mysterious appearance to their religion, so
as to command as much respect to the public as the religion of the
Pagans. To this effect they called mysteries the institutions of the
Gospel, particularly the Eucharist. They used in this ceremony, and in
that of baptism, several words and rites consecrated in the mysteries of
the Pagans. This abuse commenced in Orient, chiefly in Egypt; Clement of
Alexandria, in the beginning of the third century, was one of those who
contributed the most to this innovation, which then spread in Occident
when Adrian had introduced the mysteries in that portion of the Empire.
Hence, a large portion of the service of the Church hardly differed from
that of Paganism.

That the Church of Rome copied many of the ceremonies, rites, customs,
and fables of Pagan mysteries is certain, for they have been perpetuated
in that Church down to our days. From the Pagan mysteries the Roman
Church borrowed the following:

In the initiation to the Pagan mysteries there were degrees; so in the
Roman Church there are the degrees of porter or door-keeper, of acolyte,
of reader and of exorcist; the latter degree confers the power of
expelling the devil. The ecclesiastical ornaments in the Church of Rome,
with the difference of the cross represented on them and of some
trimming, are like those used in the mysteries of the Pagans, at least
in Rome, and in Greece. The long floating gown, the girdle, the casula,
the stola, the dalmatica, the round and pyramidal cap, the capa, and
several other garments and ornaments, are alike to those used in the
temples, where the mysteries of the Pagans were celebrated.

In those temples there was an altar richly decorated; so it is in the
Church of Rome. In those temples there were twelve flambeaux,
representing the twelve months of the year: so there are in Catholic
churches, upon the first degree above the altar, six chandeliers with
six tapers burning during the celebration of the mysteries or mass; six
others are on the second degree. The vestals kept a light constantly
burning in the Pagan temples: so a lamp is kept burning, day and night,
near the altar, in the Catholic churches. In the Pagan temples the disc
of the sun and his beams were represented: so they are in the Catholic
churches. Upon the altar, in the Pagan temples, there was an image of
the god Osiris or Bacchus, and the emblems of an aries or lamb: so upon
the altar, in Catholic churches, there is a tabernacle in which God is
said to dwell, and the door of the tabernacle represents a bleeding
lamb.

The Pagans solemnly and processionally carried the image of Osiris, or
Bacchus, around the head of which there was a halo representing the rays
of the sun: so in the Romish church the priests processionally and with
great pomp, carry, both in the aisles of the churches and on the
streets, a wafer which they call God. It is encased in a silver or gold
ostenserium, whose circular centre, in which their pretended God is seen
between two crystals, is shaped like the disc of the sun; and the
outside, of which called halo or glory, is shaped like his rays. In the
Pagan temples there was a sanctuary exclusively reserved to the
high-pontiff, and to the priests: so it is in the Catholic churches. In
the Pagan temples the sanctuary was turned towards the Orient: so it is
in the Catholic churches.

The Pagans did not permit their candidates to initiation to assist at
the celebration of the mysteries, which was always preceded by this
formula, solemnly and loudly spoken by an officer, "Away from here ye
profane and impious men, and all those whose soul is contaminated with
crimes!" So in Catholic churches, not now, but from the first centuries
down to the middle age, the deacon arose after the homily, turned toward
the assistant, and ordered the catechumens to leave the church, because
the celebration of the mysteries was to commence. Those mysteries are
the mass, during which the priest who officiates commands Jesus Christ
to descend from heaven into a wafer, which he, (priest,) holds in his
hands, and to change it into his own blood, flesh, soul, and divinity.
The Pagans initiated the candidates near the front door of their
temples: so in the Catholic churches, the baptismal fonts where the
catechumens are initiated, namely, baptized, are placed near the portal.
Here we shall remark, that, for many centuries, children are baptized,
(even now parents are obliged under the pain of mortal sin to have their
children taken to the church to be baptized) three days after they are
born. The Pagans initiated candidates chiefly on the eve of great
celebrations: so, in the Romish church, catechumens are baptized chiefly
on the eve of Easter, and of Pentecost.

The Pagans believed that initiation made them holy; so the Romish church
holds that baptism remits the original and all other sins, and makes
holy. The Pagans revered in their temples the statue of Pan, in whose
hands was a seven-pipe flute; also, they revered other emblems of the
seven planets: so in the Romish Church holds the doctrine of the seven
gifts of the Holy Spirit, and of the doctrine of the seven sacraments.
In the month of February the Pagans celebrated the Lupercales, and the
feast of Proserpine: so the Church of Rome celebrates the Candlemas-day.
We cite the very words of Bergier, a Catholic priest, and an ultra
<DW7>, who writes thus in his Theological Dictionary; article
Candlemas:

"Several authors ascribe the institution of Candlemas-day to the pope
Gelase, for the purpose of opposing it to the Lupercales of the Pagans,
who went processionally out in the fields making exorcisms. It is the
opinion of the venerable Bede. 'The Church,' he says, 'has happily
changed the lustrations of the Pagans, which took place in February
around the fields. She has substituted to them processions, in which the
people carry in their hands burning tapers.' Others ascribe this
institution to the pope Vigil, and say that it has been substituted to
the feast of Proserpine, which the Pagans celebrated in the first days
of February with torches.'

The Pagans worshiped Juno as the wife of the god Jupiter: so the Church
of Rome worships the virgin Mary as the wife of God. The Pagans
celebrated the exaltation of the virgo or virgin, the sixth sign and
seventh constellation in the ecliptic; so the Romish Church has
established the feast of Assumption, namely, of the ascension of the
virgin Mary to heaven. The Pagans made solemn processions to honor the
goddess Ceres; so the Romish Church has instituted pompous processions
in the honor of the virgin Mary.

REMARK.--All the above institutions and doctrines of the Romish Church,
and also those which we shall examine in the following chapters, date
from the first centuries. All the Catholic doctors, theologians, and
historians, confess it.

From the numerous and undeniable historical facts summed up in this
chapter we legitimately draw the conclusions, 1st. That, in the first
centuries of the Christian era, the Church of Rome established
mysteries; 2d. That the Church of Rome borrowed her mysteries from the
mysteries of the Pagans; and, 3d. That a law of secrecy was binding the
catechumens after their initiation, though this law was not so stringent
as it was among the Pagans.

When, in the sixteenth century, the Protestants shook the yoke of the
Pope, they rejected many of the mysteries of the Church of Rome;
however, they kept several of them, such as the mystery of Trinity,
namely, of three Gods composing but one God; the mystery of incarnation,
namely of God himself descending from the heavens, vesting our mortal
clay in the womb of a woman for the purpose of being persecuted and
slain on a cross by men, thus pay to himself the debt owed to him by
men who had disobeyed him, (though they did not live yet,) in the person
of Adam. These, we say, and other mysteries of the Romish Church, the
Protestants or Heterodox in the opinion of the Catholics, preserved and
transmitted them to their sons, or Partialists, who now call the Roman
Catholics heathens; call the liberal Christian Churches heterodox, and
call themselves most emphatically Evangelical Churches, Orthodox
Churches.

The final and strictly logical conclusion of this chapter is this:

_Therefore the mysteries of the Romish Church, and those of the
self-called Orthodox Protestant Churches, are of Pagan origin._

_Corollary._ Since mysteries are of Pagan origin, and since Jesus Christ
and his apostles did not establish mysteries, there ought not to be
mysteries in Christianity. Since Jesus Christ and his apostles preached
the Gospel in open air to all, everywhere, there cannot be any mysteries
in their teaching, and there cannot be any mysteries in their writings,
we mean in the New Testament.




CHAPTER III.

PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF A PERSONAL DEVIL.


THE celebrated Plutarch, historian, philosopher, and priest of Apollo,
in the first century of the Christian era, thus writes: "We ought not to
believe that the Principles of the universe are not animated, as
Democrite and Epicure thought; nor that an inert matter be organized,
and ordained by a Providence that disposes of all, as the Stoicians
taught. It is impossible that one sole being, either good or bad, be the
author of all, for God can cause no evil. The harmony of the world is a
combination of contraries like the strings of a lyre, or like the string
of a bow capable of being bent and unbent. In no case, the poet
Euripedes says, good is separated from evil: there must be a mixture of
the one and of the other. This opinion is of immemorial antiquity, and
has been held by theologians, legislators, poets, and philosophers. Its
inventor is unknown, but it is verified by the traditions of mankind; it
is consecrated by mysteries and sacrifices among the Barbarians, as well
as among the Greeks. They all acknowledge the dogma of two opposite
Principles in nature, who, by their opposition, produce the mixture of
good and evil.

"Therefore it may not be said, that a single dispenser draws events like
a liquor from two casks to mix them together; for this mixture is found
in all the phenomena of nature. We must admit two opposite causes, two
contrary powers, bearing the one to the right, and the other to the
left; and who thus govern our life and the whole sublunar world, which
for this reason is subject to all the irregularities and vicissitudes we
witness, for nothing is done without a cause. As the good cannot produce
evil, then there is a principle causing evil, as one causing good."

We see by this passage of Plutarch, that the true origin of two
Principles proceeds from the difficulty which men, in all times, found
in explaining, by one sole cause, good and evil in nature, and in making
flow from one sole spring, virtue and crime, light and darkness. "This
dogma," Plutarch adds, "has been admitted by nearly all nations, and
more especially by those renowned by their wisdom. They believed in two
gods of different trade, if I may say so, who caused, the one good, and
the other evil. They called the first God by excellence, and the second
Demon."

In fact the Persians, disciples of Zoroaster admitted, and even in our
days, the Parsis, their successors, admit two principles, the one called
Oromaze, and the other Ahriman. Plutarch says: "The Persians believed
that the first was of the nature of light, and the second of that of
darkness. Among the Egyptians the first was called Osiris, and the
second Typhon, eternal foe to the first."

All the sacred books of the Persians, and of the Egyptians, contain the
marvellous and allegorical recital of the various combats given by
Ahriman and his angels to Oromaze, and by Typhon to Osiris. These fables
have been rehearsed by the Greeks in the war of the Titans against the
Giants, against Jupiter, or Principle of good and light; for Jupiter,
Plutarch remarks, was the Oromaze of the Persians, and the Osiris of the
Egyptians.

To these examples quoted by Plutarch, and which he extracted from the
Theogony of the Persians, of the Egyptians, of the Greeks, and of the
Chaldeans, we shall add others, which are living yet, at least the most
of them. The inhabitants of the kingdom of Pegu admit two Principles;
the one author of good, and the other of evil. They particularly
endeavor to obtain the favor of the latter. The Indians of Java
acknowledge a chief supreme of the universe, and address offerings and
prayers to the evil genius lest he harm them. The Indians of the Moluc
and Philippine islands do the same. The natives of the island of Formose
worshiped a good god, Ishy, and demons, Chouy; they sacrifice to the
latter, but seldom to the former.

The <DW64>s of the Cote-d'or admit two Gods, the one good, and the
other bad; the one white, and the other black and evil. They do not
adore the former often, whereas they try to appease the latter with
prayers and sacrifices; the Portuguese have named him Demon. The
Hottentots call the good Principle the Captain of above, and the bad
principle the Captain of below. The ancients believed that the source of
evil was in the underneath matter of the earth. The Giants and Typhon
were sons of the Earth. The Hottentots say, that, whether the good
Principle is prayed to or not he does good; whereas it is necessary to
pray to the evil Principle, lest he might do harm. They call the bad god
Touquoa, and represent him small, crooked, irritable, a foe to them; and
they say that from him all evils flow to this world.

The natives of Madagascar believe in two Principles. They ascribe to the
bad one the form and badness of a serpent, they call him Angat: they
name the good one Jadhar, which means great, omnipotent God. They rear
no temple to the latter because he is good. The Mingrelians more
particularly honor the one of their idols, which they think to be the
most cruel. The Indians of the island of Teneriffe believe in a supreme
God, whom they call Achguaya-Xerax, which means the greatest, the most
sublime, the preserver of all things. Also they admit an evil genius
named Guyotta.

The Scandinaves have their god Locke, who wars against the gods, and
particularly against Thor. He is the slanderer of the gods, Edda says,
the great forger of deceit. His spirit is evil; he engendered three
monsters; the wolf Feuris, the serpent Midgard, and Hela, or death. He
causes the earthquakes. The Tsouvaches and the Morduans recognize a
supreme being, who gave men all the blessings they enjoy. They also
admit evil spirits whose occupation is to injure mankind.

The Tartars of Katzchinzi adore a benevolent god, in kneeling towards
the Orient; but they fear another god, Toues, to whom they pray to disarm
his wrath; and to whom, in the spring, they sacrifice a stallion. The
Ostiaks and the Vogouls name that evil god Koul; the Samoyedes name him
Sjoudibe; the Motores, Huala; the Kargasses, Sedkyr. The Thibetans admit
evil spirits which they place in the regions above. The religion of the
Bonzes supposes two Principles. The Siamoeses sacrifice to an evil
spirit, whom they consider as being the cause of all the misfortunes of
mankind.

The Indians have their Ganga and their Gournatha, spirits whom they try
to appease with prayer, sacrifices, and processions. The inhabitants of
Tolgony, India, believe that two Principles govern the universe; the one
good, he is light; and the other bad, he is darkness. The ancient
Assyrians, as well as the Persians, admitted two Principles; and they
honored, Augustine says, two gods, the one good, and the other bad. The
Chaldeans also had their good and bad stars, animated by geniuses or
intelligences also good and bad.

In America the dogma of two Principles, and of good and bad spirits, is
also found. The Peruvians revered Pacha-Camac as being a good god, and
Cupai as being a bad god. The Caraibs admitted two sorts of spirits; the
one benevolent, who dwell in the heaven; and the other evil, who hover
over us to lead us to temptation. The former, on the contrary, invite us
to do good, and each of us is guarded by one of them. Those of
Terra-Firma think that there is a god in the heaven, namely, the sun.
Besides they admit a bad Principle, who is the author of all evils; they
present him with flowers, fruits, corn, and perfumes. The Tapayas,
situated in America by about the same latitude as the Madegasses in
Africa, believe also in two Principles.

The natives of Brazil believe in a bad genius: they call him Aguyan; and
they have conjurors who can, they say, divert his wrath. The Indians of
Florida and of Louisiana adored the sun, the moon, and the stars. They
also believed in an evil spirit named Toia. The Canadians, and the
savage tribes of the Bay of Hudson, revered the sun, the moon, the
stars, and the thunder; but they more particularly prayed to the evil
spirits. The Esquimaux believe in a god supremely good, whom they call
Ukouma, and in another, Ouikan, who is the author of all evils; who
causes the tempests, and who capsizes the boats. The savages of the
strait of Davis believe in beneficent and malignant spirits.

This distinction of two Principles, of a god, and of geniuses or
spirits, authors of good and light; and of a god and geniuses, authors
of evil and darkness, is immemorial. This opinion has been so
universally adopted for the only reason, that those who observed the
opposite phenomena of nature could not account for them, and could not
reconcile them with the existence of a single cause. As there are good
and bad men, they believed that there were good and bad gods, the ones
dispensers of good, and the others authors of evil.

Such was the universal belief when Jesus Christ came to the world. The
Jews themselves, since the captivity of Babylon, generally believed in
those two Principles. They went so far as to immolate their own children
on the altars of evil deities, in order to appease them. Jesus preached
his Gospel, died, and left on earth his apostles with the trust of
continuing, among men, his saving mission. As in the writings of the
Evangelists the word demon, or devil, was used figuratively, meaning
lust, wrong desire, etc., some of the first Christians understood the
true sense of these figurative words, and others did not. In the third
century the Church of Rome, which had been tending to supremacy over
other churches, and which, from policy, to gain more adepts, was
compromising with Paganism, understood the word demon, or devil,
literally, and preserved the heathen doctrine, which, as she grew,
became widely spread, and afterwards an article of faith.

The Fathers of the Church, of that age, believed that the demons, or
devils, were innumerable; that their chief, Lucifer, had entrusted a
demon to accompany each man through life, to tempt him to sin; that
Lucifer had as many bad angels, or demons, under his command, as God had
good angels; that all those demons were corporeal, and that those male
committed fornication and adultery with the daughters of men; and those
female with the sons of men; that they had generated the giants; and
that they had incited the oppressors of the Christians to persecute
them. Thus thought Justin, Tatian, Minutius-Felix, Athenagoras,
Tertullian, Julius-Firmicus, Origen, Synesius, Arnobe, St. Gregory of
Nazianze, Lactance, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, etc., as seen in their
works in either edition of the Benedictines, or of the canon Caillot, of
Migne, a priest, now editor in Paris. Even in our days the most of the
superstitious practices of the Pagans, in regard to evil spirits, are
preserved in the Papal Church,--conjurations, exorcisms, Agnus Dei, holy
water, etc., and others which they have added, such as the sign of the
cross, the expulsion of the devil from houses, barns, wells, wagons,
beasts, fields, etc. These ceremonies are oftentimes performed, as a
matter of course, for money.

The same took place in the Church of Rome in reference to the heathen
dogma of good angels being under the command of the good spirit, or God;
this dogma was generally believed even by the Jews, at least since the
captivity of Babylon. We say _generally_, because the Sadduceans did not
believe it; and perhaps, also, the Samaritans and the Caraites, for we
have but two testimonies that prove they partook of the opinion of the
Samaritans on this point, namely, the testimony of Abusaid, author of an
Arabic version of the Pentateuch, and that of Aaron, in his commentaries
of the same. The Papal Church holds still that the angels form three
hierarchies, or choirs. The first is that of the Seraphims, Cherubims,
and thrones; the second comprises the dominations, the virtues, and the
powers; and the third is composed of the principalities, of the
archangels, and of the angels. One of these angels, called guardian, is
obliged to stand by each one of us all the days of our life. Temples,
altars, prayers and sacrifices are offered to them.

Tertullian, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, etc., thought that the bodies
of the good angels were formed of a very thin, subtle matter. Other
Fathers, Basile, Athanase, Cyrille, Gregory of Nysse, John-Chrysostomus,
etc., considered them as spiritual beings; however, they believed that
they may take a body when they please. The Church of Rome holds, as an
article of faith, that the good angels ought to be adored.

As seen above, the Church of Rome has preserved, with a very slight
modification, if any, the heathen dogma of two Principles, the one good,
God; and the other bad, Lucifer, or the devil; also the nomenclature of
geniuses, or spirits, or angels, which are, the ones under the command
of God, and the others under the command of Lucifer. When, in the
sixteenth century, the Protestants parted with the Church of Rome, they
cut off many branches of this dogma; but they kept its body, namely,
instead of understanding the words demon, or devil, as meaning lust,
abuse of free agency, wrong desire, etc., they understood them of
personal beings, either material or immaterial, but existing, tempting
each man to sin; and relentlessly seeking the ruin of mankind.

_Therefore the doctrine of a Personal Devil is of Pagan origin._




CHAPTER IV.

PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF ORIGINAL SIN.


THE Roman Catholic writers are unanimous in the opinion that it was the
belief of a large number of Pagans that man had fallen from a higher
state of existence. St. Augustine, more especially, lengthily and
emphatically insists upon the general belief of the Pagans in original
sin, when he writes against Pelage. However, we shall bring forth other
testimonies, which will not leave, in the mind of the reader, any doubt
that the Pagans generally believed in original sin.

Cicero, in his work De Republica, book third, after painting the
grandeur of the human nature, and then contrasting its subjection to
miseries, to diseases, to sorrow, to fear, and to the most degrading
passions, was at a loss to define man. He called him _a soul in ruins_.
It was for the same reason that, in Plato, Socrates reminds to his
disciples that those who had established mysteries, and who, he said,
were not to be despised, taught that according to their ancestors, any
one who dies without having been purified is plunged into the mire of
the Tartarus; whereas, he who has been purified dwells with the gods.
Clement of Alexandria, in his Stromata, book third, writes, that,
according to the testimony of Philolaues, the Pythagorician, all the
ancient theologians and poets said that the soul was buried in the body,
as in a grave, as a punishment for some sin. It was also the doctrine of
the Orphics, as can be seen in Plat., Cratyl., Opera, tome third.

In the pages 48, 50, and 51, of the treatise of Plutarch, on the Delays
of Divine Justice, we read: "A State, for instance, is one same thing
continued, a whole, alike to an animal which is ever the same, and the
age thereof does not change the identity. The State then being one, as
long as the association maintains the unity, the merit and the demerit,
the reward and the punishment for all that is done in common are justly
ascribed to it, as they are to a single individual. But if a State is to
be considered in this point of view, it ought to be the same with a
family proceeding from the same stock, from which it holds I do not know
what sort of hidden strength; I do not know what sort of communication
of essence and qualities, which extend to all the individuals of the
race. Beings produced through the medium of generation are not similar
to the productions of arts. In regard to the latter, when the work is
completed it is immediately separated from the hand of the workman, and
it no longer belongs to him: true it is done by him, but not from him.
On the contrary, what is engendered proceeds from the substance itself
of the generating being; so that it holds from him something which is
justly rewarded or punished in his stead, for that something is
himself."

According to the doctrine of the Persians, Meshia and Meshiane, or the
first man and first woman, were first pure, and submitted to Ormuzd,
their maker. Ahriman saw them and envied their happiness. He approached
them under the form of a serpent, presented fruits to them, and
persuaded them that he was the maker of man, of animals, of plants, and
of the beautiful universe in which they dwelled. They believed it; and
since that Ahriman was their master. Their nature became corrupt, and
this corruption infected their whole posterity. This we find in
Vendidat-Sade, pages 305, and 428.

Thus sin does not originate from Ormuzd; but, Zoroaster says, from the
being hidden in crime. This testimony is found in the Exposition of the
Theological System of the Persians, extracted from the books Zends,
Pehlvis, and Parsis, by Anquetil du Perron. The following passage,
"There are stains brought by man when he comes to life," is found in the
69th tome of the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions.

We read in the Ezour-Vedam, book 1, chapter 4, tome 1, pages 201 and
202: "God never created vice. He cannot be its author; and God, who is
holiness and wisdom, can be the author but of virtue. He gave us his law
in which he prescribes what we ought to do. Sin is a transgression of
this law by which it is prohibited. If sin reigns on the earth, we
ourselves are its authors. Our perverse inclinations have induced us to
transgress the law of God; hence, the first sin which has induced us to
commit others." The same author in book 5, chapter 5, tome 2,
acknowledges that the first man was created in a state of innocence; and
that he was happy because he controlled his passions and desires.

Maurice in his Indiae Antiquitates, vol. 6, page 53, proves that the
Indians had a knowledge of the fall of the first man and of the first
woman; he proves also that the dogma of original sin was taught by the
Druids. Voltaire, on the seventeenth page of his work, Additions to
General History, confesses that the Bramas believed that man was fallen
and degenerated: "this idea," he adds, "is found among all the ancient
peoples."

The Father Jesuit Bouchet, in a letter to the Bishop of Avranches,
writes: "The gods," our Indians say, "tried by all means to obtain
immortality. After many inquiries and trials, they conceived the idea
that they could find it in the tree of life, which was in the Chorcan.
In fact they succeeded; and in eating once in a while of the fruits of
that tree, they kept the precious treasure they so much valued. A famous
snake, named Cheiden, saw that the tree of life had been found by the
gods of the second order. As probably he had been entrusted with
guarding that tree, he became so angry because his vigilance had been
deceived, that he immediately poured out an enormous quantity of poison,
which spread over the whole earth."

In the Ta-Hio, or Moral of Confucius, page 50, Confucius, after saying
that reason is a gift from heaven, adds, "Concupiscence has corrupted
it, and it is now mixed with many impurities. Therefore take off those
impurities so that it resume its first luster, and all its former
perfection." The philosopher Tchouangse taught, in conformity with the
doctrine of King or sacred books of the Chinese, "that in the former
state of heaven, man was inly united to the supreme reason; and that he
practiced all the works of justice. The heart relished the truth. There
was in man no alloy of falsity. Then the four seasons of the year were
regular. Nothing was injurious to man, and man was injurious to nothing.
Universal harmony reigned in all nature. But the columns of the
firmament having been broken, the earth was shaken in its very
foundations. Man having rebelled against the heavens the system of the
universe was deranged; evils and crimes flooded the earth." This
testimony is extracted from the Discourse of Ramsey on Mythology, pages
146, and 148.

M. de Humboldt, in the tome 1, pages 237 and 274, and also in the tome
2, page 198 of his Views of the Cordilleras and of the monuments of
America, says, "That the mother of our flesh; the serpent Cihuacohuati,
and her are famous in the Mexican traditions. Those traditions
represent the mother of our flesh fallen from her first state of
innocence and happiness." Voltaire, in Questions on Encyclopedia, says;
"The fall of man degenerated is the basis of the theology of all the
ancient nations."

There were nearly among all nations expiatory rites, to purify infants
when they were born. Usually this ceremony was done in the day when the
child was named. Macrob informs us, in his Saturn, book 1, that "that
day, among the Romans, was the ninth for the boys and the eighth for the
girls. That day was called lustricus, because of the lustral water used
to purify the new born child." In the Analysis of the Insc. of Rosette,
page 145, we read that the Egyptians, the Persians, and the Greeks had a
similar practice. In Yucatan the new born child was brought in the
temple, where the priest poured on his head the waters destined to this
use; and then he gave him a name. In the Canary islands the women
performed this priestly function. Caril, in his American Letters, tome
1, pages 146, and 147, speaks of these ceremonies. A law prescribed
these expiatory rites among the Mexicans.

M. de Humboldt, Views of the Cordilleras, and of the Monuments of
America, tome 1, page 223, writes: "The midwife, in invoking the god
Ometeuctly, (the god of celestial paradise,) and the goddess Omecihuatl,
who live in the abode of the blessed, poured water on the forehead and
on the breast of the new-born child. After pronouncing several prayers,
in which water was considered as the symbol of the purification of the
soul, the midwife called near her the children who had been invited to
give a name to the new-born child. In some provinces a fire was kindled
at the same time, and they did as if really the child was passed through
the flame to purify him both with water and fire. This ceremony reminds
the practices whose origin, in Asia, seems to be immemorial."

Likewise, the Thibetans have similar expiatory rites: this we find in
the thirty-first page of the preface of the Thibetan Alphabet. We
extract the following from the Works of the Society of Calcutta: "In
India, when a name is given to a child, his name is written on his
forehead, and he is plunged three times into the water of the river.
Then the Brama exclaims, 'O God, pure, one, invisible and perfect! to
thee we offer this offspring of a holy tribe, anointed with an
incorruptible oil, and purified with water.'"

In the mysteries, the Hierophant taught the doctrine that our nature had
been corrupted by a first sin. The sixth book of the poem Eneida is
nothing but a brilliant exposition of this doctrine; and perhaps
antiquity offers nothing that proves more the power of tradition on the
human mind, than the passage in which the poet, following Eneas in the
abode of the dead, describes in magnificent verses the dismal spectacle
which first strikes his gaze. If there is any thing in the world that
wakes up in our mind the idea of innocence, assuredly it is a child who
has been unable neither to know nor to commit sin; and the supposition
that he is subject to punishment and to suffering, is a thought which
our soul abhors. However, Virgil, in the 6th book, verses 426, and 429,
places the children dead when yet nursing, at the entry of the sad
kingdoms, where he represents them in a state of pain, weeping and
moaning--vagitus ingens. Why those tears, those cries of sufferings?
Which faults do those children, to whom their mothers had not smiled,
expiate? (Virgil, Ecloga 4, verse 62.) What has inspired the poet with
this surprising fiction? On what does it rest? Whence does it originate,
if not from the ancient belief that man was born in sin?

Therefore, the doctrine of original sin was generally believed by the
Pagans.

We stated, at the commencement of this chapter, that the Roman Catholic
writers are unanimous in the opinion that it was the belief of a large
number of Pagans, that man had fallen from a higher state of existence.
However, a small number only of the same writers are of the opinion that
the Jews believed in the doctrine of original sin; and they find no
other proof of the assertion than the ceremony of circumcision, which,
as is familiar to all, was a mere legal and national observance, and had
not the virtue of remitting sin. In the first centuries of the
Christian era, baptism was considered as a mere ceremony for initiating
catechumens to the Christian profession.

It was only towards the end of the third century, that the belief of the
transmission of Adam's sin to all his descendants was introduced in the
Church of Rome, which already considered herself the mistress of the
other churches. Soon afterwards the dogma that baptism had the virtue of
remitting original sin was established. As proof of these two facts, we
have the testimony of more than twenty-three Christian sects of the
first centuries, which did not admit the dogma of original sin; and did
not believe that baptism had the virtue of remitting sin. We quote a few
of those sects: the Simonians, the Nicolaites, the Valentinians, the
Basilidians, the Carpocratians, the Ophites, the Sethians, the
Pelagians, all the Gnostic sects, etc.

Therefore, the Church of Rome borrowed the dogma of original sin from
the Pagans. To this many Roman Catholic writers say: true the Pagans
held this doctrine, but we did not borrow it from them; we found it in
the first chapters of Genesis. We rejoin that even the fathers of the
fourth century did not understand those chapters literally, and thereby
as teaching the dogma of original sin. St. Augustine, in his work, City
of God, avers that it was a general opinion among Christians, that the
first three chapters of Genesis are allegorical, and that he himself is
inclined to think so. He confesses that it is impossible to take them
literally without hurting piety, and ascribing to God unworthy actions.
Origen says: "Where is the man of good sense, who can ever believe that
there have been a first, a second, and a third days, and that those days
had each an evening and morning, though there were not yet neither sun,
nor moon, nor stars? Where is the man credulous enough to believe, that
God was working like a gardener, and that he planted a garden in Orient;
that the tree of life was a real tree, whose fruit would preserve life?"

Origen compared the temptation of Adam to that of the birth of Love,
whose father was Porus, or Abundance, and whose mother was Poverty. He
adds that there are in the Old Testament facts, which, if understood
literally, are absurd, and which, if understood allegorically, contain
valuable truths. We refer the reader for the above to the following
works: See St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, liber xi, cap. 6, et liber 2,
cap. xi, No. 24.--De Genesi ad Litteram, liber 4, No. 44.--De Catechis
Rudibus, cap. 13. The opinion of St. Athanase can be found in his Oratio
Contra Arium, No. 60.--That of Origen, in his work De Principiis, liber
iv, No. 16, contra Celsum, liber 6, No. 50, 51. That of St. Ambrosius,
in his Hexam, liber one, cap. 7, et Sequentia. That of Theodoret, in his
Quest. in Genes. interpr. cap. v. et Sequentia, and that of St. Gregory
in his Moral, in Job, liber 32, cap. 9.

The Fathers and the Christian sects named above, did not take the first
three chapters of Genesis literally, because it would imply absurdity
and blasphemy. The idea of God, namely, of the supreme and eternal
cause, who clothes our clay for the pleasure of walking in a garden; the
idea of a woman conversing with a serpent; listening to its counsels and
heeding them; that of a man and a woman organized for reproduction, and
yet destined to be immortal on earth, and to procreate a mathematical
infinity of beings, immortal like themselves, who also will infinitely
multiply, and will all find their food in the fruits of the trees of a
garden where they will all dwell; a fruit culled that is to kill Adam
and Eve, and to be transmitted as a hereditary crime to all their
descendants, who did not participate to their disobedience, crime which
will be forgiven only in as much as men will commit another crime,
infinitely greater, a deicide--if such a crime might exist; the woman
who since that time is condemned to bring forth with pain, as if the
pains of childbirth were not natural to her organization, and were not
common to her, as well as to the other animals which have not tasted the
forbidden fruit; the serpent forced to crawl, as if a footless reptile
could move any other way: so many absurdities and follies, heaped in
those first three chapters, they could not believe and ascribe them to
God.

Maimonide, one of the most learned Rabbins of the Jews, thus wrote in
the twelfth century: "We ought not to understand literally what is
written in the books of the creation; nor entertain about the creation
the opinions generally agreed. It is for this reason that our wise men
urged upon us to keep their true teaching secret, and not to lift up the
veil of allegory which conceals the truths they contain. If taken
literally the relation of the creation gives us the most absurd and
extravagant ideas of the Deity. Whoever will find out their true
teaching, ought to keep it to himself; this is the earnest
recommendation of our wise men, and more especially in regard to the
first six days. Those who know ought to speak about it but obscurely, as
I do myself, so as to let their hearers guess if they can."

The above facts and proofs lead us to the conclusion that the Church of
Rome borrowed the dogma of original sin from the Pagans.

As the Protestants, who call themselves Orthodox, borrowed it in the
sixteenth century from the Church of Rome, it follows that they also
hold it from the Pagans.

_Therefore, the doctrine of Original Sin is of Pagan origin._




CHAPTER V.

PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF TRINITY.


THE Roman Catholic writers themselves confess that the Pagans believed
in Trinity; also the most of the self-called Protestant Orthodox
historians and authors. The neutral authors are unanimous on this point.
The following facts and proofs we shall impartially extract from those
three classes of writers:

The Egyptians believed in Trinity; the Greek inscription of the great
Obelisk of the major circus, at Rome, reads thus: Megas Theos, the great
god, Theogentos, the begotten of god; and Pamphegges, the all-bright,
(Apollo, the Spirit.) Heraclide, of Pont, and Porphyre relate a famous
oracle of Serapis: Prota Theos, metepeita logos, kai pneuma soun autois.
Sumphuta de tria panta, kai eis en eonta. [Translation:] All is God in
the beginning; then the word and the spirit; three Gods coengendered
together and united in one.

The Chaldeans had a sort of Trinity in their Metris, Oromasis, and
Araminis, or Mithra, Oromase and Aramine. The Chinese had also, and
still have, a mysterious Trinity. The first god generates the second
one, and both generate the third one. The Chinese say that the great
term, or great unity, contains three, one is three, and three are one.
In India Trinity was immemorially known. The Father Jesuit Calmet
writes: "What I have seen mostly surprising is a text extracted from
Lamaastambam, one of the books of the Indians.... It begins thus: The
Lord, the good, the great God, in his mouth is the word. (The term which
they use personifies the word.) Then it speaks of the Holy Spirit in
these words: Ventus seu spiritus perfectus; [translation] breath or
perfect spirit,--and it ends by the creation, ascribing it to God
alone."

The Jesuit Calmet says, writing about the Thibetans: "I learned the
following about their religion. They call God Konciosa, and they seem to
have some idea of the adorable Trinity; for they call God sometimes
Konsikosick, God-one, and at other times Kocioksum, God-three. They use
a kind of bead on which they pronounce these words: _om_, _ha_, _hum_.
When they are asked the explanation, they answer that _om_ signifies the
intelligence, or arm, namely power; that _ha_ is the word; that _hum_ is
the heart or love, and that these three words signify God."

The Father Bouchet, a Roman Catholic missionary in India, wrote the
following to the bishop of Avranches: "I commence by the confused idea
which the Indians preserve about the adorable Trinity. My Lord, I have
spoken to you of the three principal deities of the Indians, Bruma,
Wishnou, and Routren. The greater portion of the people say, it is true,
that they are three different gods, and really separate. But several
Nianigneuls, or spiritual men, assure that these three gods, apparently
distinct, compose in reality but one god: that this god is called Bruma,
when he creates and exercises his all-power; that he is called Wishnou,
when he preserves the created beings, and does them good; and that,
finally, he takes the name of Routren, when he destroys the cities,
chastises the wicked, and makes men feel his just anger."

English missionaries have found at Otaiti some traces of the Trinity
among the religious dogmas of the natives.

Plato refers to this doctrine in several passages of his works. "Not
only," says Dacier in his translation, "it is believed that he knew
about the Word, eternal Son of God; but also that he knew about the Holy
Spirit, for he thus writes to the young Denis:

"'I must declare to Archedemus what is much more precious and more
divine, and which you so eagerly desire to know; for you sent him to me
for this express purpose. According to what he told me, you think that I
have not sufficiently explained to you my opinion about the first
Principle, therefore I shall write it to you, enigmatically, however, in
order that, if my epistle is intercepted at sea or on land, he who will
read it will be unable to understand it. All things are around their
king; they exist through him, and he is the only cause of good things,
second for the second things, and third for the third things.'

"In the Epinomis," continues Dacier, "Plato establishes as Principle,
the first good, the Word, or intelligence and the soul. The first good
is God;... the Word, or intelligence, is the son of this first good, who
begets him similar to himself; and the soul, which is the term between
the Father and the Son, is the Holy Spirit."

Plato had borrowed this doctrine about Trinity from Timee of Locre, who
held it from the Italian philosophical school. Marsile Ficin, in one of
his remarks on Plato, shows from the testimonies of Jamblic, Porphyre,
Plato and Maxim of Tyr, that the Pythagoricians knew also the excellence
of the Ternary; Pythagoras himself indicated it in this symbol: Protima
to Schema, kai Bema, kai Triobolon. The Jesuit Kirker, dissenting about
the unity and trinity of the first Principle, traces vestiges of the
doctrine of Trinity up to Pythagoras, and to the Egyptians.

St. Augustine himself, though the staunchest defender of the dogma of
Trinity, confessed that, among all the nations of the world, a Trinity,
nearly similar to the one he believed in, had been held. He added that
the Pythagoricians, the Platonicians, and that a great number of
Atlantes, Lybian, Egyptian, Persian, Chaldean, Scythian, Gallenses, and
Hibernian philosophers, held several dogmas about the unity of the God,
Light, and Good, in common with the Church of Rome.

Macrobe gives us a summary of ancient or Platonician theology, which
contains a true Trinity, of which that of the <DW7>s and of the
self-called Protestant Orthodox is but a copy. According to this
summary, the world has been formed by the universal soul: this soul is
the same as their spiritus, or spirit. They also call the Holy Spirit
Creator: "Veni Creator spiritus," etc., [translation,] Come Spirit
Creator, etc., (Catholic hymn.) Macrobe adds, that from this spirit or
soul the intelligence, which he calls _men's_ proceeds. Is this not the
Father, the Son, or wisdom, and the Spirit that creates and vivifies
all? Even is not the expression _to proceed_ common to the ancient and
to the <DW7> and Protestant Orthodox Churches in the filiation of the
first three beings?

Macrobe goes farther. He recalls the three Principles to a primitive
unit, who is the sovereign God. After resting his theory on this Trinity
he adds: "You see how this unit, or original monade of the first cause,
is preserved entire and indivisible up to the soul, or spirit, which
animates the world." This testimony of Macrobe has so much more bearing,
that he wrote in the beginning of the fifth century; that he was the
first Chamberlain of the emperor Theodose, and was the most learned
antiquarian of that age.

Another most important fact we shall record. It is beyond any doubt
that before the coming of Jesus Christ the Jews did not hold the dogma
of Trinity, nor do they now. Their Rabbins, and all the Roman Catholic
theologians, agree on this point.

During the first three centuries of the Christian era the dogma of
Trinity was not generally believed. The Simonians, the Nicholaites, the
Valentinians, the Basilidians, the Carpocratians, the Ophites, the
Sethians, all the Gnostics, and many other Christian sects rejected it.
It was only in the fourth century, that Arius and the above sects were
condemned in the council of Nice, because they denied the divinity of
Jesus Christ. This council was assembled by the order of the emperor
Constantine I., who was urged to it by the Bishop of Rome, (or Pope,)
whose Church held the dogma of Trinity. As a matter of course the
bishops of the council had to decide according to the will of those two
leaders; for Constantine threatened them with deposition and exile: in
fact he banished Arius, and deposed seventeen bishops, who did not
subscribe to the decision of the council.

The doctrine that Jesus Christ was not God himself was so generally
spread, and so deeply rooted in the minds, that several successors of
Constantine I. embraced Arianism; and it was only after centuries that
Arianism, which was spread nearly all over the East, was crushed by the
papal and the imperial power.

Now let us draw our conclusions. Since the Jews had no knowledge of the
dogma of Trinity, the Church of Rome could not borrow it from them;
since the generality of the Christian sects during the first three
centuries did not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Church of
Rome did not find the dogma of Trinity in the Gospel; (besides, the
Catholic theologians never pretended that the Scriptures teach it--they
simply pretended, and still pretend, that it was a tradition.) Since the
dogma of Trinity was believed by many Pagan sects, then the Roman Church
borrowed it from them.

In turns, the self-called Orthodox Protestant Churches borrowed this
doctrine from the Church of Rome, in the sixteenth century.

_Therefore the doctrine of Trinity is of Pagan origin._




CHAPTER VI.

PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE SUPREME DIVINITY OF JESUS CHRIST.


IT will be demonstrated that the doctrine of the supreme divinity of
Jesus Christ is of Pagan origin, if it can be proved, 1st, That the
Church of Rome, from which the self-called Orthodox Protestant Churches
borrowed this doctrine, in the sixteenth century, did not hold it from
the apostles of Jesus Christ; and, 2d, That the Church of Rome uses, in
her adoration to Jesus Christ, rites and ceremonies of a striking
similarity with those used by the Pagans, in their adoration to the sun,
under the names of Bacchus, Hercules, Osiris, Mithra, Atys, etc.

But it can be proved, 1st, That the Church of Rome, from which the
self-called Orthodox Protestant Churches, in the sixteenth century,
borrowed the doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ, did not
hold it from the apostles of Jesus Christ; and, 2d, That the Church of
Rome uses, in her adoration to Jesus Christ, rites and ceremonies of a
striking similarity with those used by the Pagans in their adoration to
the sun, under the names of Bacchus, Hercules, Osiris, Mithra, Atys,
etc.

1st. We prove that the Church of Rome, from which the self-called
Orthodox Protestant Churches, in the sixteenth century, borrowed the
doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ, did not hold it from
the apostles of Jesus Christ.

It will be evident that the Church of Rome, from which the self-called
Orthodox Protestant Churches, in the sixteenth century, borrowed the
doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ, did not hold it from
the apostles of Jesus Christ, if, until nearly the end of the third
century, the various Christian denominations, or sects, did not believe
the doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ. But, until nearly
the end of the third century, the various Christian denominations, or
sects, did not believe the doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus
Christ.

This we prove:--

We request the readers to bear in mind, in reading this chapter, that
we have extracted all the proofs and statements brought forth therein,
from the works of the Roman Catholic priest Bergier, which we have
studied in our Catholic theological school; from the works of
the Rev. Father Jesuit Feller; from the History of the Church,
by Berrault-Ber-Castel, a Roman Catholic priest; and from the
Ecclesiastical History, by the Roman Catholic clergyman Fleury. Those
proofs and statements can be verified, in the first two writers, at the
articles of the sects, and of their authors, arranged in alphabetical
order; and in the other authors at the dates of the centuries and years.

Bergier says: "The Cerinthians pretended that Jesus Christ was born from
Joseph and Mary like other men; but that he was endowed with a superior
wisdom and holiness; that when he was baptized, Christ, or the Son of
God, had descended on him under the form of a dove, and had revealed to
him God the Father, till then unknown, in order that he might make him
known to men." The Cerinthians sprung up, according to St. Epiphane, in
the middle of the first century, but according to St. Ireneus, at about
the year 88.

Therefore the Cerinthians did not believe the doctrine of the supreme
divinity of Jesus Christ.

Bergier says: "The Carpocratians supposed the pre-existence of the
souls; pretended that they had sinned in an anterior life; that as a
punishment of their crimes they had been condemned to be shut up in
bodies.... In their belief, the soul of Jesus Christ, before her
incarnation, had been more faithful to God than the others. It is for
this reason that God had endowed her with more knowledge than the souls
of other men; also with more strength both to defeat the geniuses
opposed to humanity, and to return to heaven against their will. God,
they said, grants the same favor to those who love Jesus Christ; and
who, like him, know the dignity of their souls. Thus the Carpocratians
considered Jesus Christ as being simply a man, though more perfect than
the others; they believed that he was the son of Joseph and Mary, and
confessed his miracles and sufferings. They are not accused of denying
the resurrection, but of denying the general resurrection; and of
holding that the soul only (not the body) of Jesus Christ, had ascended
to the heavens." The sect of the Carpocratians commenced towards the end
of the first century.

Therefore the Carpocratians did not believe the doctrine of the supreme
divinity of Jesus Christ.

Bergier writes thus about the Ebionites: "It is very probable that
(although some authors say that they date from the year 72 of the first
century) they commenced to be known only in the year 103, or even later,
under the reign of Adrian, after the total ruin of Jerusalem, in the
year 119; that the Ebionites and the Nazarenes are two different sects;
it is the opinion of Mosheim, Hist. Christ., soec. 1, par. 58, soec. 2,
par. 39.... The Ebionites considered Jesus Christ as being simply a man
born from Joseph and Mary."

Consequently the Ebionites did not believe the doctrine of the supreme
divinity of Jesus Christ.

The Christian sect of the Basilidians was founded in the beginning of
the second century by Basilide of Alexandria, Feller says; he had been
converted from the philosophy of Pythagoras and Plato to Christianism.
Bergier writes about the Basilidians: "They believed that God had sent
his Son, or intelligence, under the name of Jesus Christ, to liberate
those who would believe in him; that Jesus Christ had really performed
the miracles ascribed to him by the Christians; but that he had only a
fantastical body and the appearances of a man."

Therefore the Basilidians did not believe the doctrine of the supreme
divinity of Jesus Christ.

The sect of the Marcionites was established, in the middle of the second
century, by Marcio, the son of a bishop of Pontus. The Marcionites held
that God, principle of the spirits, had given to one of them, Jesus
Christ, the appearances of humanity; and had sent him to the earth to
abolish the law and the prophets; to teach to men that their souls come
from heaven, and that they cannot be restored to happiness except in
reuniting to God.

Therefore the Marcionites did not believe the doctrine of the supreme
divinity of Jesus Christ.

Valentin founded the sect of Valentinians in 140. He was an Egyptian,
and had been converted from philosophy to Christianism. Bergier, after
lengthily exposing the doctrines of his sect, says, "Consequently the
Valentinians neither admitted the eternal generation of the Word, nor
his incarnation, nor the divinity of Jesus Christ, nor the redemption of
mankind, in the proper sense. In their opinion, the redemption of
mankind by Jesus Christ did not extend farther than this--Jesus Christ
had come to the world to liberate men from the tyranny of the Eons, and
had given them examples and lessons of virtue, and had taught them the
true means of obtaining eternal happiness."

Therefore the Valentinians did not believe the doctrine of the supreme
divinity of Jesus Christ.

The Ptolemaites did not believe the doctrine of Jesus Christ, and held
that he was but the Son of God.

St. Epiphane in his work Haere. 36, and Bergier, inform us that the
Heracleonites, whose chief was Heracleon, and who were widely spread,
particularly in Sicily, believed that the Word divine did not create the
world, but that it had been created by one of the Eons, or spirits. In
their opinion, there were two worlds, the one corporeal and visible, and
the other spiritual and invisible, and they only ascribed the formation
of the latter to Jesus Christ, who was one of the greatest Eons, or
spirits. The Heracleonites were organized as a sect in the year 140.

The Colarbasians did not believe the doctrine of the supreme divinity of
Jesus Christ.

Sanderus and Bergier say, that the Barules professed to believe that the
Son of God had but a fantastical body; that there was no original sin;
that all our souls had been created before the world, and all had sinned
in that former state of existence; and that Jesus Christ was not God.

The Bardesanists, thus named from their founder, Bardesanes, a Syrian,
who lived in the second century, became a large sect. Beausobre in his
History of Manicheanism, tome 2, book 4, chap. 9, writes, that they
believed in two Principles, originators of all things, the one good and
the other bad. They denied that the eternal Word, or Son of God, had
taken a human flesh; they said that he had taken only a celestial and
aerial body. They denied the future resurrection of the body. Bergier,
Feller, etc., say the same.

Then the Bardesanists did not believe the doctrine of the supreme
divinity of Jesus Christ.

The Marcosians rejected the doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus
Christ, and held only that he was one of the principal Eons, or spirits.
The Marcosians were founded by Marc in the second century.

The Theodotians, Bergier says, believed that Jesus Christ was not God
but a man; that he was above the other men only by his miraculous birth,
and by his extraordinary virtues. Theodote, a native of Bysance, founded
them in the second century.

The Artemonians also denied the doctrine of the supreme divinity of
Jesus Christ.

The Docetes held that Jesus Christ was only the Son of God, and that he
had but apparently suffered humiliations, torments, and death.

The Tatianists did not believe the doctrine of the supreme divinity of
Jesus Christ. Tatian gave them his name when he organized them as a
Christian denomination, in the second century. Bergier pretends that
some passages of the writings of this learned author can be understood
of the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ, but Fauste Socin, and others,
in the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, in ten volumes, in folio, proves
the contrary; and at the same time they prove that Clement of Alexandria
and other Fathers of the second century disbelieved the doctrine of the
supreme divinity of Jesus Christ. Bergier confesses, however, that it is
doubtful that Tatian had been Orthodox about the generation of the Word.

The Apellites denied the doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus
Christ. In their belief there was but one God, who sent to the world his
Son, who took a body not in the womb of the virgin Mary, but from the
four elements. Their sect widely spread in the East during the second
century.

Bergier says, writing about the doctrines of the Ophites, a Christian
sect of the second century: "In their belief, matter was eternal; the
world was created against the will of God, and was governed by a
multitude of spirits who govern the world. Christ united to the man
Jesus to destroy the empire of the Demiourge, or creator of the world."

Therefore the Ophites did not believe the doctrine of the supreme
divinity of Jesus Christ.

One of the doctrines of the Cainites was, that Jesus Christ was a spirit
sent by God to save the world.

The Hermogenians, or followers of Hermogene, a Stoician philosopher,
converted to Christianism at the end of the second century, believed
that matter was eternal; that there was but one God, who had sent a
spirit, Jesus Christ, to correct the evil that was among men.

"The Hermians, or disciples of Hermias," Bergier says, "taught that
matter is eternal; that God is the soul of the world; that Jesus Christ,
ascending to the heavens left his body in the Sun, from whom he had
taken it; that the soul of man is composed of fire and of subtle air;
that the birth of children is the resurrection, and that the world is
hell." Bergier adds, in another article, that they believed that there
was but one God, who had sent to the world a spirit, Jesus Christ.

Therefore the Hermians did not believe the doctrine of the supreme
divinity of Jesus Christ.

Bergier, writing about the Sethians, says: "They said that the soul of
Seth had passed to the body of Jesus Christ, and that Seth and Jesus
Christ were the same person."

St. Augustine informs us that the Severians did not believe the doctrine
of the resurrection of the flesh, and rejected the Old Testament. They
did not believe that Jesus Christ was God himself.

The Encratites never held that Jesus Christ was God. Bergier says, "They
did not believe that the Son of God was truly born from the virgin
Mary."

The Valesians rejected the doctrine that Jesus Christ was God himself.

Bergier writes: "The Hieracites, heretics of the third century, were
established by Hierax, or Hieracas, a physician by profession, born at
Leontium, or Leontople, in Egypt. St. Epiphane, who relates and refutes
the errors of this Sectarian, confesses that the austerity of his morals
was exemplary; that he was familiar with the Greek and Egyptian
sciences; that he had thoroughly studied the Scriptures, and that he was
gifted with a persuasive eloquence. He denied the resurrection of the
body, and admitted but a spiritual resurrection of the souls. He
confessed that Jesus Christ had been generated by the Father; that the
Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father as well as the Son; but he had
dreamed that the Holy Ghost had taken a human body under the form of
Melchisedek. He denied that Jesus Christ had a true human body."

Therefore the Hieracites denied the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ.

Bergier thus writes about the Samosatians: "They were disciples and
followers of Paul of Samosate, bishop of Antioch, at or about the year
262. This heretic taught that there is in God one sole person, namely,
the Father; that the Son and the Holy Spirit are only two attributes of
God, under which he manifested himself to men: that Jesus Christ is not
God, but a man to whom God has communicated his wisdom in an
extraordinary manner."

Therefore the Samosatians did not believe the doctrine of the supreme
divinity of Jesus Christ.

The Manicheans denied the divinity of Jesus Christ, and believed that
Jesus Christ had not a real body while on earth. His soul, they said,
was of a nature similar to the nature of the souls of other men, though
more perfect. He was the Son of God.

Therefore the Manicheans denied the doctrine of the supreme divinity of
Jesus Christ.

All the above sects composed nearly the whole Christian body, during the
first three centuries; and, as shown to the reader, every one either
ignored or denied the doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ.

Then it remains evident that the Church of Rome, from which the
self-called Orthodox Protestant Churches, in the sixteenth century,
borrowed the doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ, did not
hold it from the apostles of Jesus Christ.

_Confirmatur._--As a confirmation of this last and very important
consequence, we are to prove,

1st. That in the Church of Rome, herself, the doctrine of the supreme
divinity of Jesus Christ was established only at about the year 180.

_Remark._--By the Church of Rome, we mean only the church whose bishop
(who after centuries assumed the title of Pope,) was at Rome, and which,
then, did not extend farther than the province of Rome, and a few other
occidental places.

2d. That in the council of Nice, held in 325, despite the efforts of
the Bishop of Rome; and despite the tyranny of the emperor Constantine
I., who invoked the council at his own expense, attended, surrounded,
and enforced it with military force, it was with the greatest difficulty
that the Church of Rome obtained, from the bishops who composed it, a
decision in favor of the doctrine she held, that Jesus Christ was God
himself.

3d. That it was only long after the council of Nice that its decision,
in favor of the doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ,
prevailed among the churches which depended on the Emperor of
Constantinople, and on the Bishop of Rome.

4th. We will also present a succinct view of the large number of
Christians, who, without the pale of the communion of Rome, preserved
the former belief that Jesus Christ was not God.

1st. We prove that in the Church of Rome herself, the doctrine of the
supreme divinity of Jesus Christ was established only at about the year
180.

Bergier himself makes the following confession: "An ancient author, who
is believed to be Caius, bishop of Rome, who had written against
Artemon, and of whom Eusebe has related the words, Ecclesiastical
History, book 5, chap. 22, seems to confound together the Theodotians
and the Artemonians.... They maintain, he says, that their doctrine is
not new; that it has been taught by the apostles, and that it has been
followed in the church until the pontificates of Victor and of Zephyrine
his successor, but that since that time the truth has been altered."

Bergier adds, "The Theodotians believed that Jesus Christ was a man, and
not God, that Jesus Christ was above the other men only by his
miraculous birth, and by his extraordinary virtues." Also, Bergier says,
that, although Theodote was a native of Bysance, he resided in Rome,
where he preached the same doctrine as Theodote, at least in regard to
Jesus Christ being a man and not God.

Therefore in the Church of Rome herself, the doctrine of the supreme
divinity of Jesus Christ was established only at about the year 180.

2d. We prove that in the council of Nice, held in 325, despite the
efforts of the Bishop of Rome; and despite the tyranny of the emperor
Constantine I., who convoked the council at his own expense, attended,
surrounded, and enforced it with military force, it was with the
greatest difficulty that the Church of Rome obtained, from the bishops
who composed it, a decision in favor of the doctrine she held, that
Jesus Christ was God.

Arius, a priest of Alexandria, surprised at hearing Alexander, his
bishop, teaching in an assembly of priests, that Jesus Christ was God,
protested against this new doctrine. An animated controversy between him
and Alexander, and then between the friends of the Church of Rome,
which held this doctrine, and other churches which did not, ensued. The
council of Nice assembled, and there seventeen bishops boldly faced the
legate of Sylvestre, the emperor Constantine and his military force; and
they sided with Arius. Eusebe, bishop of Cesarea, the most learned of
the bishops who composed the council, sided with Arius. He is the same
Eusebe who wrote the Evangelical Preparation and Demonstration, in two
volumes in folio; who wrote an Ecclesiastical History, the Life of
Constantine, a Chronic and a Commentary on the Psalms and on Isaiah.
Constantine forced them either to yield and to acquiesce to the doctrine
of the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ, or to be expelled from their
episcopal sees; and Arius, exiled, had to retire in Palestine.

Consequently, in the council of Nice, held in 325, despite the efforts
of the Bishop of Rome; and despite the tyranny of the emperor
Constantine I., who convoked the council at his own expense, attended,
surrounded, and enforced it with military force, it was with the
greatest difficulty that the Church of Rome obtained, from the bishops
who composed it, a decision in favor of the doctrine she held, that
Jesus Christ was God himself.

3d. We prove that it was only long after the council of Nice, that its
decision in favor of the doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus
Christ, prevailed among the churches which depended on the Emperor of
Constantinople, and on the Bishop of Rome.

Bergier, despite his partiality in favor of the Church of Rome, is
obliged to make the following avowal:

"The anathema pronounced against Arianism did not destroy it; _the
larger portion of those_ (bishops) _who had signed the decision of the
council, only for fear of being exiled, remained attached to the party
of Arius_. Constantine himself, influenced by an Arian priest,
recommended to him by his sister Constantia, at her death bed, and who
had gained his confidence, consented to the repeal of Arius from his
exile, in 328. This heretic reunited to his partisans, and commenced
spreading his errors with even more earnestness than before. But St.
Athanase, who had succeeded to Alexander in the episcopal see of
Alexandria, constantly refused to commune with him, and by this firmness
displeased Constantine I.

"Since that time the Arians became a redoubtable party. They held
several councils where they obtained the majority.... Arius died in a
tragic manner, in the year 337. After the death of Constantine I., in
337, the party of the Arians was alternatively the stronger, in ratio of
the less or greater protection extended to them or to the Orthodox by
the Emperors. Under Constance, who favored them, they filled the Orient
with seditions and troubles; but Constantine Junior and Constant, who
reigned in Occident, prevented Arianism from spreading. In 351,
Constance, who had become the master of the whole empire by the death of
his two brothers, protected Arianism more openly than before. Several
councils were held in Italy, in which the Arians had the majority; and
others, in which the Catholics had the superiority.... Julian, who was
emperor in 362, sided neither with one party nor with the other. Valens,
emperor of the Orient, in 364, favored and embraced Arianism; whereas
Valentinian, his brother, did all in his power to extirpate it from the
Occident.

"Gratian, and afterwards Theodose, proscribed Arianism from the whole
empire.... In the beginning of the fifth century, the Goths, the
Burgundians, and the Vandals, spread it in Gaul and in Africa. The
Visigoths introduced it in Spain, where it subsisted as long as the
kings of that country were Arians themselves, until the year 660.

"Arianism was to be revived in the sixteenth century. It is probable
that Arianism would have invaded the whole Orient if the Arians had been
united."

Therefore, it was only long after the Council of Nice, that its
decision, in favor of the doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus
Christ, prevailed among the churches which depended on the Emperor of
Constantinople, and on the Bishop of Rome.

4th. We will also present a succinct view of the large number of
Christians, who, without the pale of the communion of Rome, preserved
the former belief that Jesus Christ was not God.

We have proved, in the course of this chapter, that the following
Christian sects, or denominations, did not believe the doctrine of the
divinity of Jesus Christ: the Corinthians, the Carpocratians, the
Ebionites, the Basilidians, the Marcionites, the Valentinians, the
Ptolemaites, the Heracleonites, the Colarbasians, the Barules, the
Bardesanists, the Marcosians, the Theodotians, the Artemonians, the
Docetes, the Tatianists, the Apellites, the Ophites, the Cainites, the
Hermogenians, the Hermians, the Sethians, the Severians, the Encratites,
the Valesians, the Hieracites, the Samosatians, and the Manicheans. But
nearly all these Christian sects of the first three centuries outlived
the Council of Nice, and preserved through centuries the doctrine that
Jesus Christ was not God himself: this is the unanimous testimony of
historians.

From the four heads of convincing historical proofs brought forth in
this _confirmatur_, we draw once more the conclusion:

1st. Then the Church of Rome, from which the self-called Orthodox
Protestant Churches, in the sixteenth century, borrowed the doctrine of
the divinity of Jesus Christ, did not hold it from the apostles of Jesus
Christ.

2d. We prove the second proposition of the argument of this chapter,
namely, that the Church of Rome uses, in her adoration to Jesus Christ,
rites and ceremonies of a striking similarity with those used by the
Pagans in their adoration to the sun, under the names of Bacchus,
Hercules, Osiris, Mithra, Atys, etc.

Every year the Pagans celebrated with pomp the death of Bacchus. Those
celebrations were called Titanical, and celebrations of the perfect
night. They supposed that this god had been slain by the Giants; but
that his mother, or Ceres, had reunited his bones. To retrace his death
they killed a bull, whose raw flesh they ate, because Bacchus,
represented with the horns of an ox, had been thus torn by the Titans.
Julius-Firmicus, an orthodox author of the fourth century, who wrote
about the legend of Bacchus, says that the Pagans considered those
fictions as solar fables. He adds that the sun was irritated at being
thus worshiped: here, in being immersed into the Nile river, under the
names of Osiris and of Horus; there, in being mutilated under the names
of Atys and of Adonis; and in other places, in being boiled or roasted,
like Bacchus. The Bacchanals, or disorderly, noisy, tumultuous, and
frantic scenes took place.

St. Athanase, St. Augustine, Theophile, Athenagoras, Minutius-Felix,
Lactance, Firmicus, and other Christian writers of the first centuries,
as well as more ancient authors, describe the general mourning of the
Egyptians in the anniversary day of the death of Osiris. They describe
the ceremonies practiced on his tomb, and the tears shed thereon during
several days. The mysteries in which the representation of his death was
exhibited, and which took place during the night, were called mysteries
of night.

Likewise the death of Mithra was celebrated. To the usual magnificence
of his temples succeeded a gloomy sight. The priests, during the night,
carried his image in a tomb, and laid it on a litter, in the same manner
as the Phoenicians laid the image of Adonis. This ceremony was
accompanied with dismal songs, and with groans. The priests, after this
feigned expression of grief, kindled a flambeau, called sacred; anointed
the image of Mithra with chrisma, or with perfumes; and then one of
them, in a solemn and loud voice, pronounced these words: "Cheer up,
holy mourners, your god is come again to life; his sorrows and his
sufferings will save you."

Julius Firmicus, who relates this, exclaims: "Why do you exhort those
unfortunate to rejoice? Why do you deceive them with false promises? The
death of your god is known; but his new life is not proved. There is no
oracle that ascertains his resurrection; he has not appeared to men
after his resurrection to prove his divinity. An idol you bury; upon an
idol you mourn; an idol you lift up from the tomb, and having expressed
your grief you rejoice," etc.

The Church of Rome practices alike ceremonies in celebrating the
anniversary day of the death of Jesus Christ. All the ornaments of each
church, the statues and images of saints, etc., are clothed in black. In
one of the chapels of the church a tomb is prepared, in which, on the
Holy Thursday morning, Jesus Christ--namely, a wafer which has been
consecrated--is laid, shut up, not in the ostensorium, but in a
ciborium, as a sign of mourning. The priests perform this ceremony.
During the whole day the church is thronged with people, who come to
express to Jesus Christ their sympathy in his sufferings. At about eight
o'clock in the evening, a gloomy procession, composed of the priests and
the people, march along the streets in the dark (this procession takes
place only in Catholic countries,) now and then reciting in a low and
dismal tone a verse of the psalm, _Miserere mei Deus_, [translation,]
Lord have mercy on me. When this procession has taken place, hymns of
suffering and of death are sung in the church, around the tomb in which
Jesus Christ lays. At eleven o'clock a priest goes to the pulpit, and in
an affecting manner relates to the sobbing and weeping multitude the
sufferings and death of Jesus Christ. This address is called Passion's
sermon.

The people spend the whole night in the church to keep company to Jesus
Christ in his sufferings, they say, and to relieve him by their
sympathy. In the morning of the Holy Friday the church is yet filled
with mourners. The priests, processionally, but in silence, go to the
tomb where Jesus Christ lays, take him out, and carry him into the
tabernacle, where they shut him up, but without leaving any taper
burning in the whole church. In the evening, after the recitation of the
_Officium Tenebrarum_, [translation,] Office of Darkness, boys, men,
women and all, fill the church with their yells, with the sharp sound of
rattles, with the blows they strike on boards with small and large
sticks, and with sounding, sonorous instruments, such as horns, etc. A
few days after they eat the wafer, which they pretend to be the raw
flesh and blood of Jesus Christ.

The Pagans, in celebrating the resurrection of Bacchus, Osiris, etc.,
who represented the sun, lighted the lamps of their temples with a fire,
which the priests obtained by striking a piece of steel with silex, and
was called new fire. That day the priests were clothed in white
ornaments; the lustral waters were renewed, and also the decorations of
the temples: so in every church the Romish priests strike a piece of
steel with silex, and obtain a fire called new fire; with it they light
the lamps, and the taper called Paschal taper. They renew the holy
water, which the people piously carry to their homes, and keep for
protection during the storms, etc. The priests change their priestly
garments, and clothe in white.

The Pagans worshiped the sun under the name of Aries, because the Aries
was one of the celestial signs: so the Church of Rome worships Jesus
Christ under the form of a lamb. Formerly, the Roman Catholic parents
suspended on the necks of their children the symbolic image of a lamb;
and the women, instead of wearing a cross, as they do now, wore a lamb.
This practice had been introduced by the Romish priests, who sold, as
they sell now, Agnus Dei, which have been consecrated with prayers and
sprinkled with holy water, as being the emblems of Jesus Christ.

A lamb was represented bleeding, and under it was a vessel in which the
blood dropped. This practice was in use till the year 680, under the
pontificate of the pope Agathon, and under the reign of the emperor
Constantine III., surnamed Pogonat. Then it was ordered by the sixth
council of Constantinople, canon 82, that a man nailed to a cross should
be substituted to the ancient symbol of a lamb. However, this symbol was
partly preserved in the church, as seen above. The symbol of a lamb is
yet seen on the tabernacle, or small box of marble, or of wood, richly
wrought upon, placed on the altar; also on the ostensorium, and on the
forepart of the altars.

The Pagans placed a sunlike halo around the heads of the statues of
Osiris, Bacchus, and other gods, who, in their opinion, represented the
sun: likewise in the Church of Rome the priests place the wafer, which,
they think, is Jesus Christ himself, in an ostensorium, which is shaped
like the disc of the sun; and which represents his beams; the wafer
itself is circular. This ostensorium is of silver, or of gold, and
adorned with diamonds, or gems. Above the altar a large sun is
generally either painted, or carved, or formed with draperies. The
Pagans kept in their temples a lamp burning, in the honor of the sun:
so, in the Roman Catholic churches a lamp is kept burning, day and
night, near the altar, in the honor of Jesus Christ.

The Pagans built their temples so that the sanctuary was turned towards
the rising sun: likewise, the Roman Catholic churches are built so that
the sanctuary be turned towards the rising sun.

The Pagans carried in triumph, processionally, and with the most
brilliant pomp, the statues of Bacchus, Osiris, and other gods,
representing the sun: likewise, on the feast day of the body of Jesus
Christ, the consecrated wafer is carried in triumph, processionally, and
with the most brilliant pomp. The priestly and other ornaments are of a
tissue of silver, or of gold. A multitude of people follow: the various
confraternities of Penitents, the ones grey, the others blue, the others
white, etc., and the many confraternities of virgins, of married women,
all in variegated costumes, march before the consecrated wafer. The
civil, judiciary, and military authorities, regiments of soldiers with
brass bands, with drums beating, with banners and flags unfurled, escort
the consecrated wafer, which is carried by the first priest of the
parish, under a canopy of the most costly and magnificent tissue.

The Pagans burnt flambeaux before the statues of Osiris, Bacchus, etc.,
to represent the planets; and sometimes to represent the signs of the
Zodiac: so, in the Roman Catholic churches, upon the altar, there are
six chandeliers, with candles burning around the consecrated wafer,
namely, Jesus Christ, who is in the middle.

From all the above facts we may legitimately draw the conclusion, that
the Church of Rome uses, in her adoration to Jesus Christ, rites and
ceremonies of a striking similarity with those used by the Pagans in
their adoration to the sun, under the names of Bacchus, Hercules,
Osiris, Mithra, Atys, etc.

We now come to the general conclusions of the present chapter.

It has been proved, 1st, That the Church of Rome, from which the
self-called Orthodox Protestant Churches, in the sixteenth century,
borrowed the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ, did not hold it
from the apostles of Jesus Christ.

2d. It has been proved that the Church of Rome uses, in her adoration to
Jesus Christ, rites and ceremonies of a striking similarity with those
used by the Pagans in their adoration to the sun, under the names of
Bacchus, Hercules, Osiris, Mithra, Atys, etc.

Then the Church of Rome, from which, in the sixteenth century, the
self-called Orthodox Protestant Churches borrowed the doctrine of the
supreme divinity of Jesus Christ had borrowed it from the Pagans.

_Therefore the doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ is of
Pagan origin._




CHAPTER VII.

PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF ENDLESS HELL.


ARTICLE I.

_Metempsychosis, or Transmigration of the Souls._

THE rulers of nations, and the authors of the initiations, had a
profound knowledge of the human nature, and of the genius of the people.
From the fact that an ox, unaware of his strength, yields to the leading
hand of a child, so they knew that would they let the masses ignore
their power, they could easily control them, mould their opinions,
habits, and morals. Also aware of the terror that death impressed upon
their minds, and knowing that it is an infirmity of man's nature, when
uncultivated by philosophy, to fear more a distant and indefinite, but
unavoidable misery beyond the grave, than the most excruciating tortures
on earth, they found in those prejudices of the people a sure means to
lead and rule them. Therefore they endeavored to make them believe that
those who would transgress the laws, or would commit some other crimes,
should be punished by the gods immortal in the future life.

They had to invent the nature of that punishment, and as there were many
degrees of wickedness, they had to admit, also, various degrees in the
punishment. To more easily and more surely make the people believe their
invention, they thought it was wise to make the punishment, and its
degrees, coincide with the then universally established religion, which
was but one, though there were many systems of theology. That religion
was the one we have examined in the first chapter of this work, and
which consisted in the belief that nature was an uncreated but animated
being, whose vast body comprised the earth, the sun, the planets, and
the stars, to which one great soul impressed motion and life; and that
those principal parts, or members, of the body of the universe were
animated by emanations or irradiations of the great soul of the
universe, or nature.

This pantheistic doctrine was materialist; for it supposed that the
great soul of the universe was the purest substance of the fire ether,
and thereby man's soul was of the same nature. It was the belief even of
the famous philosopher Pythagoras, and of his disciples. All animals,
according to Servius, the commentator of Virgil, draw their flesh from
the earth, their humors from water, their breath from the air, and their
soul from the breath of the Deity. Thus the bees have a small portion of
the Deity. Our soul is like a drop of water which is not annihilated,
whether it evaporates in the air, or condenses and falls again in rain,
or rolls into the sea to add its littleness to the massy waters. When we
die our life melts, reenters into the great soul of the universe, and
the remains of our body mix again with the elements of the air.

Virgil believed that our death is not annihilation, but that it is a
separation of two sorts of matters, the one thereof remains here below,
and the other reunites to the sacred fire of the stars, as soon as the
matter of which our soul is composed has reacquired all the purity of
the subtle matter, from which it had emanated, _aurae simplicis ignem_.
Nothing, Servius says, is lost in the great whole, and in the pure fire
which constitutes the substance of the soul. Virgil says of the souls:
_igneus est ollis vigor, et coelestis origo_; that they are formed of
the active fire that shines in the heaven, and that they return thither
when they are separated from the body by death.

The same doctrine we find in the dream of Scipio: "It is from there," he
says, speaking of the regions of the fixed stars, "that the souls
descended, thereto they shall return; they were emanated from those
eternal fires we name stars. What ye call death is but a return to true
life; the body is but a prison, in which the soul is momentarily
chained. Death breaks her ties, and restores her to liberty, and to her
true state of existence."

From this pantheistic doctrine, it followed that man's soul is immortal
though material.

Upon this sort of immortality of our soul, the rulers built a system of
punishment, called Metempsychosis, or transmigration of the souls. This
system was so much the better adapted to the then received religion,
that all the souls being simply different emanations from the same fire
ether, the consequence was that all the souls were homogeneous, and
differed only in appearance, and by the nature of the bodies to which
the fire-principle, which composed their substance, united. Virgil said
that the souls of all animals are an emanation of the fire ether, and
that the difference of their operations on earth is to be ascribed only
to the difference of vases, or organized bodies, which receive this
substance; or, according to the words of Servius, the lesser or greater
perfection of their operations is in ratio of the nature of the bodies.

The Indians, among whom, even in our days, the system of Metempsychosis
prevails, think that man's soul is absolutely of the same nature as that
of other animals. They say that man is superior to them, not in his soul
but in his body, whose organization is more perfect and more apt to
receive the action of the great Being, viz., of the universe, than
theirs are. They ground their opinion on the example of children and of
old men, whose organs being too weak yet, or having been weakened, do
not permit their senses to have the same activity which is displayed in
a mature age.

The soul, in the exercise of her operations, being necessarily in
submission to the body which she animates; and all souls flowing from
the immense reservoir called universal soul, it follows that the portion
of the fire ether which animates a man, might as well animate an ox, a
lion, an eagle, a whale, or any other beast. Fate caused that she would
animate a man, and such a man; but when the soul will be disengaged from
this first body, and will return to her source, she will be able to pass
into the body of another animal; and her activity will be lesser or
greater, in ratio of the organization of the new body into which she
will pass.

All the great work of nature being reduced to successive organizations
and destructions, in which the same matter is ten thousand times used
under ten thousand forms, the subtle matter of the soul, carried in that
current, brings life to all the moulds which open to receive her. Thus
the same water flown from a same reservoir, enters the various pipes
which are opened, rolls on and empties either as a fountain, or as a
cascade, according to the forms of the orifices of the pipes; then it
congregates, evaporates, and forms clouds which brings it back down to
the earth, to experience again an infinity of modifications. It is the
same of the fluid of the soul spread in the various canals of the animal
organization, flowing from the bright mass of which the ethereal
substance is composed; thence being carried to the earth by the
generating force distributed among the animals, continually ascending
and descending in the universe, and circulating within new bodies
diversely organized.

Such was the basis of Metempsychosis, which became one of the most
powerful political engines in the hands of the ancient rulers,
legislators and mystagogues. Pythagoras brought this doctrine from the
Orient to Greece, and to Italy. This philosopher, and Empedocles after
him, taught that the souls of the criminals, when death separated them
from the bodies they animated, passed into the bodies of beasts in order
to suffer, under those divers forms the punishment of their wickedness,
until they might recover, by expiation, their native purity. So this
transmigration of the souls was a punishment of the gods. The Stoicians
held this doctrine; and the emperor Marcus-Aurelius, in the ninth book
of his Works, said: "The spiritus, or breath, which animates us, passes
from one body into another."

To give the reader a general idea of what was the belief of the
ancients, and of their philosophers, in regard to Metempsychosis, we
take from the tenth and last book of the Republic of Plato the following
lengthy but instructive extract:--

"It is not the narration of Alcinoues (namely, a false story, such as the
one of Ulysse to the Pheacians,) that I will tell you; but that of a
noble man, of Her, the Armenian, a native of Pamphily. He had been
killed in a battle; but when, ten days after, the dead bodies were taken
away for inhumation, his, instead of being in putrefaction like the
others, was found natural and entire. It was carried to his house, and,
on the twelfth day, when laid on the wood-pile, he came again to life;
and he related to the assistants what he had seen in the other world.

"'As soon,' he says, 'as my soul left my body, I arrived, in company
with a great number of souls, at a mysterious place, where were seen two
openings near each other, and two others corresponding in the sky.
Between these two regions were judges sitting: when they had pronounced
their sentence they ordered the righteous to take the right hand side
route through one of the openings of the sky, after having previously
placed on their breast a mark containing the judgment rendered in their
favor; also they ordered the wicked to take the left hand side route
through one of the openings of the earth, carrying on their back a mark
containing all their evil actions. When I was presented to the judges,
they decided that I should return to the earth to inform men of what was
done in the other world; and they bade me listen and observe all I was
to witness.

"'First I saw the souls of those who had been judged, the ones ascending
to the heavens, and the others descending below the earth through the
two corresponding openings. Withal I saw, through the other opening of
the earth, many souls coming out, covered with filthiness and dust; and
also, through the other opening in the sky, I saw souls pure and
spotless descending: they seemed to return from a long voyage, and to
stop with pleasure in the meadow, as if in a place of reunion. Those who
knew each other mutually inquired what they had seen in the heaven, and
in the earth. The ones related their adventures with groans and tears,
caused by the recollection of the sufferings they had endured, or seen
others endure, during their voyage below the earth, whose duration was
of a thousand years. The others, who returned from the heaven, related
the rapturous pleasures they had enjoyed, and the marvellous things they
had seen.'

"It would be too long, my dear Glaucon, to relate the whole discourse of
Her on this subject. It might be summed up in saying that the souls were
punished ten times for each injustice they had committed while on earth;
that the duration of each punishment was of one hundred years, natural
length of man's life, in order that the punishment be ever tenfold for
each crime. Thus those who had contaminated themselves with murder; who
had betrayed States and armies, and reduced them to servitude; or who
had committed similar crimes, were punished tenfold for each one of
those crimes. Whereas those who had done good to their fellow men, who
had been holy and virtuous, received in the same proportion the reward
of their good deeds. In regard to children who die immediately, or a
short time after they are born, Her gave details which it is useless to
relate. According to his narration there were great recompenses for
those who had honored the gods, and had respected their parents; and
also there were extraordinary tortures for the parricides, and for
impious men.

"'I was present,' said he, 'when a soul asked another where was the
great Ardiee. This Ardiee had tyrannized over a city of Pamphily a
thousand years before; he had killed his father, who was an old man, and
he was guilty, it was said, of many other atrocious crimes. He does not
come, the soul answered, and he will never come here. We all have
witnessed, in relation to him, the most dreadful spectacle. When we were
about leaving the subterraneous abyss after our pains ended, we saw
Ardiee, and a great number of others, the most of whom had been tyrants
like himself; there were also others, who, though in a private
condition, had been great criminals.

"'When those souls were about going out, the opening was closed; and
whenever one of those wretched souls, whose crimes were irremissible,
tried to get out of the abyss, she howled. Thereupon hideous and
firelike beings came. They violently wrested away several of those
criminals; then they seized Ardiee and others, tied their feet, their
hands and their heads; and after throwing them on the ground and
torturing them with lashes, they dragged them through bleeding thorns,
telling the shadows which they met on their route the reason why they
treated so those souls, and adding that they were going to throw them
into the Tartarus. Those souls added, that of the various fears they
had on the route none was so horrible as that of hearing that howl; and
that it had been an inexpressible pleasure for them not to have heard it
when they were released from the abyss.

"'Behold what took place in regard to the judgments, tortures, and
rewards. After each one of those souls had spent seven days in the
meadow they left on the eighth, and arrived, after a march of four days,
at a designated spot, wherefrom was seen a light crossing the heaven and
the earth, as straight as a column, and similar to the rainbow, but
brighter and purer. They reached this light in one day's march. There
they saw that the extremities of the heaven meet at the middle of this
light, which united them fast, and which embraced all the circumference
of the heaven, in nearly the same manner as the beams which girdle the
sides of galleys, and which bear their frame. At the extremities the
spindle of Necessity hung, and determined the revolutions of the
celestial spheres.'"

Here Her describes the spindle. This description we omit, for it does
not relate to our subject.

Her continues:--

"'Near the spindle, and at equal distances, sat on thrones the three
Parques, daughters of Necessity, Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos, dressed
in white, and their heads crowned with a bandelet. They united their
chant to that of the Sirenes; Lachesis sung the past, Clotho the
present, and Atropos the future. Clotho, now and then, touched the
spindle with her right hand, and made it revolve externally. Atropos,
with her left hand, impressed motion to each one of the interior whirls,
and Lachesis, with both hands, touched now the spindle, and then the
interior whirls. When the souls arrived they appeared before Lachesis.
First a Hierophant assigned a rank to each one; then taking from the lap
of Lachesis the fates and the various conditions of human life, he
mounted on a high stand, and spake thus:--

"'This is what the virgin Lachesis, daughter of Necessity, says:
Voyaging souls you are to commence another career, and return into a
mortal body. The genius will not choose for you: each one of you shall
choose hers. The first one that fate will designate shall choose first,
and her choice shall be irrevocable. Virtue has no master; she clings to
him who honors her, and flies from him who despises her. The error of
the choice shall fall on you. God is innocent.

"'Thereupon the Hierophant casting the fates, each soul picked up the
one that fell before her, except myself who had been forbidden it. Each
one knew then in which rank she had to choose. Then the same Hierophant
placed before them callings of all kinds, whose number was greater than
that of the souls who were to choose; for all the conditions of men and
beasts were assembled therein. There were tyrannies, the ones were to
last till death; and the others were to be suddenly interrupted, and
were to end by exile, poverty and indigence. Also there were seen
conditions of illustrious men, the ones for beauty, for strength, for
fame in the combats; and the others by their nobleness, and the great
qualities of their ancestors; there were seen also obscure conditions.
There were destinies of women of the same variety. But there was no
regulation for the rank of the souls, because each one was necessarily
to change of nature according to her choice. Besides, wealth, poverty,
and diseases, were found in all conditions: here without any mixture,
there in a just proportion of advantages and disadvantages.'

"But this is evidently, my dear Glaucon, the redoubtable trial for
mankind.... The Hierophant added: he who chooses the last, provided he
be judicious, and then be consistent in his conduct, may hope to be
blessed in life. Therefore let him who is to have the first choice, be
not presumptuous; and let him who has the last choice, despair not. When
the Hierophant had thus spoken, he to whom the first fate had been
devolved, hastily advanced, and took, without any deliberation, the
greatest tyranny; but when he had considered it, and seen that his
destiny was to eat his own children, and to commit other enormous
crimes, he lamented; and, forgetting the recommendation of the
Hierophant, charged upon the fortune and the gods, with the wretchedness
of his fate. This soul was one of those who came from heaven; she had
previously lived in a well governed state, and had been virtuous more
from temper and habit, than from philosophy.

"On the contrary, the souls who had sojourned in the subterranean
region, and who had both the experience of their own sufferings, and the
knowledge of the misfortunes of others, were cautious in their choice.
This experience on one side, and that inexperience on the other,
together with the fate which decided the rank for the choice, were the
cause that the most of the souls exchanged a good condition for a bad
one, and a bad one for a good one. He also said, that it was a strange
spectacle to see in what manner each soul made her choice, nothing was
more extraordinary, nor more pitiful; the most of them were guided in
their choice by the habits they had contracted in their previous life.
He had seen the soul of Orpheus choosing the condition of a swan, from
hatred to women who had killed him, and from whom he did not wish to
receive birth. He saw the soul of Thamyris choosing the condition of
nightingale; likewise he saw a swan and several other birds choosing the
human condition.

"Another soul had chosen the condition of a lion; it was that of Ajax,
son of Telamon, who, remembering the offense she had received in the
judgments rendered about the arms of Achilles, refused to take again a
human body. Then came the soul of Agamemnon, who, from antipathy against
mankind on account of her past sufferings, chose the condition of an
eagle. The soul of Atalante, desirous of the athletic honors, chose to
be a champion. The soul of Epee, son of Panope, preferred the condition
of a woman skillful in handiworks. The soul of the buffoon Thersite came
one of the last, and entered the body of a monkey. There were, Her
added, souls of animals which exchanged their condition against ours,
and human souls which passed into bodies of beasts. The souls
indistinctly passed from the bodies of animals into human bodies, and
from human bodies into bodies of animals; those of the righteous into
species of a higher order.

"When all the souls had chosen their new condition of existence,
according to the rank determined by fate, they came to Lachesis in the
same order. She gave to each one the genius of her choice, and this
genius was to be her guardian during her mortal life, and was to aid her
in the accomplishment of her destiny. This genius first led her to
Clotho, who, with her hand, and with a revolution of the spindle
confirmed the chosen destiny. When the soul had touched the spindle, the
genius took her to Atropos, who rolled the thread in her fingers, to
render irrevocable what had been already spun by Clotho. After that, the
soul proceeded to the throne of Necessity, under which the soul and her
genius, or demon, passed together. When all had passed, they went to the
plain of the Lethe river, where they were oppressed by an intense heat;
for there was in this plain, neither tree nor shrub. The evening came
and they spent the night near the river Ameles, whose water can be
contained in no vessel. Every soul was obliged to drink some of its
water. They fell asleep; but at about midnight the thunder roared, and
all the souls suddenly waking up were dispersed, like shooting stars,
towards the various places where they were to commence their new life.

"As to Her, he had been forbidden to drink of the water of the Lethe
river; nevertheless, he knew not in what manner his soul had returned
into his body, but having opened his eyes in the morning, he had seen
that he was laying on a wood-pile.

"This tradition, my dear Glaucon, has been handed down to us; and if we
believe it, it is very apt to save us; we will safely cross the Lethe
river, and we will preserve our soul free from stain."

The reader has undoubtedly remarked the last sentence of this extract,
which proves the antiquity of the doctrine of the transmigration of the
souls. Burnet wrote, that it was so ancient and so universally spread in
Egypt, Persia, India, and other countries of the Orient, that it seemed
it had descended from heaven, and been believed by the first inhabitants
of the earth. Herodote found it established in Egypt in the remotest
ages. It was the basis of the theology of the Indians, and the subject
of the celebrated Metamorphosis and incarnations of their legends.
Metempsychosis has been immemorially believed in Japan, where the
people, even in our days, according to Koempsfer, abstain from meat, and
live exclusively upon fruits and vegetables. In Siam, where the
Talapoins or monks hold it as a sacred dogma; in China by the Tao-See;
also among the Kalbouls and the Mongols, and among the Thibetans, who
admit that the souls pass even into the plants, into the trees, and even
into the roots. However, the Thibetans believe that it is only by
uniting to human bodies, that the souls can, after successive changes,
be restored to their former purity.

The aim of the doctrine of Metempsychosis was to accustom man to detach
himself from the gross matter, to which he is tied here below, and to
excite in him the desire of promptly returning there, wherefrom he had
formerly descended. The rulers of the people frightened them with the
pictures of humiliating transformations of their souls, as the Catholic
priests and the Partialist preachers do among us, with their teaching of
an endless hell. The people, amazed and terrified, for the masses were
ignorant, believed all those politico-religious fables. They firmly
believed that the souls of the wicked passed into vile bodies; that they
were punished with cruel and loathesome diseases; that those who did not
reform after a certain number of transmigrations were delivered up to
the Furies and to the evil spirits (or devils) to be tortured; and that,
after that, they were sent again to the earth, as in a new school, and
were obliged to run a new race. Thus we see that the whole system of
Metempsychosis rested on the false supposition, that it was necessary,
in order to govern the people here below, to frighten them with absurd
and visionary tales of atrocious tortures beyond the grave, which were
the more terrifying for the very reason of their absurdity and
atrociousness.

Timee of Locre, one of the disciples of Socrates, wrote, that among the
various means of governing those who are not able to reach the truth of
the principles, on which nature has established justice and morals,
Metempsychosis is an efficacious one. He said: "Let them be taught those
dogmas which inform us that the souls of effeminate and pusillanimous
men transmigrate into female bodies; those of murderers into bodies of
wild beasts; those of licentious men into bodies of wild boars and hogs;
those of fickle and inconstant men into bodies of birds; those of idle,
ignorant and silly men into bodies of fishes. The just Nemesis regulates
those pains in the future life conjointly with the gods of the earth,
avengers of the crimes they have witnessed. The supreme God has
entrusted them with the government of this inferior world. Let them be
frightened, even, by the religious terrors conveyed to the soul by those
discourses which describe the vengeance of the celestial gods, and the
unavoidable torments reserved to the criminals in the Tartarus; and also
by the other fictions which Homer has found in the ancient sacred
opinions. Sometimes the body is cured by poisonous substances; so the
souls can be ruled by fables when they cannot be governed by truth."

This philosopher plainly gives us his secret, which has been, and still
is, the secret of all legislators and priests. True, the belief of these
fables has restrained many from vice and crime; nevertheless we firmly
believe that men ought to be led to justice by the bright light of the
truth, and not by the dismal light of error, and of superstition: the
one elevates man, but the other keeps him in an eternal infancy and
ignorance. How sad it is to see, even now-a-days, in free and
enlightened America, priests, and Protestant ministers themselves,
keeping down in intellectual, moral and religious bondage, millions of
Christians, who, from fear of endless curse, kiss the very chains which
heavily they drag through life; who believe that God will endlessly
roast men--his children--in an undying fire! More surely, and more
easily, could those purely minded, but unfortunate Christians, be guided
to love God, if they knew that he is not worse than a tiger; that, on
the contrary, he is truly good and loving; more virtuous they would be
if they were taught that virtue is the source, and the only true source,
of happiness. Truer fraternity would reign in our communities, if
priests and pretended Protestants, who tyrannize over the souls of their
misled victims, and, like the Pharisees of old, lay upon their shoulders
a burden they would not be willing to touch with their own
fingers--yea, they lay upon their mind and heart the leaden weight of
the dogma of endless misery, which they, at least the leaders of the
leaders, reject--truer fraternity would exist, we say, for there would
not be in our communities, a class of Christians, believing that they
are the elect of God for righteousness and eternal bliss, while all the
others shall be endlessly damned. Hence their indifference, or rather
aversion for them; hence a spirit of Pharisaism: hence a spirit of
religious aristocracy, which unfortunately ramifies into a social
aristocracy!


ARTICLE II.

_Tartarus._

When legislators, priests and philosophers had invented the doctrine of
Metempsychosis, the mystagogues and the poets took hold of it, and
endeavored to spread it among the people, in consecrating it, the ones
in their chants, and the others in the celebration of their mysteries.
They clothed it with the charms of poetry, and presented it with magical
illusions. All united to deceive the people, under the specious pretext
of bettering and governing them with a surer hand. The widest field was
opened to fictions; and the genius of the poets, as well as the cunning
of the priests, were inexhaustible in portraying the bliss of the
righteous hereafter, and the horror of the horrible prisons wherein
crime was to be punished.

Each one portrayed them according to his own fancy, and added new scenes
and views to the descriptions of those unknown lands; of that world of
new creation, which the imagination of poets peopled with shadows,
chimeras and phantoms, for the purpose of frightening the people: for
rulers wrongly thought that their minds could not rise up to the
abstract notions of metaphysics and morals. The Elysium and the Tartarus
were more pleasing and more vividly striking to the imagination of the
people: therefore darkness and light were successively presented to the
gaze of those initiated to the mysteries. To the darkest night, and to
frightful spectres, succeeded a bright day, whose light shone around the
statue of the Deity: one could not help feeling a mysterious terror,
when entering that sanctuary, where all was disposed to represent the
Tartarus and the Elysium. It was in this sanctuary that the one
initiated, being finally introduced, saw the picture of charming
meadows, lighted by a pure sky: there he heard harmonious voices, and
the majestic chants of sacred choirs. It was then that, entirely free,
and rid of all evils, he joined the multitude of those initiated; and
that, a crown of flowers on his head, he celebrated the holy orgies.

Thus the ancients represented here below, in their initiations, what
was, they said, to happen hereafter to the souls, when they would be
disengaged from their bodies; and would be liberated from the obscure
prison, wherein fate had chained them by uniting them to terrestrial
matter. In the mysteries of Isis, of which we hold the details from
Apuleo, the candidate passed through the dark region of the empire of
the dead; thence into a vast enclosure, which represented the elements;
and then he was admitted into the bright region, where the brightest sun
succeeded to the darkness of the night, namely, in the three worlds, the
terrestrial, the elementary, and the celestial. He who had been
initiated said: "I have approached the boundaries of death in treading
the thresh hold of Proserpine; therefrom I have returned through the
elements. Then I saw a bright light, and I found myself in the presence
of the gods." This was the autopsy.

What mystagogy exhibited in the sanctuaries, poets, and even
philosophers, in their fictions, publicly taught to the people: hence
the descriptions of the Elysium and of the Tartarus found in Homer,
Virgil and Plato, and all those given us by many systems of theology. We
never had a description of the earth and of its inhabitants, a
description as complete as that transmitted to us, by the ancients,
about those countries of new creation, known under the names of Hell,
Tartarus, and Elysium. Those men, whose geographical knowledge was so
limited, have given us the minutest details of the abode of the souls
beyond the grave; of the government of each one of the two empires,
which form the domain of the shadows; of their habits; of their diet; of
their pains and pleasures; and even of the costume of the inhabitants
of these two regions. The same poetical imagination which had invented
that new world, arbitrarily traced out its plan and distribution.

Socrates, in the Phaedo of Plato, a work intended to prove the
immortality of our soul, and the necessity of practicing virtue, speaks
of the place where the souls go after death. He imagines a sort of
ethereal land, superior to the one we inhabit, and situated in a sunnier
region. There is nothing on our earth that can compare to the beauties
of this wonderful abode. There colors are brighter, the vegetation
richer; the trees, flowers and fruits are infinitely superior to those
of our earth. There precious stones are so bright that those of our
earth are but their shadow. This ethereal land is strewed with pearls of
the purest crystal; everywhere gold and silver are dazzling. There
beasts are more beautiful, and more perfectly organized than ours. There
the air is the sea, and ether is the air. There seasons are so
harmoniously combined, that the fortunate inhabitants are not subject to
infirmities and to diseases. There the temples are inhabited by the gods
themselves, who familiarly converse with men. The inmates of this
delightful mansion are the only ones who see the sun, the moon, and the
stars, as they truly are.

To this Socrates adds, that men, who, here below, distinguish themselves
for their piety and exactitude in discharging their social duties, will
be admitted in this abode of happiness when death destroys their mortal
form. There all those whom philosophy has led to wisdom will dwell.
Socrates concludes thus:

Then it is for us a strong inducement to study wisdom, and to practice
virtue, while we are on earth. These expectations are high enough for us
to risk the chances of this opinion, and not to break its charms.

This is a plain avowal of the motive of the fiction: such is the secret
of nearly all legislators, and the deceitfulness of the most renowned
philosophers.

The second part of the land of the dead, called Tartarus, the leaders of
the people also minutely described. According to their description, this
abode of the wicked presents the horrid view of precipices, caverns, and
abysses, more frightful than those we see on earth. Those caverns
communicate to each other in the profundities of the earth, through the
medium of sinuosities vast and dark, and of subterraneous canals, in
which waters flow; the ones cold, and the others warm: also in several
of those canals flow torrents of fire, and in others the filthiest mire.
The vastest of those caverns is in the center; and into it four main
rivers ebb, to spring out again. The first is the Acheron, which forms
beneath the earth a shoreless marsh, wherein the souls assemble. The
second is the Pyriphlegeton, which rolls torrents of burning sulphur.
The third is the Cocyte; and the fourth is the Styx.

In this horrible abode divine justice tortures the criminals. At the
gate of the Tartarus the frightful Tisiphon, whose gown is reeking with
blood, watches day and night. The gate is also defended by a strong
tower, backed by three walls, which are surrounded by the burning waves
of the Phlegeton river, that rolls huge stones on fire. There are
incessantly heard the rattle of chains dragged by wretched victims;
their groans; and the strokes of lashes that tear their flesh. There is
seen an hydra with a hundred heads, whose mouths are ever gaping for new
victims to be devoured. There a vulture is constantly feeding on the
ever re-growing entrails of a criminal. Other victims carry a heavy rock
to the summit of a mountain, where they must set it; but, vain are their
efforts, it rolls down to the bottom of the valley. Other criminals,
tied to a wheel, relentlessly revolving, are not permitted the slightest
rest in their torture. Others, placed near refreshing waters, and near
trees loaded with fruit, are ever devoured with unquenchable thirst and
hunger. If they stoop to drink the water flies from their mouth, and a
stinking mire sticks to their lips. If they lower a limb to cull a
fruit, the limb slips from their hand.

Farther, fifty female victims are forced to fill up with water a cask,
whose bottom is riddled. Indeed, there is no sort of torment that was
not invented by legislators, mystagogues, poets, and philosophers, to
frighten the people, under the false assumption of making them better;
but the truth is that it was rather to keep them down in subjection.
Those terrifying pictures were painted on the walls of the temple of
Delphos. Those fables were repeated to infants by nurses and mothers.
Thus their souls grew weak and pusillanimous, for strong and durable are
the first impressions, and more especially, when the general opinion,
the example of the credulity of others, the authority of philosophers,
of poets, of learned Hierophants, and the sight of pompous rites, and
ceremonies in the overpowering sacredness of sanctuaries; when the
monuments of arts, music, statues, and pictures, in short, when all
tends to insinuate in the soul, through the senses stricken with hope
and terror, a great error presented as a sacred truth revealed by the
gods themselves for man's bliss.

Such was the general teaching and belief of the Pagans in regard to
future punishment, before the coming of Jesus Christ, and the preaching
of his Gospel.

As to the Jewish nation, not the slightest vestiges of any kind of
belief regarding future punishment, can be traced out, neither in the
Old Testament, nor in Josephus, nor in the writings of other historians,
at least before the captivity of Babylon, which took place in the year
598 before the Christian era. Afterwards the Jews divided into four
sects, the Essenes, the Sadducees, the Samaritans, who denied the
existence of any future punishment, and the Pharisees, who, according to
the testimony of Josephus, adopted the belief of Metempsychosis, or
transmigration of the souls.


ARTICLE III.

_Did the Christians of the First Centuries believe in Endless Hell?_

We emphatically answer, no. If the Christian Fathers of the first
centuries, have neither taught the dogma of endless hell, nor mentioned,
in their writings, that their fellow-Christians knew or believed it, and
if the same is proved by the testimony of the then existing Christian
sects or denominations, it is evident that the first Christians did not
believe in endless hell. But the Christian Fathers of the first
centuries have neither taught the dogma of endless hell, nor mentioned,
in their writings, that their fellow-Christians knew or believed it; and
the same is proved by the testimony of the then existing Christian
sects. These two members of the proposition we are to successively
prove: 1st _member_: In the first century the four Gospels, and other
books of the New Testament were written by the apostles, but history
does not inform us of any other Christian writing, or author, in that
age, except perhaps Clement, bishop of Rome, who, it is said, has left a
letter to the Corinthians: critics call it Apocryphal. We have not read
it. Therefore in order to know whether the first Christians believed in
endless hell or not, we must recur to the works of the Christian Fathers
who lived and wrote in the following centuries, and particularly to
those who lived and wrote during the second.

St. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, who suffered martyrdom at Rome, in the
year 107, was the first apostolic Father of the second century. There
are in the collection of the works of the holy Fathers, six letters
ascribed to him by some authors; some others, Saumaise, Blondel, Daille,
etc., say that they are apocryphal. Mosheim, in his Histor. Christ.,
says, that it is doubtful whether they are of Ignatius or not. We have
read those six letters, of which five are addressed to different
Churches, and one to Polycarpus. Although they treat of the most
important points of the Christian faith and duties, they are silent upon
the question of endless hell. In the year 131, St. Quadratus presented
to the emperor Adrian an apology of the Christian religion, which
contained the principal Christian doctrines. Adrian was so pleased with
this apology, that, if we must believe what Lampride says in his Life of
Alexander Severus, he designed to rear a temple to Jesus Christ, and to
place him among the gods of the empire. A fragment of this apology can
be found in the works of Eusebe; but not a word is said about the dogma
of endless hell.

St. Justin, a Platonician philosopher, was born at Naplouse, Palestine,
in 103. He was converted to Christianity in 133. He wrote the following
works: Exhortation to Gentiles; two Apologies of the Christian religion,
the one to the emperor Antonine, and the other to the emperor
Marcus-Aurelius; a Dialogue with the Jew Triphon; a treatise on
Monarchy, or Unity of God; and an Epistle to Diognet, in which he states
the reasons why Christians left the worship of the gods, and did not
adopt that of the Jews. He composed other works, but they exist no more.
The main editions of his works are those of Robert Etienne in 1551 and
1771, in Greek and Latin; that of Commelin in 1593, in Greek and Latin;
that of Morel in 1656, and that of Don Marand in 1742, in folio. All
these editions, and afterwards that of Migne, we have compared in the
voluminous library of the theological seminary of Brou, France, where we
have been ordained a priest. Although there were alterations of the
text, we did not find any passage referring to the dogma of endless
hell. True, addressing the Romans, he says: "Come, O Romans, to find
instruction! Formerly I was like you, now be what I am. The power of the
Christian religion has enlightened me, and freed me from servitude to my
senses and passions: it has afforded me peace and serenity. The soul
thus free is sure to reunite to her Creator, because it is right that
she return to him from whom she emanated." But this passage neither
explicitly nor implicitly supposes that he believed, or that the first
Christians believed, in endless hell; it is simply a Platonician and
Christian doctrine, in regard to the purity of our soul which is worthy
of God only when unstained. However Bailly, a Catholic theologian, says
that on page 74 of the first Apology there is a passage proving his
belief in endless hell. We did not find it.

Meliton, bishop of Sardes, Lybia, under the reign of Marcus-Aurelius,
presented to this emperor an Apology of the Christian religion, in 171.
Eusebe and several other authors praise it. Only a few fragments of it
are found in the Bibliotheca Patrum; in none of them is a question of
the dogma of endless hell.

Athenagoras, a Platonician philosopher, was converted to the Christian
religion, and presented, in 177, an Apology of the Christian doctrines
to the emperors Marcus-Aurelius and Lucius-Aurelius-Commode. He
justified the Christians, who were charged by the Pagans with atheism:
with sacrificing and eating a child in their assemblies; and with
indulging to impudicity. In this Apology he ascribed to God but a
general providence; and he expressed the Platonician opinion, that
angels, or spirits, had the government of this world. He admitted that
there were pains and rewards in the future life. Let us not infer from
this that he referred to the dogma of endless hell. No; he merely meant,
by those pains and rewards, the Platonician doctrine about
Metempsychosis.

Ireneus was born in Greece, in 140. He became bishop of Lyons, Gaul. He
wrote several theological works in the Greek language. He believed in a
general judgment, and in the millenium, namely, in a temporal kingdom of
Jesus Christ on earth, which was to last one thousand years immediately
before the general judgment. During this reign of Jesus Christ, the
Christians were to enjoy a happiness which was to be a foretaste of the
happiness they should enjoy after the general judgment. Not only this
Father did not teach the dogma of endless hell, but according to the
ultramontane Bergier, he has been charged by the pretended Orthodox
divines with having expressed himself in an heterodox manner upon the
divinity of the Word; upon the spirituality of the angels and of the
human soul; upon free agency and the necessity of grace; and upon the
state of the souls after death. He seemed to be inclined to believe
Metempsychosis--this, however, is our private opinion, resting on his
general views on the state of the souls after death. The Catholics
invoke but one passage of his writings against this opinion. Grabe, a
Protestant, published at Oxford, in 1702, an edition of his works; it is
quite different from the Catholic editions.

Theophile was promoted to the episcopal see of Antioch, in 168. We have
from his pen but three Books to Autolic; they have been edited by Don
Prudent Marand. He is the first Father who used the word Trinity. His
works are a refutation of Paganism, and an apology of Christianism. We
could not find in them the dogma of endless hell; he only vaguely
speaks of rewards and pains hereafter.

We have seen that the above Fathers, who compose the complete list of
the Fathers of the second century, neither taught the dogma of endless
hell, nor have recorded that the first Christians held such a dogma.
Therefore we may draw the conclusion that the first Christians did not
believe the doctrine of endless hell.

We pass to the Fathers of the third century. Titus Flavius Clement, of
Alexandria, a Platonician philosopher, became a Christian, and succeeded
to Pantenus, a professor of the school of Alexandria, in 190; and he
died in 217. Alexander of Jerusalem and the celebrated Origen were his
disciples. He wrote many works, the principal thereof are: Exhortations
to Pagans; his Pedagogue; his Hypotyposes; and his Stromatas, which are
divided into eight books. It is said that the best edition of his works
is that of Potter, published at Oxford, in 1715, in two vols. folio. I
read only the Paris edition, published in 1696. In his Exhortations to
Pagans, he pointed out the absurdity of idolatry, and of the fables of
Paganism. In his Stromatas he compared the doctrines of the philosophers
with those of Jesus Christ. In the treatise headed, Which rich man will
be saved? he shows that he who will use his riches properly will obtain
salvation: he does not say salvation from endless hell. His Pedagogue is
a treatise of morals in which he relates how the first Christians
righteously lived and fervently served the Lord. In all these works it
is not a question of the dogma of endless hell, either taught to the
Christians or believed by them.

According to Le Clerc, Beausobre, d'Argens, Barbeyrac, Scultet, Daille,
Mosheim, Brucker, Semler, etc., this Father did not believe the
spirituality of God and of man's soul.... It is a fact that, in his
Stromatas, he says that God is composed of a body and of a soul, and
that so is our soul. He believed in the Pagan fable that the angels had
sexual intercourse with human females, and had begotten giants; he
refers probably to the Giants who had fought against the Titans. All the
Catholic theologians themselves admit the above, and say, that, though a
Christian, he was too much of a Platonician philosopher. This is the
reason why the Pope, Benedict XIV., opposed his worship, as a saint, in
the Romish Church. These statements show how far this Father was from
holding the dogma of endless hell.

Tertullian was one of the Fathers who wrote at the end of the second
century; however, as he died in 216, we class him among the Fathers of
the beginning of the third century. His works are on Prayer, on Baptism;
also he wrote Exhortation to Patience; two Books to his Wife; Testimony
of the Soul; treatises on Spectacles and Idolatry; treatise on
Prescription; two books against the Gentiles; one against the Jews; one
against Hermogenes; one against the Valentinians; one against the
Gnostics; one on the Crown; one to Scapula; books against Praxeas; books
on Pudicity, on Persecutions, on Fast, against the Physics, on Monogamy.
These works we had not the advantage to read; but we have studied the
following in our theological school: his treatise on Penance; his five
books against Marcion; his treatise on the Flesh of Jesus Christ; his
book on the Resurrection of the Flesh; and his Apology of the Christian
Religion.

In these works which, let this be cursorily said, were written in Latin,
for Tertullian was the first Father who wrote in this language, we read
several times the word _infernus_, synonimous to _Tartarus_, and the
words _ignem eternum_, used in speaking of pains, which will be
inflicted upon the wicked after the general judgment; but nothing
positive in regard to the duration of the punishment, for he might have
used the adjective _aeternum_ hyperbolically; nor anything in regard to
the belief of the first Christians in regard to it, nor even of his
contemporaneous Christians. If the dogma of endless hell had been
generally believed by the Christians, he would have certainly mentioned
it in his Apology of the Christian Religion; for one of the main charges
of the Pagans against them was that they were Atheists; and thereby
denied the Elysium and the Tartarus. However, in no one of the fifty
arguments which compose the Apology does he say a word about endless
hell, even about any punishment beyond the grave. He only, in the
forty-eighth argument, says, that there will be a resurrection of the
flesh.

Sextus Julius Africanus, a Christian historian, who wrote in the
beginning of the third century, is altogether silent about the dogma of
endless hell, at least in the fragments of his works which have been
preserved by Eusebe.

Origen was born at Alexandria, in 185. He has been one of the most
talented and learned among the Fathers. He wrote the following works:
Exhortation to Martyrdom; Commentaries on the Holy Scriptures. He
undertook an edition of the Bible in six columns, and headed it
Hexaples. The first column contained the Hebrew text in hebraic letters;
the second, the same text in Greek letters; the third contained the
version of Aquila; the fourth column, the version of Symmaque; the
fifth, that of the Septuagint; and the sixth, that of Theodotion. He
considered the version of the Septuagint as the most authentical. The
Octaples contained, also, two Greek versions, which had been recently
found, and whose authors were unknown. He wrote more than one thousand
sermons; he wrote his celebrated work about Principles, and a treatise
against Celse.

All the above works have not been transmitted to us entire, though the
most of them are, as can be seen in the Bibliotheca Sanctorum Patrum,
published in Paris, in 1826. This Catholic edition, we positively know,
is not as impartial as it ought to be. So much has been written, for
centuries, against Origen and for his justification, that a mere
summary of those writings would fill volumes. Besides, would we make
this summary we might perhaps be suspected of partiality, because
Origen's doctrines are favorable to the bearing of this work; therefore
we shall extract from the works of Feller, a Romish priest and a Jesuit,
what we have to write about his accusation and justification, and about
the summary of his doctrines.

Feller says, Article Origen: "In the fourth century, the Arians invoked
his authority to prove that Jesus Christ was not God. St. Athanase, St.
Basile, and St. Gregory of Nazianze, defended him. Hilaire, Tite de
Bostres, Didyme, Ambrosius, Eusebe of Verceil, and Gregory of Nysse have
laudably spoken of his works; whereas, Theodor of Mopsueste, Apollinary,
and Cesary, have disparagingly written of them. Origen was condemned in
the fifth general council, held at Constantinople, in 553. The pope
Vigil condemned him anew. St. Epiphane, Anastase the Sinaite, St. John
Climaque, Leonce of Byzantium, Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, and
Antipater, bishop of Bostres, violently denounced his writings; the pope
Pelage II. said that heretical works were not worse than Origen's
writings. There are, in the acts of the sixth council, an edict of the
emperor Constantine Pogonat, and a letter of the pope Leon II., in which
he is counted with Didyme and Evagrius among the Theomaques, or enemies
of God.

"The pope St. Martin I., anathematized him in the first council of
Latran, in 649. St. Augustine, St. John of Damas, and St. Jerome, wrote
against the Origenists, namely, the sect of Christians who believed the
doctrines of Origen. In the same century, when a dispute arose about the
orthodoxy of Origen, John of Jerusalem, and Rufin made his apology, and
St. John Chrysostomus did the same. St. Pamphyle also took his part.
Theotime of Tomi refused to condemn him, and Didyme tried to give an
orthodox meaning to his doctrine on Trinity; others in condemning the
errors contained in his books pretended that they had been added by the
heretics. Theophile of Alexandria accused the monks of Nitria of
Origenism, and condemned them in a council held at Alexandria; the pope
Anastasius ratified the sentence. In the seventh century, the emperor
Justinian declared himself hostile to the memory of Origen; wrote a
letter to Memnas against his doctrine; issued an edict against him, in
640; and obtained his condemnation in a council held the same year at
Constantinople, whose acts were added to those of the fifth general
council."

We read in the acts of the fifth general council of Constantinople, held
in 553, that Origen was condemned by the council for having taught the
following doctrines: 1st, That in the dogma of Trinity the Father is
greater than the Son, and the Son greater than the Holy Spirit. 2d, That
human souls have been created before the bodies, to which they have
been chained as a punishment for sins, which they had committed in an
anterior state of existence. 3d, That the soul of Jesus Christ had been
united to the Word before his incarnation. 4th, That the planets and
stars are animated, and contain a soul intelligent and endowed with
reason. 5th, That, after the resurrection, all bodies will have a
spheroidal shape. 6th, _That the punishment of the wicked in a future
life will not be endless_; and that Jesus Christ, who has been crucified
to save the world, will be crucified once more to save the devils.

According to this testimony of the Romish Church--which carries
fanaticism farther than any other sect, in regard to the dogma of
endless hell, for it holds as an article of faith even that the
reprobates are tortured in hell, in their bodies and in their souls,
though their bodies are in the grave, and though a material fire cannot
burn an immortal soul--according to the above testimony of the Romish
Church, we say, it is an established, an undeniable fact, that Origen
taught the doctrine of Metempsychosis, or transmigration of the souls;
and also the doctrine that the punishment of the wicked in a future life
would not be endless.

From this testimony we draw the following argument, which we invite the
reader to attentively examine, and to carefully weigh, for this
argument, _alone_, would unanswerably prove that the Christians of the
first, of the second, of the third, and even of the fourth, and of the
fifth centuries, did not generally believe the dogma of endless hell.

Argument: In the beginning of the third century, Origen (he was born in
185) taught the doctrine of Metempsychosis, or transmigration of the
souls, and the doctrine that the punishment of the wicked in a future
life would not be endless; these two doctrines were condemned only in
the sixth century by the fifth general council held at Constantinople,
in 553, and composed of 151 bishops. But if the Christians of the first,
of the second, of the third, and even of the fourth, and of the fifth
centuries, had generally believed the dogma of endless hell, the above
two doctrines would have certainly been condemned before the sixth
century. This minor proposition we prove:

By the orders of the bishop of Rome, Sylvester, and of the emperor
Constantine I., an oecumenical council, composed of 381 bishops, was
held at Nice, in 325, to frame a symbol of faith, and to condemn Arius.

In 381, a second general council, composed of 150 bishops, was held at
Constantinople, to condemn Macedonius, who denied the divinity of the
Holy Spirit; and to alter the symbol of Nice, (striking inconsistency of
the Romish Church which holds as an article of faith that a general
council is infallible in its decisions.)

In 431, the bishop of Rome, Celestine I., assembled a general council at
Ephesus, to obtain the condemnation of Nestorius, who denied that Mary
was, strictly speaking, the mother of God.

In 451, a general council was held at Chalcedony, Asia Minor, for the
condemnation of Eutyches, and of Dioscorus, bishop of Alexandria, who
held the doctrine that there was in Jesus Christ but one nature.

From the beginning of the second century, the time when Origen taught
the above two doctrines, up to the year 553, several thousand synods and
principal councils were held.

Thereupon we say: The doctrine of Metempsychosis, or transmigration of
the souls; and the doctrine that the punishment of the wicked in a
future life will not be endless, were as important as the most of the
doctrines discussed in those councils; and Origen had a weightier
influence upon the Christian communities by his talents, learning,
virtue, and fame, and by the diffusion of his works, than Arius,
Macedonius, Nestorius, Eutiches, Dioscorus and others put together.
Therefore, if the dogma of endless hell had been generally believed by
the Christians of the first, of the second, of the third, of the fourth,
and of the fifth centuries, the doctrine of Metempsychosis, and the
doctrine that the punishment of the wicked in a future life will not be
endless, held and taught by Origen, would have been called up,
discussed, and condemned in the above councils. But they were called up,
discussed, and condemned, _only_ in the fifth general council, held at
Constantinople, in 553. Therefore, it is an irrefutable fact that the
Christians of the first, of the second, of the third, of the fourth, and
of the fifth centuries, did not generally believe the dogma of endless
hell.

Gregory of Neocesaree, was a disciple of Origen, and was promoted to the
episcopal see of Neocesaree, in 240. He wrote the following works:
Thanks to Origen, Profession of Faith on the Dogma of Trinity, Canonical
Epistle, and Paraphrase of the Book of Ecclesiastes. In these works the
spirit of the doctrines of Origen is seen at every page; and the dogma
of endless hell is neither taught, nor declared to have been the belief
of the first Christians, nor of the Christians of the third century. St.
Cyprian, made bishop of Carthage in 248, is silent about the dogma of
endless hell.

We pass to the Fathers of the fourth century.

Pamphile Eusebe obtained the bishopric of Cesarea in 313. He wrote the
Panegyric, and the Life of Constantine; a Chronicle, viz: a compilation
of Pagan authors, and several other works, whose fragments have
remained. His principal work is his Ecclesiastical History, which we
have studied in our theological school. If the dogma of endless hell had
been the belief of the first Christians, and had been generally believed
in his age, he would have certainly mentioned it therein: however, he
has not. Therefore, the first Christians, and those of his age, did not
hold the dogma of endless hell.

Athanase succeeded to Alexander on the episcopal see of Alexandria, in
326. His works are: Defense of Trinity and of Incarnation; apologies;
letters; and treatises against the Arians, the Melecians, the
Apollinarists, and the Macedonians. In these works there is not a word
concerning the dogma of endless hell being believed by the first
Christians, or by his contemporaries. The famous symbol which is headed
symbol of Athanase, which the Romish priests read every Sunday in the
Psalms-Breviary, is not from his composition nor from his pen; every one
of the Catholic theologians and authors confesses it.

Basile, bishop of Cesarea, was born in 329. He has left several letters,
homilies, treatises of morals, and sermons on the six days of the
creation. We have examined the Latin edition of his works, or rather of
the fragments of his works, for they are not entire, by Don Gamier and
Don Prudent; but though in many passages he speaks of salvation, of
eternal bliss, and of the punishment of the wicked hereafter, he does
not positively declare that the punishment will be endless; and he does
not say that the first Christians believed it, nor that it was a dogma
of the Church in his age. Theodor of Mopsueste, who wrote in the fifth
century, is charged by the Catholic writers to have taught that future
punishment will not be endless.

Since that time, down to the sixth century, the question of the eternal
duration of the punishment of the wicked in a place called hell, was
discussed by the ecclesiastical writers, who, nevertheless, did not
assert that it was the belief of the first Christians. Ambrosius
supposed that it would be infinite in duration; so Augustine, his
disciple, wrote in his work, De Civitate Dei, book 21; St. Fulgence; the
pope Gregorius, etc. The opinion of those leading doctors was preached,
and, little by little, it became the belief of a large number of
Christians. They even designated the place where hell was: some thought
it was in the profundities of the earth; Augustine opposed them; then he
recanted himself, and agreed that it was there. Finally, in 553, a
general council was held in Constantinople, and it was decided that the
dogma of endless hell shall be henceforth an article of faith. It was
only many years after that this council was considered oecumenical.

We have proved by the testimony of the Fathers themselves, that the
Christians of the first, of the second, of the third, of the fourth, and
of the fifth centuries, did not believe the dogma of endless hell; we
shall now prove it by the various Christian sects, which existed, and
were organized religious denominations, in those centuries.

Lest we might be suspected of partiality in the exposition of the belief
of those Christian sects in regard to future punishment, we will
_exclusively_ make our extracts from the works of Bergier, Feller, and
other Catholic theologians and historians.

The Cerinthians did not believe the doctrine of endless hell. The
Basilidians believed in Metempsychosis, or transmigration of the souls.
In consequence they did not hold the dogma of endless hell. Eusebe
informs us, in his Ecclesiastical History, that Basilide had written on
the four Gospels twenty-four books; and that his sect was numerous. It
flourished till the fourth century.

The Millenaries, who existed mainly in the second and third centuries,
believed that Jesus Christ would soon come from heaven, to reign one
thousand years over the righteous; that this reign would be temporal;
and that it would be followed by a general judgment: but they did not
hold that future punishment would be endless, for they were silent about
its nature.

The Marcionites believed in a good principle, God, and in a bad one, the
Devil; the latter had created our body. Jesus Christ had but an apparent
flesh. Our body should not come again to life; they believed like
Pythagoras, of whom Marcion was a follower, in the doctrine of
Metempsychosis: such was their belief. They made so many proselytes,
that, even in the fifth century, their sect was numerous in Italy, in
Egypt, in Palestine, in Syria, in Arabia, in Persia, and in other
oriental countries.

The Valentinians held that Jesus Christ was not God; that he had
redeemed the world only from sin, by freeing men of the empire of evil
Eons, or geniuses, who had the government of the universe. They believed
in the doctrine of Metempsychosis, or transmigration of the souls. In
consequence, they neither knew nor believed the dogma of endless hell.
Valentin had an immense number of disciples, and his sect spread in
Asia, and in Africa; in Europe it extended as far as Gaul, where,
according to the testimony of Ireneus, bishop of Lyons, the Valentinians
were very numerous.

The Marcosians formed a numerous religious body towards the end of the
second century. Their sect spread as far as Gaul. They believed the
doctrine of Metempsychosis.

The Theodotians and the Artemonians, in the second century, professed
that Jesus Christ was not God, and believed in Metempsychosis.

The Carpocratians believed in the pre-existence of the souls, and taught
that they had sinned in an anterior state of existence; that, as a
punishment for those crimes, they had been condemned to animate other
bodies, and would pass into other bodies as long as they would not have
been sufficiently purified by this expiation. They denied the divinity
of Jesus Christ, and the belief of the resurrection of the body.
Carpocrate, of Alexandria, founded this sect in the second century.

The Docetes professed the same belief as the Carpocratians, with the
difference that they did not admit that Jesus Christ had a natural body.
They had exactly the same belief in regard to Metempsychosis. This sect
existed in the second century. The Patripassians, the Noetians, the
Praxeans, and the Sabellians have been silent on the dogma of endless
hell.

Tatian, one of the most prominent ecclesiastical writers of the second
century, established the sect of the Tatianists, who believed that Jesus
Christ had not really suffered, and that he had not redeemed the world
by his blood. They also held the doctrine of Metempsychosis. Of the many
works of Tatian we have only his Discourse against the Pagans, and his
Diatessaron.

Apelles established a sect of his name, in 145. The Apellites denied the
resurrection of the body; believed in Metempsychosis; and also that God
had entrusted a spirit of fire to create the world.

In the second century, Montan, a native of Ardaban, in Mysia,
established the sect of the Montanists, which split and ramified into
the Artotyrites, the Ascites, Ascodrutes, etc. They all believed the
doctrine of Metempsychosis.

The Ophites, a sect of the second century, professed that the world had
been created, and was governed by evil Eons or geniuses, and that God
had sent Jesus Christ, his Son, to oppose the evil geniuses. They held
the doctrine of Metempsychosis.

In the second century the sect of the Cainites denied the resurrection
of the body, and believed in Metempsychosis.

The above sects compose the large body of Christians in the second
century; and yet we do not find in their doctrines anything like the
dogma of endless hell. They all, except perhaps the Millenaries,
believed in the doctrine of Metempsychosis. And as those extracts are
from Roman Catholic authors, who had the greatest interest in disguising
the true doctrines of those sects, it follows that it is an undeniable
fact, that the Christians of the second century neither did believe nor
knew any thing about such a dogma as endless hell.

_Corollary._ Since the Christians of the second century neither believed
the dogma of endless hell, nor knew anything about it, therefore the
Christians of the first century neither believed this dogma, nor knew
anything about it; for had they believed it, or known any thing about
it, the Christians of the second century would have preserved that
belief, or at least would have mentioned it. Consequently, it is an
undeniable fact that the Christians of the first century were not taught
by the apostles the dogma of endless hell.

Let us examine, now, the doctrines of the various Christian sects, which
sprung up in the third century.

Tertullian, one of the Fathers of whom we have spoken above, had joined
the Montanist sect; but afterwards he disagreed with them, and he
founded, at about the fifth year of the third century, another sect,
called Tertullianists. This sect lived several centuries, for in the
time of St. Augustine, towards the end of the fourth century, they had a
denominational organization at Carthage, Africa. Probably they held the
same belief as Tertullian, in regard to the dogma of endless hell.

The Hermogenians believed that the earth and the whole universe have
been uncreated, and are eternal. Hermogene said: "God has either taken
evil from himself, or from nothing, or from a pre-existing matter. He
could not take evil from himself, for he is indivisible; and, besides,
evil could not abide in a being infinitely perfect. He could not take
evil from nothing, for in this case it would have been in his power not
to produce it; therefore, evil is derived from a matter pre-existing,
co-eternal to God, and the defects of which God could not amend." The
Hermogenians believed in Metempsychosis. Their sect spread more
particularly in Galatia.

Berylle, bishop of Ostres, in Arabia, established, in 207, the sect of
the Arabics. They believed that the soul was born and died with the
body, and that both would come again to life. Origen wrote against this
belief, and converted the most of them to his opinions. As Origen
thought and taught that the punishment of the wicked would not be
endless, and that the souls transmigrated, we may safely conclude that
the Arabics embraced his opinions.

The Novatians were organized into a sect by Novat and Novatian, priests
of the Church of Carthage. We have perused the treatises on Trinity and
on the Viands, written by Novatian, whose fragments are found in the
works of Tertullian; but we have found no opinion expressed in regard to
the dogma of endless hell. We heard since that there is a complete
edition of his works, published in 1728, by Jackson, at London: we have
not been able to obtain it.

According to the testimony of Epiphane, the Valesians held many of the
doctrines of the Gnostics. From this we may safely infer that they
believed in Metempsychosis. Tillemont, in his Memoirs for the
Ecclesiastical History, tome 3d, says that the Valesians sprung up in
240. St. Epiphane and Tillemont are the only authors who have referred
to them in their writings.

The Samosatians, whose chief was Paul of Samosate, Patriarch of Antioch,
professed that the three persons of the Trinity were not three Gods, but
three attributes, under which God has manifested himself to men; that
Jesus Christ was not a God, but a man to whom wisdom had been
extraordinarily given. We did not find any thing in the Ecclesiastical
History in regard to their doctrines about future punishment. However,
as they considered Jesus Christ only as an extraordinary man, it is most
probable that they kept the immemorially, and, even then, generally
believed doctrine of Metempsychosis. This sect was established in 260.
The famous Zenobia, who then reigned in Syria, and believed the Jewish
religion, was converted to this sect.

Manes was born in Persia, in 240. He was the father of the sect of the
Manicheans. We shall give a summary of their doctrines, and as their
sect has been one of the most numerous, one of the most widely spread,
and one whose denominational organization seems to have outlived nearly
all those of the first centuries, we will add a summary of their
history. We will find in their doctrines, and in their history, a
weighty proof that the dogma of endless hell was not generally believed
by the Christians of the first five centuries, to say the least.

To remove the least shadow of doubt about our impartiality, we continue,
as done before, to take our extracts from Roman Catholic authors, who
had an interest to make it appear that the dogma of endless hell was
co-eval to the apostles.

We extract from Cotelier, a Roman Catholic author, tome 1, of the
Apostolic Fathers, page 543, and following, these doctrines of the
Manicheans:

In their opinion, the souls, or spirits, are an emanation from the good
spirit, whom they considered as an uncreated light; and all bodies have
been formed by the bad principle, whom they called Satan, and the power
of darkness. They held that there are portions of light enclosed within
all the bodies of the universe, and that they give them motion and life,
wherefore those souls cannot reunite to the good principle, except when
they have been purified by the means of various transmigrations from one
body into another. They denied the future resurrection of the body.

It is therefore evident that the Manicheans either knew nothing about
the dogma of endless hell, or did not believe it.

From the year 285 to the year 491, the Manicheans were persecuted. The
emperors of Orient confiscated their property, and decreed the penalty
of death against them. Thousands of them died in the most cruel
tortures, rather than to give up their faith; we read even in our days,
in the Theodosian code, the laws enacted against them. Despite those
persecutions they rapidly and widely spread. In the fourth century St.
Augustine was converted to their sect, but he afterwards left them, and
became their most powerful opponent. They formed a large body in Africa.
In 491, the mother of the emperor Anastase, who was a Manichean,
obtained the suspension of the laws enacted against them. They were
allowed, during twenty-seven years, to have churches, and to freely
worship; but during the reign of Justin, and under his successors, they
were again forbidden it. Towards the end of the seventh century, the
famous Gallinice, who was a Manichean, brought up her two sons, Paul and
John, in her belief, and sent them to Armenia as missionaries. Paul made
so many proselytes that the new converts took the name of Paulicians.

In the beginning of the ninth century the Paulicians split; but soon
after they reunited, at the persuasion of one of their most influential
members, named Theodote. The aversion of the Manicheans for the worship
of the virgin Mary, of the cross, of the saints, and of images, pleased
the Saracens, who made frequent irruptions in the empire: through their
influence they obtained more credit among their opponents.

In the year 841, the empress Theodora, who had declared herself in favor
of the worship of the virgin Mary, of the cross, of the saints, and of
images, went so far in her fanatical zeal for this doctrine, that she
resolved to exterminate the Manicheans, and their religion. By her
orders more than one hundred thousand of them were arrested and put to
death; nearly all expired in the most cruel tortures. Then the
Manicheans sought a refuge among the Saracens; they retired in fortified
towns, repelled the repeated assaults of the imperial armies, and
maintained themselves during about forty years; but having been defeated
in a great battle they were forced to disperse.

Some went to Bulgaria, and since took the name of Bulgarians; others
went to Italy, and mainly settled in Lombardy, wherefrom they sent
missionaries to France, to Germany, and to other countries. In the year
1022, under the king Robert, several canons of Orleans, who had joined
the Manicheans, were burnt alive. Although the penalty of death had been
decreed against the Manicheans, they established a large number of
convents all over France, and particularly in the provinces of Provence,
of Languedoc, and, more especially, in the diocese of Albi, where they
took the name of Albigenses.

Alanus, monk of Citeaux, and Peter, monk of Vaux-Cernay, who wrote
against them, accused them, 1st, of admitting two principles or
creators, the one good and the other bad; the first, creator of
invisible and spiritual things, and the second, creator of bodies. 2d,
Of denying the resurrection of the body. 3d, Of denying the Purgatory.
4th, Of denying the utility of prayers for the dead. 5th, Of denying the
pains of hell. 6th, Of believing the transmigration of the souls into
other bodies of men, or of animals, according to the degree of their
guilt in an anterior state of existence, until by successive expiatory
transmigrations they become purified. 7th, Of disbelieving the seven
sacraments. 8th, Of rejecting the worship of the virgin Mary, of the
cross, of the saints, and of images, etc.

In 1176, the council of Albi, which some authors call council of Lombez,
was held against the Manicheans, who, as said above, were called
Albigenses. In this council they were condemned under the calling of
Good Men. Fleury, who, in the seventy-second book of his Ecclesiastical
History, quotes the acts of the council, ascribes to them the above
doctrines; so does the historian Rainerius; and Bossuet, in the ninth
book of his History of Variations, cites other authors who confirm all
these accusations. The condemnation of the Manicheans, or Albigenses,
was confirmed by the general council of Latran, in 1179. A crusade was
ordered against them by the Pope, Innocent III., and a strict
inquisition was organized. Simon, count of Montford, was appointed, by
the Pope, general-in-chief of the crusaders; then the slaughter
commenced. It lasted eighteen years: the Albigenses, or Manicheans, were
exterminated, a few only secretly found their way to the Alps, where
they concealed themselves, and afterwards united to the Valdenses.
Several hundred thousands were either burnt alive, or tortured on racks,
or put to the sword; all were slain: men, old men, young men, women,
children, and infants; and during those horrible ceremonies of death,
the soldiers of the Pope sung the Veni Creator Spiritus, etc., a hymn of
invocation to the Holy Spirit.

From the doctrines and history of the Manicheans we draw the following
argument:

According to the unanimous testimony of the Roman Catholic authors
themselves, from about the middle of the third century to the
thirteenth, the Manicheans composed a numerous body of Christians, and
did not believe the dogma of endless hell. So constant were they in this
disbelief, that they persisted in it till nearly every one of them was
exterminated; therefore it is an undeniable historical fact that this
large denomination of Christians did not hold the dogma of hell, in the
third, fourth, fifth, etc., centuries.

Let us examine the doctrine of the Christian sects, which sprung up in
the fourth century, in regard to endless hell. We continue to take our
extracts from Roman Catholic authors.

Priscillian, a Spaniard, was the founder of the Christian sect of
Priscillianists, in the year 380. This denomination of Christians
believed in the doctrine of Metempsychosis. They held that the souls
passed into the bodies of other men, until they were purified, by their
transmigrations, of the sins they had committed in an anterior life.
They denied the resurrection of human bodies. Priscillian was condemned
to death, and the penalty of death was decreed against the
Priscillianists. The emperor Maxime, and the pope Leon, used fire,
racks, and swords against them; they slew thousands of them,
nevertheless they increased so that they were numerous yet in the sixth
century in Spain and in Italy. Tillemont, in his Ecclesiastical Memoir,
tome 8, refers to Sulpice-Severe, to Ambrosius, and to St. Augustine,
for the confirmation of the above, said concerning the doctrines of the
Priscillianists.

The other principal sects of the fourth century were the Donatists, the
Photinians, the Macedonians, the Apollinarists, the Jovinians, the
Collyridians, and the Pelagians. The Nestorians, the Eutichians, and the
Monothelites, sprang up in the fifth century. We have not found in their
writings any passages referring to the dogma of endless hell. However we
must state that we had the opportunity of perusing only about two-thirds
of the numerous and voluminous, we would add tedious, works composed pro
and con concerning their respective tenets.

_Remark._--Let the reader bear in mind that the most of the Christian
sects, whose disbelief of the dogma of endless hell we have traced out
above, composed the majority of the Christian body; and also that they
have existed, at least, till the middle of the sixth century, the epoch
when the fifth council of Constantinople condemned the doctrine held by
Origen--that of the transmigration of the souls, and of their temporary
punishment.

_Conclusion._ Therefore the dogma of endless hell was not generally
believed by the Christians of the third, of the fourth, and of the fifth
centuries.

General conclusion of this third article:

1. We have proved, by the testimony of the Fathers of the second
century, and by the doctrines of the numerous Christian sects of the
same century, that the dogma of endless hell was even unknown to the
Christians of the first and of the second centuries. Then we must
conclude that not only the first Christians, namely, the Christians of
the first and of the second centuries did not believe in endless hell,
but even that they knew nothing about such a dogma.

2. We have proved, by the testimony of the Fathers of the third, of the
fourth, and of the fifth centuries, and also by the many Christian sects
which existed in the third, in the fourth, and in the fifth centuries,
that the Christians did not generally believe, in the said centuries,
the dogma of endless hell. Therefore the Christians of the third, of the
fourth, and of the fifth centuries, did not _generally_ believe in
endless hell.

Therefore the proposition we were to prove in the present article, _that
the first Christians did not believe in the doctrine of endless hell_,
remains peremptorily established.

_Objection._--Since the fourth century the Church of Rome obtained the
condemnation of the above Christian sects in five general councils. But
if the above sects had composed the majority of the body of Christians,
the Church of Rome would not have obtained their condemnation.
Consequently the above sects did not compose the majority of the body of
Christians during the third, the fourth, and the fifth centuries.

_Answer._--We deny the minor proposition of this syllogism, which is:
But if the above sects had composed the majority of the body of
Christians, the Church of Rome would not have obtained their
condemnation--and we prove our denegation as follows:--

Supposing that the United States be constituted into an empire--God
forbid!--that the emperor would have the control of Church property,
would side, say with the Presbyterian Church, or any other, claiming
supremacy over the other Christian denominations; and that the emperor
would assemble councils conjointly with that Church, would attend and
even be vice-president of those councils, would enforce them with civil
and military force, and also the execution of their acts condemning
another sect arrayed before those councils, without permitting the other
sects to vote in those councils, would it follow from this that all the
other Christian sects do not compose the body of Christians in the
United States? Certainly not.

But the case was the same with the Church of Rome. Since the end of the
second century the bishop of Rome (we do not say the Pope, for it was
only centuries after that he had the boldness, or rather impudence, to
call himself exclusively Pope,) commenced to claim a personal supremacy
over the other bishops, and also a supremacy of his church over the
other Christian churches. Vain were his efforts until the beginning of
the fourth century, when Sylvestre, bishop of Rome, obtained for himself
and for his church the favors and protection of the emperor Constantine
I., who afterwards joined it, (we will state in the last chapter of this
work the reasons why this tyrant took these steps.) In behalf of the
Church of Rome, he convoked the council of Arles, and the general
council of Nice, and defrayed the expenses of the bishops out of his own
treasure. His protection to the Church of Rome the most of his
successors on the imperial throne continued; and thus the power and
supremacy of this church grew in ratio of the persecutions directed
against the other Christian denominations, which were debarred from
voting in the councils; whose church property was oftentimes
confiscated; and which many of them were prohibited to publicly worship.
In consequence, it is not true to say that, if the various Christian
sects spoken of before had composed the majority of the body of
Christians, the Church of Rome would not have obtained their
condemnation. Therefore the various sects spoken of before composed the
majority of the body of Christians during the third, the fourth and the
fifth centuries.


APPENDIX

_To the proofs that the first Christians did not believe in endless
hell._

From the second to the fourth centuries many Apocryphal Gospels had been
written. Some of them have been transmitted down to us, at least their
fragments; and others have not been preserved except their titles.

Among those gospels are: 1st, the Gospel according to the Hebrews; 2d,
according to the Nazareans; 3d, according to the Twelve Apostles; 4th,
according to St. Peter. It is supposed that these four Gospels were that
of Matthew, altered by the Hebrews. This circumstance has led the
critics to believe, that the Hebrew or Syriac text of Matthew had been
abandoned, lest it might be altered; and that the Greek version had been
preserved.

5th, The Gospel according to the Egyptians; 6th, that of the birth of
the virgin Mary: we have read it in Latin; 7th, the Protogospel of
James, written in Greek and in Latin; 8th, the Gospel of the Infancy, in
Greek and in Arabic; 9th, that of St. Thomas; 10th, the Gospel of
Nicodemus, in Latin; 11th, the Gospel Eternal; 12th, that of Andrew;
13th, that of Bartholomew; 14th, that of Apelles; 15th, that of
Basilides; 16th, that of Cerinthus; 17th, that of the Ebionites--perhaps
it was the same as that of the Hebrews; 18th, that of Tatian; 19th, that
of Eve; 20th, that of the Gnostics; 21st, that of Marcion; 22d, that of
St. Paul; 23d, the Gospel of the small and great interrogations of Mary;
24th, that of the birth of Jesus: probably the same as the Protogospel
of James; 25th, that of John, or of the death of the virgin Mary; 26th,
that of Matthias; 27th, that of Perfection; 28th, that of the Simonians;
29th, that of the Syrians; 30th, that of the Encratites: probably the
same as that of Tatian; 31st, the Gospel of Thadeus, or of Jude; 32d,
that of Valentine; 33d, that of Life, or of the Living God; 34th, that
of Philip; 35th, that of Barnabeus; 36th, that of James, the major;
37th, that of Judas; 38th, of the Truth: probably the same as that of
Valentine; 39th, the Gospels of Leucius, of Seleucus, of Lucianus, and
of Hesychius.

For a more extensive information concerning the Apocryphal Gospels, we
refer the reader to the Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti Collectus,
Castigatus, published at Hamburg, in 3 vols. octavo, in 1719. The author
was John Albert Fabricius, one of the most learned antiquarians of the
17th century.

We had the opportunity of reading, in the rich library of the
theological school of Brou, France, several of these Apocryphal
Gospels, that of the birth of the virgin Mary, the Protogospel of James;
that of the death of the virgin Mary, and that of the Twelve Apostles;
but we do not recollect to have seen in these gospels anything, in
regard to endless hell, more positive than what is found in the Gospel
concerning the ruin of Jerusalem.

Of course this proof, drawn from the Apocryphal Gospels, has not the
same weight as if it was drawn from authentical authors, (it is for this
reason that we have not inserted it in the body of proofs,) however as
it is certain that they have been written from the second to the fourth
centuries, they at least show that their authors, and the many
Christians who used them, did not believe in endless hell.


ARTICLE IV.

_How the Church of Rome borrowed the doctrine of Endless Hell from the
Pagans; and how, afterwards, the self-called Orthodox Protestant
Churches borrowed it from the Church of Rome._

It has been proved in the foregoing article, and, we think, to
demonstration, that the Christians of the first and of the second
centuries, neither knew nor believed the dogma of endless hell;
wherefore we may logically make this argument:

The Christians of the first and of the second centuries neither knew nor
believed the dogma of endless hell: But if the dogma of endless hell
had been taught in the New Testament, the Christians of the first and
of the second centuries would have known and believed it. This we prove:

Those of the apostles who wrote the New Testament certainly knew
whether, in the New Testament they wrote, they had taught the dogma of
endless hell. If they had known that, in the New Testament they wrote,
they had taught the dogma of endless hell, they would have certainly
informed the Christians of the first century, in their oral
predications, that, in the New Testament they wrote, they had taught the
dogma of endless hell, for it was one of the most important points of
doctrine. If they had informed the Christians of the first century, in
their oral predications, that they had taught, in the New Testament they
wrote, the dogma of endless hell, the Christians of the first century
would have certainly believed that they had taught, in the New Testament
they wrote, the dogma of endless hell. If the Christians of the first
century had believed that they had taught, in the New Testament they
wrote, the dogma of endless hell, they would have certainly believed in
endless hell. If the Christians of the first century had believed in
endless hell, those of the beginning of the second century would have
also believed it; for the apostle and evangelist John was still living
at the end of the year 100; (even many authors say that he died only in
104,) and therefore if any discussion had arisen in regard to the dogma
of endless hell, he would have declared whether it was taught in the
New Testament or not. If the Christians of the beginning of the second
century had also believed the dogma of endless hell, those who would
have lived in the middle and at the end of the second century would have
believed it also; because learning, from the lips, or from the writings,
of those who were co-eval to some of the apostles, the dogma of endless
hell, no traditional alteration might have taken place towards this
dogma; so much so that it would have been generally spread and believed
among Christians, owing to its importance.

Therefore the minor proposition of our argument is true: _But if the
dogma of endless hell had been taught in the New Testament, the
Christians of the first and of the second centuries would have known and
believed it._ Wherefore we draw this logical conclusion: Then the dogma
of endless hell is not taught in the New Testament.

Moreover, if the Christians of the third, of the fourth, and of the
fifth centuries, had thought that the dogma of endless hell was taught
in the New Testament they would have at least _generally_ believed it.
But they did not _generally_ believe it, as it has been proved, to
demonstration, in the foregoing Article: consequently the dogma of
endless hell is not taught in the New Testament.

From the fact that, according to the Christians of the first and of the
second centuries themselves, the dogma of endless hell is not taught in
the New Testament, we draw the conclusion that the Church of Rome,
which first, and successively, introduced in the body of Christians the
dogma of hell and of endless hell, did not originate it from the New
Testament; because there would have been a general protestation against
it from all the other churches.

It has been proved, in the second Article of this chapter, that the Jews
did not believe the dogma of endless hell. Therefore the Church of Rome
did not originate the dogma of endless hell from the Jews, or from their
Holy Writs.

Wherefrom, then, did the Church of Rome originate the dogma of endless
hell?

From Paganism:--

The Church of Rome established mysteries towards the beginning of the
third century. They were an imitation of the Pagan mysteries.

We refer the reader for the proofs of this proposition to the last pages
of the second chapter of this work.

Thereupon we continue. It was only successively, and to make more
proselytes, that the Church of Rome had established those ceremonies,
rites and doctrines, to the reading thereof we have invited the reader,
and which were not only unspoken of in the Scriptures, but which were a
pure imitation of those of the mysteries of the Pagans. We say, _to make
more proselytes_; for the aim of the Church of Rome was evidently to
diminish the abruptness of the transition between Paganism and
Christianity; to throw a bridge, if we may thus illustrate our idea,
over the steep, wide, and deep abyss that lies between Paganism and
Christianity.

Now let us compare the hell of the Church of Rome with the Tartarus of
the Pagans. The Pagans called the place where the wicked were punished,
Tartarus, or Infernus; the Church of Rome called, and still calls, the
same place, Tartarus, or Infernus. The Pagans believed that the Tartarus
was in the profundities of the earth; the Church of Rome held, and still
holds, that the Tartarus, called in English, Hell, is in the
profundities of the earth.

_Remark._--Before proceeding further, let us give the native
signification of the words Tartarus, Infernus and Hell. [Greek:
Tartaros, ou], dark and deep place: [Greek: Tartara gains], [in
Hesiode,] abysses of the earth. The word [Greek: Tartaros] has been
adopted and kept in the Latin, though with the change of the final
[Greek: os] into _us_, Tartarus, and its native meaning preserved. The
Latin word Infernus derives from the word inferior, which signifies a
place under, below an other, a cavity, a profundity. The words Tartarus,
Infernus, have been kept in French, Tartare, Enfer; in Spanish, Tartaro,
Infierno; and also in the other languages derived from the Latin. The
English word _hell_ is the genitive case of the Anglo-Saxon word _hole_,
[See Webster's Dictionary,] which means a cavity, a profundity. The word
Tartarus has been kept from the Latin, with its native signification. In
Greek [Greek: Tartaros] has a plural, as seen before. In Latin
_Tartarus_ has a plural, _Tartari_; so _Infernus_, _Inferi_. In French
_Tartare_ has a plural, _Tartares_; so, _Enfer_, _Enfers_. In Spanish
_Tartaro_ has a plural, _Tartaros_; so, _Infierno_, _Infiernos_.

Now we continue the comparison that we have commenced between the
Infernus of the Pagans and the Infernus, or Hell, of the Church of Rome.
We will use the word Hell, to express the Tartarus, or Infernus, of both
the Pagans and the Church of Rome.

The Pagans believed that there was a gate to their hell; so the Church
of Rome believes that there is a gate to the hell of the Christians. The
Pagans believed that the frightful Tisiphon watched day and night at the
gate of their hell; so the Church of Rome believes that Lucifer holds
the keys of the gate of hell, as St. Peter holds the keys of Paradise.

The Pagans believed that the deepest darkness reigned in their hell; so
the Church of Rome believes that the deepest darkness reigns in the hell
of the Christians.

The Pagans believed that, in their hell, the Phlegeton river rolled huge
stones on fire, burning the wicked without consuming them; so the Church
of Rome believed, and still believes, [even now it is an article of
faith which must be believed under the penalty of excommunication, of
being a heretic, and thereby of infallibly going to hell,] that, in the
hell of the Christians, the wicked are plunged into a corporeal, or
material, fire of sulphur, and of brimstone. St. Augustine, in his work
De Civitate Dei, Liber 21, Capitulum 10, writes: "_Gehenna illa, quod
etiam stagnum ignis et sulphuris dictum est, corporeus ignis erit._"
[Translation.--"That Gehenna, which is said to be a marsh of fire and of
sulphur, will be a corporeal fire."]

The Pagans believed that, in their hell, the wicked were tortured in
their bodies and in their souls, although their bodies were in the
grave; so the Church of Rome believed, and still believes that, in the
hell of the Christians, the wicked are tortured in their bodies and in
their souls, although their bodies are in the grave.

The Pagans believed that, in their hell, hideous furies were armed with
whips and other instruments of torture; so the Church of Rome believed,
and still believes, that, in the hell of the Christians, the devils are
hideous and armed with whips, tridents, harpoons, and other instruments
of torture. We invite the reader to go to Catholic stores of images, and
to see the representation of devils with tails, horns, and armed with
instruments of torture.

The Pagans believed that, in their hell, the wicked were whipped and
tortured in various cruel manners by the furies, though their bodies
were in the grave; so the Church of Rome believed, and still believes,
that, in the hell of the Christians, the wicked are whipped and
tortured in various cruel manners by the devils, though their bodies
are in the grave. The Pagans believed that, in their hell, the wicked
dragged heavy chains; so the Church of Rome believed, and still
believes, that, in the hell of the Christians, the wicked drag heavy
chains. The Pagans believed that, in their hell, there were two
principal abodes, the one expiatory, in which the common wicked were
detained and tortured, until they had expiated their faults, and been
purified enough to be admitted in the Elysium; and the other, the
vastest, the darkest, and the deepest cavern, where great criminals were
burnt and excruciated endlessly, and without any hope of cessation or
relief in their torments; so the Church of Rome believed, and still
believes, that in the hell of the Christians, there are two principal
abodes, the one, Purgatory, where the common wicked, namely, those
guilty of venial sins, are tortured and burnt in a material fire, until
they have expiated their faults, and been purified enough to be
permitted to crave St. Peter to open to them the gate of Paradise, and
the other the vastest, the darkest, and the deepest profundity, where
the heretics, the schismatics, those who eat meat on Friday, do not pay
the tithe to the priests, or who disobey kindred laws of the Church, are
plunged, bodies and souls, (though their bodies are in the grave,) into
a devouring fire, and where they are excruciated endlessly, without any
hope of cessation or relief in their torments.

The Pagans believed that, in the expiatory abode of their hell, there
were many different degrees of tortures; so the Church of Rome believed,
and still believes, that, in the Purgatory of the hell of the
Christians, there are many different degrees of tortures. The Pagans
believed that supplications could relieve and free from their tortures,
the common wicked detained in the expiatory abode of their hell; so the
Church of Rome believed, and still believes, that, in the Purgatory of
the hell of the Christians, the common wicked, namely, those guilty of
venial sins, can be relieved in their torments, and be freed from them
by supplications; hence the incalculable sums of money paid to the
priests, to say masses for the deliverance of those wicked; hence the
countless splendid churches, the vast number of monasteries, convents,
nunneries, abbeys, and other costly edifices, founded in behalf of those
wicked.

The Pagans believed that there were an innumerable quantity of different
degrees of tortures in the second principal abode of their hell; so the
Church of Rome believed, and still believes, that, in the second
principal abode of the hell of the Christians, there is an innumerable
quantity of different degrees of tortures. The Pagans believed that, in
their hell, the wicked condemned to endless misery, would, mingle with
their yells of anguish, torment, and despair, vociferations,
maledictions, and curses, against the gods, and against themselves; so
the Church of Rome believed, and still believes, that, in the hell of
the Christians, the wicked, condemned to endless misery, will mingle
with their yells of anguish, torment, and despair, vociferations,
maledictions, and curses against God, and against themselves; that they
will exclaim, _Montes cadite super nos!_--Mountains fall upon us! The
Pagans believed that, in their hell, the wicked condemned to endless
misery will vainly endeavor to kill and annihilate themselves; so the
Church of Rome believed, and still believes, that the wicked condemned
to endless misery, will vainly attempt to put an end to their miserable
existence.

Therefore there is a most striking similarity, or rather identity,
between the hell of the Pagans, and the hell of the Church of Rome.

Therefore, since as proved above,

1st, The Church of Rome was the first Church which introduced the dogma
of endless hell in the body of Christians;

2d, Since, as proved above, the Church of Rome did not originate the
dogma of endless hell from the New Testament;

3d, Since, as proved above, the Church of Rome did not borrow from the
Jews, or from their Holy Writs, the dogma of endless hell;

4th, Since, as proved above, the Church of Rome, at the imitation of the
Pagans, established, towards the beginning of the third century,
mysteries, many of the ceremonies, rites and doctrines thereof were
alike to those ceremonies, rites and doctrines, of the mysteries of the
Pagans;

5th, Since, as proved above, there is a most striking similarity, or
rather identity, between the hell of the Pagans, and the hell of the
Church of Rome,

We legitimately draw this important conclusion:

Therefore the Church of Rome borrowed from the Pagans the dogma of
endless hell.

When the Protestants, now self-called Orthodox Churches, left the Church
of Rome, in the sixteenth century, they cut off many of the appendices
and concomitant particularities of the dogma of endless hell; but they
preserved, and even in our days profess to believe, the main features of
this dogma, namely, that in hell there is sulphur, brimstone, and fire;
that in hell there are devils; that in hell there are many degrees of
torments; that in hell the wicked are constantly burning in fire without
consuming, and are constantly tortured by the devils without any relief;
that hell shall exist forever and evermore, as long as endless eternity
shall endure; and that the torments of the wicked in hell shall no more
end than hell itself.

That the Protestants, now self-called Orthodox Christian Churches,
borrowed from the Church of Rome, in the sixteenth century, the dogma of
endless hell; and that they preserved the above belief in regard to
endless hell, is proved by the unanimous testimony of modern historians
and of chroniclers. That they, now-a-days, profess the above belief in
regard to endless hell, is a fact which we can daily, and particularly
every Sunday, in all cities, towns, and villages of this country, and of
all Protestant countries, verify with our own eyes in their writings,
and with our own ears in their temples.

Now we draw our general conclusions:

1st, Therefore the Church of Rome borrowed from the Pagans the dogma of
endless hell.

2d, Therefore the now self-called Orthodox Protestant, or Christian
Churches, borrowed from the Church of Rome the dogma of endless hell.

Conclusion of the chapter:

_Therefore the Partialist doctrine of endless hell is of Pagan origin._




CHAPTER VIII.

PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF A FIRST JUDGMENT, BY JESUS CHRIST,
IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE SEPARATION OF THE SOUL FROM THE BODY.


IT will be evident that the origin of the doctrine of a first judgment,
by Jesus Christ, immediately after the separation of the soul from the
body, is Pagan, if it can be proved, 1st, That the Pagans believed in a
first judgment, by a god, immediately after the separation of the soul
from the body; 2d, That the particulars of this first judgment, believed
in by the Partialist Christian Churches, present a striking similarity
with the particulars of the first judgment, believed in by the Pagans;
and 3d, That the Church of Rome, which, in the sixteenth century,
transmitted to the now self-called Orthodox Christian Churches this
doctrine of a first judgment, which they accepted full and entire, did
not hold it from the apostles of Jesus Christ nor from the Jews.

But it can be proved, 1st, That the Pagans believed in a first judgment,
by a god, immediately after the separation of the soul from the body;
2d, That the particulars of this first judgment, believed in by the
Partialist Christian Churches, present a striking similarity with the
particulars of the first judgment, believed in by the Pagans; and 3d,
that the Church of Rome, which, in the sixteenth century transmitted to
the now self-called Orthodox Christian Churches this doctrine of a first
judgment, which they accepted full and entire, did not hold it from the
Apostles of Jesus Christ nor from the Jews.

1st, It can be proved that the Pagans believed in a first judgment, by a
god, immediately after the separation of the soul from the body.

We extract the following from the History of the Egyptians, by Rollin.
Article--Funerals: "Before the dead were admitted in the sacred asylum
of the tomb, they underwent a solemn judgment. And this circumstance of
the funerals among the Egyptians, is one of the most remarkable things
in the ancient history. It is a consolation to us to leave behind us,
when we die, a name honored among men; and of all blessings it is the
only one of which we cannot be deprived by death. But in Egypt, it was
not permitted to indistinctly praise the dead; this honor was conferred
only after a favorable public judgment. The assembly of the judges was
held on the other side of a lake, which they crossed on a bark. He who
conducted the bark was called, in the Egyptian tongue, _Charon_; and it
is from this name that the Greeks, instructed by Orpheus, who had been
in Egypt, had invented the fable of the bark of _Charon_.

"When a man died he was brought to judgment. The public accuser was
heard. If he proved that the conduct of the dead had been wicked, his
memory was stigmatized, and he was deprived of the honor of funerals.
The people admired the power of the laws, which extended even beyond
death; and everybody, influenced by the example of others, was afraid to
dishonor his family, and his own memory. If the dead was not convicted
of any crime, he was honorably buried. What was the most astonishing in
this judgment of the dead was that royalty itself was not spared. The
kings were not judged during their life, the public good demanded it;
but they were not exempted from the after death's judgment, and several
of them were deprived of honorable funerals. This custom passed among
the Israelites. We read in the Old Testament that wicked kings were not
buried in the tombs of their fathers. Thus kings learned, that, if their
majesty places them above the judgments of men, it is so no longer when
death has placed them on the same level with their fellow-men.

"When the judgment, which had been pronounced, was favorable to the
dead, they proceeded to the ceremony of the burial. A panegyric was
delivered in which nothing was said of his birth, because every Egyptian
was considered to be a noble man. His personal virtues only were
praised. Then the whole assembly supplicated the gods to welcome him in
the assembly of the virtuous dead, and to associate him to their
eternal bliss."

This judgment gave birth to the fable of a judgment rendered by the
gods, immediately after the separation of the soul from the body. Charon
was represented carrying the souls of the dead on board his bark, across
the Styx river, to be judged by the great judge, Minos. This became a
general belief among the Pagans, not only in Egypt, but in Greece, in
Italy, and in nearly all the Oriental countries; as proved by the
unanimous consent of the mythological authors. This belief has been
perpetuated among the Pagans of those countries. Even in our days, the
Indians believe in this judgment, and call the great judge, Zomo, or
according to others, Jamen. The Japanese, followers of Buda, also
believe in this judgment; and they call the great judge, Zomo. Likewise
the Lamas believe in this judgment, and call the great judge Erlik-kan.

Therefore the Pagans believed in a first judgment, by a god, immediately
after the separation of the soul from the body.

2d. It can be proved that the particulars of this first judgment,
believed in by the Partialist Christian Churches, present a striking
similarity with the particulars of the first judgment, believed in by
the Pagans:

The Pagans believed that their great judge, Minos, sat on a throne, to
judge the souls immediately after their separation from the bodies that
they animated; so the Partialist Christian Churches believe that Jesus
Christ sits on a throne, to judge the souls, immediately after their
separation from the bodies that they animated. The Pagans believed that,
near to Minos' throne, and at his right hand, good geniuses, or spirits,
stood; so the Partialist Christian Churches believe that, near to Jesus
Christ's throne, and at his right hand, good angels stand. The Pagans
believed that, near to Minos' throne, and at his left hand, furies
stood; so the Partialist Christian Churches believe that, near to Jesus
Christ's throne, and at his left hand, devils stand.

The Pagans believed that the souls were driven to the redoubtable
tribunal of Minos by their respective guardian angel, who had
accompanied them during their whole life on earth; had watched day and
night over their conduct; and had kept a record of all they had done,
right or wrong; so the Church of Rome, and some other Partialist
Christian Churches, believe that the souls are driven to the redoubtable
tribunal of Jesus Christ by their respective guardian angel, who has
accompanied them during their whole life on earth; has watched day and
night over their conduct, and has kept a record of all they have done,
right or wrong. The Pagans believed that Minos based his judgments on
the contents of two books, the one called book of life, and the other
book of death; so the Partialist Christian Churches believe that Jesus
Christ bases his judgments on the contents of two books; the one called
book of life, and the other book of death. The Pagans believed that the
souls who had obtained from Minos a favorable sentence, were led to the
Elysium by their respective guardian angel; and that those who had been
condemned to the Tartarus, were apprehended by the furies, and hurled
into it; so the Partialist Christian Churches believe that the souls who
obtain from Jesus Christ a favorable sentence, are led to Paradise by
their respective guardian angel; or, [in the opinion of those of the
Partialist Christian Churches, which do not believe in a guardian angel]
by other angels.

Consequently the particulars of the first judgment, believed in by the
Partialist Christian Churches, present a striking similarity with the
particulars of the first judgment, believed in by the Pagans.

3d. It can be proved that the Church of Rome, which, in the sixteenth
century, transmitted to the now self-called Orthodox Christian Churches
the doctrine of a first judgment, which they accepted full and entire,
did not hold it from the apostles of Jesus Christ, nor from the Jews:--

The Church of Rome does not hold the doctrine of a first judgment from
the apostles of Jesus Christ, for this doctrine implies a
blasphemy--whether Jesus Christ be considered as being God himself--and
all the Partialist Christian Churches hold that he is God himself--and
whether Jesus Christ be considered as being only the Son of God. But
the doctrine of a first judgment implies a blasphemy, whether Jesus
Christ be considered as being God himself, and whether he be considered
as being only the Son of God.

First, it implies a blasphemy, if Jesus Christ is considered as being
God himself. Jesus Christ, being God himself, would necessarily know all
the good and bad actions done by the souls, while they animate their
respective bodies on earth, in consequence it is an insult to his
attribute of wisdom, and thereby a blasphemy, to say that the guardian
angels of the souls, as they bring them to his tribunal, inform him of
their good and bad actions, which they have recorded. Even in the case
of those of the Partialist Christian Churches, which reject the
circumstance of the guardian angels, the doctrine of a first judgment
implies an insult to the wisdom of Jesus Christ, (in their opinion God
himself), and thereby a blasphemy; for a judgment supposes a trial; a
trial supposes an investigation; an investigation supposes the ignorance
of the deeds to be pronounced upon, and the supposition that God has not
a perfect knowledge of those deeds, is an insult to his wisdom, and
thereby is a blasphemy.

Second, The doctrine of a first judgment implies a blasphemy, if Jesus
Christ is considered as being only the Son of God. If God had vested
Jesus Christ with the power of discerning rewards and punishments to the
souls after death, he would have given him a knowledge of the good and
bad actions of the souls. But the doctrine of a first judgment supposes
that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, would come to this knowledge only
through the means of a trial, which supposition is an insult to the
wisdom of God, and thereby a blasphemy.

Then the doctrine of a first judgment implies a blasphemy, whether Jesus
Christ be considered as being God himself, and whether Jesus Christ be
considered as being only the Son of God.

Therefore the Church of Rome does not hold the doctrine of a first
judgment from the apostles of Jesus Christ.

General conclusions:--

It has been proved in this chapter, 1st, That the Pagans believed in a
first judgment, by a god, immediately after the separation of the soul
from the body; 2d, That the particulars of this first judgment, believed
in by the Partialist Christian Churches, present a striking similarity
with the particulars of the first judgment, believed in by the Pagans;
and, 3d, That the Church of Rome, which, in the sixteenth century,
transmitted to the now self-called Orthodox Christian Churches this
doctrine of a first judgment, which they accepted full and entire, did
not hold it from the apostles of Jesus Christ; neither did she hold it
from the Jews; for not a single passage can be traced out in the Old
Testament, or in Josephus, referring to a first judgment.

_Therefore the origin of the doctrine of a first judgment, by Jesus
Christ, immediately after the separation of the soul from the body, is
Pagan._




CHAPTER IX.

PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY.


IF it is proved, 1st, That in the first centuries of the Christian era,
and before the coming of Jesus Christ, the doctrine of the resurrection
of the body was held by a large number of Pagans; 2d, That the Church of
Rome which, in the sixteenth century, transmitted it to the now
self-called Orthodox Christian Churches, did not hold it either from the
apostles of Jesus Christ, or from the Jews, it will remain evident that
the Church of Rome borrowed it from the Pagans, and consequently that
its origin is Pagan.

But it can be proved, 1st, That in the first centuries of the Christian
era, and before the coming of Jesus Christ, the doctrine of the
resurrection of the body was held by a large number of Pagans; 2d, That
the Church of Rome, which, in the sixteenth century, transmitted it to
the now self-called Orthodox Christian Churches, did not hold it from
the apostles of Jesus Christ; and, 3d, That she did not hold it from the
Jews.

1st. It can be proved that in the first centuries of the Christian era,
and before the coming of Jesus Christ, the doctrine of the resurrection
of the body was held by a large number of Pagans:

The doctrine of the resurrection of the body had been taught by
Zoroaster. All the Persians believed it; and even now the Parsis, or
followers of the religion of Zoroaster, who live in Turkey and in
Persia, hold it. It was also one of the dogmas of the Chaldeans, and of
many other oriental countries. In India the Pagans, now-a-days, believe
that their bodies will come again to life, and it is owing to this
belief, the Roman Catholic priest Bergier says, that the wives throw
themselves on the same wood piles on which lay the dead bodies of their
husbands, to be burnt alive, and to come again to life with them. This
belief and practice are immemorial in India. Interesting particulars in
regard to the doctrine of the resurrection believed by ancient nations,
can be read in the French work, Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions,
tome 69, pages 270, and following; in the work of Hyde, on the Religion
of the Persians; and also in the writings of Plutarch, article Isis and
Osiris.

According to the testimony of Diodore, and of Herodote, the Egyptians
believed in Metempsychosis; and it was an immemorial doctrine among
them. Also, many of them believed that their bodies would come again to
life, after a sojourn of one thousand years in the grave. The Sybilline
verses treat of the resurrection of the body. Much has been written
about it by Bocchus, in Solin, chap. 8; and by Lactance, book 7, chap.
29, book 4, chap. 15, 18, and 19. The Stoicians, who were the most
learned philosophers of antiquity, and in the three centuries which
preceded the coming of Jesus Christ, and also in the three that
followed, believed in Metempsychosis; however, a portion of their school
believed in the resurrection of the body. Of this we are informed by
Seneca, Epist. 40; by Laerta, book 7; and by Plutarch, writing on the
Resignation of the Stoicians.

Pliny, deriding Democrite, informs us that this philosopher believed in
the resurrection of the body; see book 7, chap. 45, where he says: "Vain
is the promise made by Democrite that we will live again." The doctrine
of the resurrection of the body is taught in these verses of Phocylides
about the remains of the dead:

  "[Greek: Ou kalon harmonien analyemen anthropoio;
           Kai tacha d' ek gaies elpizomen es phaos elthein
           Leipsan' apoichomenon opiso te theoi telethontai.]"

Translation:--"It is impious to disperse the remains of man; for the
ashes and the bones of the dead will come again to light, and will
become similar to the gods."

Virgil speaks of the resurrection of the body, though in an obscure
manner, in the sixth book of his poem Eneida.

Therefore in the first centuries of the Christian era, and before the
coming of Jesus Christ, the doctrine of the resurrection of the body was
held by a large number of Pagans.

2d. It can be proved that the Church of Rome, which, in the sixteenth
century, transmitted the doctrine of the resurrection of the body to the
now self-called Orthodox Christian Churches, did not hold it from the
apostles of Jesus Christ:--

It will be evident that the Church of Rome did not hold the doctrine of
the resurrection of the body from the apostles of Jesus Christ, if it
can be proved, 1st, That the Fathers of the first centuries did not
agree on this doctrine; 2d, That nearly all the Christian denominations
of the first two centuries, and the majority, to say the least, of those
of the century following, disbelieved it; and, 3d, That this doctrine is
irrational.

But it can be proved, 1st, That the Fathers of the first centuries did
not agree about the doctrine of the resurrection of the body; 2d, That
nearly all the Christian denominations of the first two centuries, and
the majority, to say the least, of the century following, disbelieved
it; and, 3d, That this doctrine is irrational.

1st. It can be proved that the Fathers of the first centuries did not
agree about the doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

Tatian believed in Metempsychosis, but not in the resurrection of the
body. St. Gregory of Nysse denied that there was anything corporeal in
the person of Jesus Christ, since the time he ascended to the heavens.
Origen admitted the resurrection of the bodies, but not that of the
flesh. Synesius, bishop of Ptolemaida, in his Series of Epistles,
declares that the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is a mystery,
whose solution ought to be kept secret, and considered as sacred: that
it is well to teach it to the people; and that he, the bishop, would
publicly profess and preach this doctrine, though it is not his personal
belief. If the reader desires to find lengthier particulars, about the
divergency of the opinions of the Fathers concerning the doctrine of the
resurrection of the body, we refer him to the work of Beausobre, headed,
History of Manicheanism, tome 2, book 8, chap. 5, No. 3, and following.

Therefore the Fathers of the first centuries did not agree about the
doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

2d. It can be proved that nearly all the Christian sects, or
denominations, of the first two centuries, and the majority, to say the
least, of those of the century following, disbelieved the doctrine of
the resurrection of the body:----

According to the unanimous testimony of the Roman Catholic authors
themselves, Bergier, Feller, Fleury, etc., etc., the following Christian
sects of the first three centuries held the dogma of Metempsychosis: The
Basilidians, the Bardesanists, the Barules, the Barborians, the
Valentinians, the Marcionites, the Marcosians, the Theodotians, the
Artemonians, the Carpocratians, the Docetes, the Tatianists, the
Apellites, the Montanists, the Artotyrites, the Severians, the Ascites,
the Ascodrutes, the Ophites, the Cainites, the Sethians, the
Hermogenians, the Hermians, the Valesians, the Hieracites, the
Samosatians, and the Manicheans: this latter sect, Catholic authors say,
were subdivided into more than sixty sects, which professed, each one of
them, to believe in Metempsychosis. The same authors add, that many of
the other sects named above denied the resurrection of the body. Though
they do not say so of all, we may safely affirm that every one of the
above named Christian sects disbelieved the doctrine of the resurrection
of the body. This we demonstrate thus:--

According to the doctrine of Metempsychosis, when, at death, a soul
separates from the body, she passes into another body to animate it; and
to thus expiate, by many and successive transmigrations, the faults she
has committed in an anterior existence, and so continually. But the
doctrine of the resurrection of the body teaches that the same soul
which animated it in its prior existence, shall animate it anew when it
will come again to life. How can then this same soul animate this same
body, and at the same time the thousands of other human bodies, which
she had also animated in her various transmigrations? Therefore the
belief of the doctrine of Metempsychosis necessarily implies a disbelief
of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. Consequently, although
the Roman Catholic authors do not positively state that all the above
named Christian sects disbelieved the doctrine of the resurrection of
the body, we may safely affirm, from the fact that they held the
doctrine of Metempsychosis, that they disbelieved the doctrine of the
resurrection of the body.

Therefore nearly all the Christian sects, or denominations, of the first
two centuries, and the majority, to say the least, of those of the
century following, disbelieved the doctrine of the resurrection of the
body.

3d. It can be proved that the doctrine of the resurrection of the body
is irrational.

All the reasons which have been brought forth by St. Cyrille, bishop of
Jerusalem, in his Catechism, page 18; by St. Gregory of Nysse, in his
oratio on the Resurrection of the Flesh; by St. Augustine, in his City
of God, book 20; by St. Chrysostome, in his homily on the Resurrection
of the Flesh; by Tertullian, in his treatise on the Resurrection of the
Flesh; by St. Gregory, the Pope, in his Fourth Dialogue; by St.
Ambrosius, in his sermon on the Faith of the Resurrection of the Flesh;
and by St. Epiphane, Ancyrot, page 38, can be summed up as follows:--

God himself has formed with his own hands man's body; he has animated it
with the breath of his own mouth, and has placed within it a soul made
to his likeness. The flesh of the Christian is, in some manner,
associated to all the functions of its soul, and is the instrument of
all the graces of God. It is the body that is washed by baptism to
purify the soul, it is the body that in order to feed the soul receives
the Eucharist; it is the body that is immolated to God by
mortifications, by fasts, by vigils, by virginity, and by martyrdom.
Thus St. Paul reminds that our bodies are the members of Jesus Christ,
and the temples of the Holy Spirit. Would God leave in the grave forever
the work of his own hands, the master-piece of his might, the depository
of his breath, the king of the other bodies, the canal of his graces,
and the victim of his worship?

If God has condemned the body to death as a punishment for sin, Jesus
Christ came to save all that was lost. Without this complete reparation,
we would not know how far the goodness, the mercy, and the parental
tenderness of our God, extend. The flesh of man, restored by incarnation
to its former dignity, ought to come again to life, as well as that of
Jesus Christ. Is not he who created the flesh mighty enough to bring it
again to life? Nothing entirely perishes in nature: forms change, but
all renews itself, and seems to grow young again; God has stamped
immortality upon all his works. Night follows the day, eclipsed stars
appear anew; the spring makes us forget the winter; plants grow again,
and resume their hues and perfumes; and several animals which seem to
die receive a new life. Thus, by the lessons of nature, God has prepared
the lessons of the revelation; and he has shown us the image of the
resurrection, before showing us its reality.

God's justice demands the resurrection of our body. God ought to judge,
to reward, or to punish the whole man. The body is the instrument of
the soul for good or for evil; even the thoughts of the soul are
reflected on man's face. The soul cannot experience pleasure or pain
without the co-participation of the body, and the principal exercise of
virtue consists in the repression of the desires of the flesh. Then it
is just that the soul of the wicked be tormented, by being reunited to
the same body which has been the instrument of her crimes; and that the
soul of the saints be rewarded, by her eternal reunion to a body which
has been the instrument of her merits.

All these reasons can be generalized thus:

Man's body has been the instrument of our soul to do good or evil. Then
the justice of God requires that man's body come again to life, to
share, with its soul, eternal reward, or eternal punishment.

We answer: Since man's body is but the instrument of our soul to do good
or evil, his body is capable neither of merit nor of demerit. But, since
man's body is capable neither of merit nor of demerit, it is capable
neither of reward nor of punishment. Therefore the justice of God does
not require that man's body come again to life, to share, with its soul,
eternal reward or eternal punishment.

More, it is irrational that the same particles of matter be, at the same
time, in many places. But the doctrine of the resurrection of the body
supposes that the same particles of matter will be, at the same time,
in many places. This we prove:

The cannibals live upon man's flesh; and they assimilate to their own
bodies the particles of flesh which compose the bodies of the men they
devour. Consequently, at the resurrection of the bodies, these particles
of flesh will compose the bodies of the cannibals, and, at the same
time, the bodies of the men they have devoured. Therefore, the doctrine
of the resurrection of the body supposes, that the same particles of
matter will be, at the same time, in many places.

Besides, when, after death, man's body putrefies, the particles of
flesh, of which it is composed, dissolve into gases, which the plants
convert to their own nature. Those vegetables and fruits, thousands of
men eat; and thus they assimilate to themselves those same particles,
which formerly composed the bodies of other men. Consequently, at the
resurrection of the bodies, those particles will compose a multitude of
bodies. Therefore, the doctrine of the resurrection of the body
supposes, that the same particles of matter will be, at the same time,
in many places.

Then the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is irrational.

_Objection._--Jesus Christ came again to life with a spiritual body.
Then these proofs do not demonstrate that the doctrine of the
resurrection of the body is irrational.

_Answer._--Jesus Christ came again to life with a spiritual body; this
we concede. Then these proofs do not demonstrate that the doctrine of
the resurrection of the body is irrational. This we deny; for it is an
article of faith in the Church of Rome; and it is nearly unanimously
believed by all the other Partialist Churches, that the bodies of the
righteous _alone_ will be spiritual bodies; and that the bodies of the
wicked will be after the resurrection, as they were while on earth.
Consequently, it does not follow, from the fact that Jesus Christ came
again to life with a spiritual body, that the above proofs do not
demonstrate that the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is
irrational.

_Remark._--The Partialists quote passages of the Scriptures to prove the
doctrine of the resurrection of the body. We shall not discuss the true
meaning of those passages; for such a discussion does not enter in the
plan of this work, which is exclusively intended to prove historically
the true origin of the Partialist doctrines. However, in regard to those
texts we say:

It would be a blasphemy against God to suppose that the Scriptures teach
us an irrational doctrine. But, as demonstrated above, the doctrine of
the resurrection of the body is irrational. Then the Scriptures do not
teach it. Then those texts ought not to be understood of the
resurrection of the body.

3d. It can be proved that the Church of Rome did not hold the doctrine
of the resurrection of the body from the Jews.

The Church of Rome did not hold from the Jews the doctrine of the
resurrection of the body, if, 1st, the Roman Catholic theologians do not
hold that this doctrine is taught in the Old Testament; 2d, If this
doctrine was traditional only among the illiterate portion of the Jewish
nation; and, 3d, If this tradition was not of an ancient and national
origin.

But, 1st, The Roman Catholic theologians do not hold that the doctrine
of the resurrection of the body is taught in the Old Testament; 2d, This
doctrine was traditional only among the illiterate portion of the Jewish
nation; and, 3d, This tradition was not of an ancient and national
origin.

1st, The Roman Catholic theologians do not hold that the doctrine of the
resurrection of the body is taught in the Old Testament.

The Roman Catholic theologians do not pretend that the doctrine of the
resurrection of the body is taught in the Old Testament; they only
assert that it may be that it is taught therein. Bergier, who is their
organ, and whose works, written in the last century, were, and still now
are, classical among the priests, writes--Article, Resurrection of the
Body, page 159:--"We presume that Job, Daniel, and the seven Maccabean
brothers, had some knowledge of this essential dogma." Consequently the
Roman Catholic theologians do not hold that the doctrine of the
resurrection of the body is taught in the Old Testament.

2d, The doctrine of the resurrection of the body was traditional only
among the illiterate portion of the Jewish nation.

Josephus states, in his Antiq. Jud., book 18, ch. 2; and in his De Bello
Judaico, book 2, ch. 7, al. ch. 12, that the Sadducees were the literate
portion of the Jewish people; that they held nearly all the public
offices; that they were well educated, courteous, and that they avoided
public discussions and controversies on the subject of religion. He
states also that they disbelieved the doctrine of the resurrection of
the body. Therefore the doctrine of the resurrection of the body was
traditional only among the illiterate portion of the Jewish nation.

3d, The tradition of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body was
not of an ancient and national origin.

In the year 587 before the Christian era, in the second year of the
reign of Sedecias, Jerusalem was besieged, taken, destroyed; Sedecias
and the whole nation were led captives to Babylon. There they were
detained seventy years, until Cyrus permitted them to return to their
own country. During those seventy years of captivity, the Jewish people
borrowed from the Pagans many religious practices, ceremonies, rites,
and doctrines--this is the testimony of Josephus--and among them the
doctrine of the resurrection of the body, which, as has been proved
before, was believed by a large number of Pagans. When the people
returned from Babylon to Jerusalem a portion of them preserved some of
those religious practices, ceremonies, rites, and doctrines, and
rejected the others. Those which they preserved they transmitted to
their posterity, and among them was the doctrine of the resurrection of
the body. Therefore the tradition of the doctrine of the resurrection of
the body was not of an ancient and national origin.

We have proved, 1st, That the Roman Catholic theologians do not hold
that the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is taught in the Old
Testament; 2d, That this doctrine was traditional only among the
illiterate portion of the Jewish nation; and, 3d, That this tradition
was not of an ancient and national origin.

Therefore, 3d, The Church of Rome did not hold from the Jews the
doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

We come now to the general conclusions of this chapter.

It has been proved, 1st, that in the first centuries of the Christian
era, and before the coming of Jesus Christ, the doctrine of the
resurrection of the body was held by a large number of Pagans; 2d, That
the Church of Rome, which, in the sixteenth century, transmitted it to
the now self-called Orthodox Christian Churches, did not hold it either
from the Apostles of Jesus Christ or from the Jews.

Therefore the Church of Rome borrowed from the Pagans the doctrine of
the resurrection of the body.

_Therefore the origin of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is
Pagan._




CHAPTER X.

PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF A GENERAL JUDGMENT AT THE END OF THE
WORLD.


THE Church of Rome and the other Partialist Christian Churches profess
to believe that, at the end of the world, a general judgment of all the
then living, and of all the dead, shall take place. When, in the
sixteenth century, the great Protestant scission took place, the new
Churches formed preserved this doctrine of the Church of Rome, with only
accessory modifications; and since that time they have professed it;
even now-a-days they cling to it. We shall prove in this chapter that
the origin of this doctrine is Pagan.

The origin of the doctrine of a general judgment of all the then living
and of all the dead, which shall take place at the end of the world, is
Pagan, 1st, If the Pagans held the doctrine of a general judgment of all
the then living and of all the dead, which shall take place at the end
of the world; 2d, If there is a striking similarity between the
particulars of the doctrine of a general judgment, as held by the
Pagans, and the doctrine of a general judgment, as held by the Church
of Rome, and by the other Partialist Christian Churches; 3d, If the
Church of Rome did not hold the doctrine of a general judgment from the
apostles of Jesus Christ; and, 4th, If the Church of Rome did not hold
this doctrine from the Jews.

But, 1st, The Pagans held the doctrine of a general judgment of all the
then living and of all the dead, which shall take place at the end of
the world; 2d, There is a striking similarity between the
particularities of the doctrine of a general judgment, as held by the
Pagans, and the doctrine of a general judgment, as held by the Church of
Rome; 3d, The Church of Rome did not hold the doctrine of a general
judgment from the apostles of Jesus Christ; and, 4th, The Church of Rome
did not hold this doctrine from the Jews.

These four heads of questions we are to successively prove.

1st, We prove that the Pagans held the doctrine of a general judgment of
all the then living and of all the dead, which shall take place at the
end of the world.

Plato, and other philosophers and writers of the Pagans, taught that a
solemn general judgment of the dead was to decide their fate. Minos sat
on a throne, and shook the fatal urn. By his side were the avenging
furies, and a host of evil spirits, executioners of the sentences of
Minos. Eacus, Rhadamante, and Triptolem, were his assistant judges.

Even now the Indians believe that Zomo will judge the world; so the
Japanese. The Lamas ascribe this power to Erlik-kan.

At the sound of a trumpet the earth was to deliver up her dead to be
judged. It was to be destroyed by fire after a great commotion of the
celestial spheres, and fears of the then living mortals.

The souls, at the sound of a trumpet, assembled in a vast meadow,
adorned with asphodels, where Minos sat on his throne. The dead were led
to his redoubtable tribunal by their respective guardian angels, who had
accompanied them during their whole life; watched over their conduct;
and had kept a record of all they had done, right or wrong. This meadow,
where the dead were to be judged, was called the field of truth, because
there the whole truth about the past doings of the dead was made known,
and no crime could escape the knowledge and justice of the great judge.
The dead, once assembled, were divided into three classes. The first
class was composed of those who had been virtuous on earth: they were
the smallest number. The second class was composed of those who were
guilty of great crimes; and the third class, of those who had been
neither virtuous nor great criminals.

This triple division, which we naturally find in society, was taught by
Plato in his Phaedo, a work in which, writing about the judgment of the
dead, he divides them as said before. This same division we also find
in Plutarch, treating the same subject, and disserting, in his answer to
the Epicureans, about the state of the dead to be judged. Minos used
three books in judging the dead; the first was called book of life, it
was used for the righteous: the second was called book of death; it was
used for the great criminals: the third book was used for those who had
been neither righteous nor great criminals. The judge pronounced the
sentence only after the severest examination of the virtues and crimes
of every one of the dead; and he affixed a seal on their forehead as he
judged them.

Social laws and duties were the particular subjects of his judgments. He
amply rewarded social virtues, and severely punished social vices. Among
the Greeks and the Romans, this great priestly fiction was intended for
the maintenance of laws; for stimulating patriotism, national and social
virtues by the hope of the rewards of the Elysium; and also to check
crime and vice in society, by the fear of terrible sufferings in the
Tartarus. Were sentenced to the Tartarus all those who had conspired
against the State, or fostered a conspiration; those who had been
bribed; those who had delivered up a city to the enemy; those who had
provided the foes of the country with weapons, vessels, provisions,
etc.; those who had contrived to enslave their fellow-citizens, or had
tyrannized over them, etc. This last dogma had been added to the others
by the free States.

Afterwards, philosophy turned these fictions against despotism itself,
which had invented them. Plato placed in the Tartarus ferocious tyrants,
such as Ardiee of Pamphylia, who had murdered his brother, his father,
and had committed many other crimes. The soul preserved after death all
her stains, and was sentenced accordingly. Plato represented the souls
of the kings, and of other rulers, as being the most stained. Tantalus,
Tityus, and Sisiphus, who had been kings, were the greatest criminals,
and endured in the Tartarus the most excruciating pains. However, kings
did not believe those fictions, and were not restrained from oppressing
the people.

Virgil enumerates the principal crimes which divine justice punished in
the Tartarus. He represents, here, a brother who from hatred has slain
his brother; a son who has ill-treated his father; a man who has
deceived his patrons; an avaricious man, an egotist, and a selfish man;
there, are seen an adulterer, an unfaithful servant, and a citizen who
either waged war against his fellow citizens, or sold his country for
gold, or was bribed for the enactment of unjust laws. Farther are seen
an incestuous father, and wives who have murdered their husbands.

It is to be remarked that the authors, or originators of these fictions,
pronounced pains only against crimes which might have injured society,
whose progress and happiness was one of the great ends of the initiation
to the mysteries of Eleusis and others.

In the Tartarus Minos punished the same crimes which he would have
punished on earth according to the wise laws of the Cretenses, supposing
that he had in reality reigned over them. If crimes against religion
were to be punished in the Tartarus, it was because religion, being
considered as a duty, and as the principal bond of society, it
necessarily followed that irreligion was to be one of the greatest
crimes, which was to be avenged by the gods. Hence the people were
taught that the great crime of many of the famous criminals, tortured in
the Tartarus, was their disrespect for the mysteries of Eleusis; that
the great crime of Salmone was to have tried to imitate Jove's thunder;
and that the great crime of Ixion, of Orion, and of Tityus, was to have
violated goddesses.

The fiction of the Elysium was directed to the same moral and political
aim. Virgil places in the Elysium the heroes who laid down their lives
for the defense of their country; also the inventors of arts, and all
those who have been useful to their fellow men, and have a title to
their gratitude. It was to strengthen this idea that apotheosis was
instituted; hence it was taught in the mysteries that Hercules, Bacchus,
and the Dioscores were but men, who, by their virtues and their services
had obtained immortality. Afterwards the Romans placed Scipio in the
Elysium. Cicero ascribed a high station in the Elysium to the true
patriots; to the friends of justice; to good sons; to good parents; and
to good citizens.

In the Elysium, as Plato described it, kindness and justice were
rewarded: there the true patriot, the modest and just Aristides, had
been admitted. To this divine recompense piety, eagerness in seeking for
truth, and love to it, were the surest titles. When the dead had been
judged those who had been pronounced worthy of the Elysium passed to the
right hand side, and were led to the Elysium, every one by his guardian
angel. Those who had been sentenced to the Tartarus passed to the left
hand side, and were dragged thereto, each one by the evil genius that
beguiled him while on earth. Onward they were driven, carrying on their
back their sentence of condemnation, and the enumeration of all their
crimes. Those whose vices were curable were to be released after due
expiation and reform.

According to Plato, the dead who have been guilty of murder, sacrilege,
and other enormous crimes, shall be endlessly miserable in the Tartarus.
Those whose crimes have not been so great shall be detained therein for
a year; and, at the expiration of this time they will be brought out,
near the marsh of Acheron, by the waters of the Cocyte, and of the
Pyriphlegeton rivers. Then they shall humbly beg pardon from those they
have wronged; and, if they obtain it, they shall be released; if not
they shall be taken back to the Tartarus on the rivers. Virgil also
speaks of that state of expiation and purification of the souls of the
dead.

Therefore the Pagans held the doctrine of a general judgment of all the
then living, and of all the dead, which shall take place at the end of
the world.

2d. We prove that there is a striking similarity between the
particularities of the doctrine of a general judgment, as held by the
Pagans, and the doctrine of a general judgment, as held by the Church of
Rome.

The Pagans believed that, immediately before the end of the world, there
would be mighty and frightful signs in the heavens; and that the then
living mortals would be struck with terror: likewise the Church of Rome
believes that, at the end of the world, the columns of the heavens will
be shaken; that the signs on high will be so frightful that the then
living men will be appalled: also there will be famine, pestilence, war
and murders over the whole earth. The Pagans believed that, at the sound
of a trumpet, the earth would deliver up her dead to be judged: likewise
the Church of Rome believes that four angels will sound a trumpet; and
that, when the four trumpets will resound over the earth, all the dead,
who had been buried either in the sea or in the earth, will come again
to life to be judged.

The Pagans believed that geniuses would force men to the place of
judgment: likewise the Church of Rome believes that angels will gather,
from the four cardinal points of the earth, the multitude of men to the
place of judgment. The Pagans believed that men would be judged in a
meadow covered with astophels: likewise the Church of Rome believes that
the general judgment will take place in the valley of Josaphat. The
Pagans believed that, in the meadow, a throne would be erected, on which
Minos, the great judge, would sit: likewise the Church of Rome believes
that Jesus Christ, the great judge, will descend from heaven on clouds,
and will sit on a throne erected in the valley of Josaphat. The Pagans
believed that, near to the throne of Minos, Eacus, Rhadamante and
Triptolem, his assistant judges, and good geniuses, or spirits, would
stand: likewise the Church of Rome believes, that, near to the throne of
Jesus Christ, good angels will stand.

The Pagans believed that, near to the throne of Minos, would stand
avenging furies, and a host of evil spirits, executioners of the
sentences of Minos against the wicked: likewise the Church of Rome
believes that there will be, at some distance from the throne of Jesus
Christ, a host of devils, executioners of the sentences of Jesus Christ
against the wicked. The Pagans believed that each man was led to the
redoubtable tribunal of Minos by the guardian spirit, who had
accompanied him during his whole life on earth: likewise the Church of
Rome believes that each man will be led to the redoubtable tribunal of
Jesus Christ by the guardian angel who has accompanied him during his
whole life on earth.

The Pagans believed that Minos used three books in his judgments: the
first called book of life, for the righteous; the second called book of
death, for the great criminals; and the third for those who had been
neither righteous nor great criminals: likewise the Church of Rome
believes that Jesus Christ will use two books: the one called book of
life, for the righteous; and the other called book of death, for the
wicked.

_Remark._--The Church of Rome does not hold that, at the general
judgment, Jesus Christ will use the third book; but holds that, in the
first judgment, he uses it for those of the dead who have been neither
righteous nor great criminals, and who thereby shall be sentenced to
Purgatory, which shall finish at the end of the world. Apropos of this
limitation of the duration of Purgatory, we might cursorily say that
this restriction has been wisely made by the far-sighted ministers of
the Church; for as, after the general judgment, they would be no longer
on earth, they could not say masses and other prayers, for the
deliverance of the souls detained in Purgatory; and thus it would be
quite useless to make the torments of Purgatory last any longer.

The Pagans believed that the guardian spirit of each man, who had
accompanied him through life, and had kept a record of all his good and
bad actions, would testify to Minos in his favor, or against him:
likewise the Church of Rome believes that the guardian angel of each
man, who has accompanied him through life, and has kept a record of all
his good and bad actions, will testify to Jesus Christ in his favor, or
against him. The Pagans called the meadow of the general judgment, the
field of the truth: likewise the Church of Rome calls the valley of
Josaphat, the valley of the truth. The Pagans believed that the crimes
for which Minos was to inflict the severest punishment were those
against religion, against its hierophants, and against other ministers:
likewise the Church of Rome believes that the crimes for which Jesus
Christ is to inflict the severest punishment, are those against the
Church, against its Pope, against its bishops and its priests. The
Pagans believed that the neglect or omission of lustrations, and other
practices and teachings of the priests, would be severely punished by
Minos: likewise the Church of Rome believes that the neglect or omission
of the practices, ceremonies, and other prescriptions of the priests,
will be severely punished by Jesus Christ.

The Pagans believed that those found righteous would be placed at the
right hand side of Minos, but the wicked at his left hand side: likewise
the Church of Rome believes that the righteous will be placed at the
right hand side of Jesus Christ, but the wicked at his left hand side.
The Pagans believed that the righteous would be destined, by Minos, to
eternal bliss in the Elysium; but that the wicked would be sentenced, by
Minos, to endless misery in the Tartarus: likewise the Church of Rome
believes that the righteous will be destined, by Jesus Christ, to
eternal bliss in Paradise; but that the wicked will be sentenced, by
Jesus Christ, to endless misery. The Pagans believed that the wicked
would carry on their back their sentence of condemnation, and the
enumeration of all their crimes: likewise the Church of Rome believes
that the wicked will carry on their back their sentence of condemnation,
and the enumeration of all their crimes.

The Pagans believed that the guardian spirits of the righteous would
lead them to the Elysium: likewise the Church of Rome believes that the
angels of the Lord will lead them to heaven, in a procession preceded by
Jesus Christ. The Pagans believed that Furies, and other evil spirits,
would drag the wicked to the Tartarus: likewise the Church of Rome
believes that the devils will drive, with whips, the wicked to hell. The
Pagans believed that, after the general judgment, the earth would be
destroyed by fire: likewise the Church of Rome believes that the earth
will be destroyed by fire, and that then will the world end.

Therefore there is a striking similarity between the particularities of
the doctrine of a general judgment, as held by the Pagans, and the
doctrine of a general judgment as held by the Church of Rome.

3d. We prove that the Church of Rome did not hold the doctrine of a
general judgment from the apostles of Jesus Christ.

The Church of Rome did not hold the doctrine of a general judgment from
the apostles of Jesus Christ, 1st, If the Roman Catholic theologians did
not understand the 24th chapter of Matthew, and the last sixteen verses
of the 25th; the 24th, 25th, 26th, and 27th verses of the 13th chapter
in Mark, and also the 25th, 26th, 27th, and 28th verses of the 21st
chapter in Luke, as meaning a general judgment; 2d, If nearly all the
Christian sects, or denominations, of the first and of the second
centuries, did not believe the doctrine of a general judgment; and, 3d,
If the doctrine of a general judgment is irrational.

But, 1st, The Roman Catholic theologians did not understand the 24th
chapter of Matthew, and the last sixteen verses of the 25th; the 24th,
25th, 26th, and 27th verses of the 13th chapter in Mark; and also the
25th, 26th, 27th, and 28th verses of the 21st chapter in Luke, as
meaning a general judgment; 2d, Nearly all the Christian sects, or
denominations, of the first and of the second centuries, did not believe
the doctrine of a general judgment; and, 3d, The doctrine of a general
judgment is irrational.

1st. We prove that the Roman Catholic theologians did not understand the
24th chapter of Matthew, and the last sixteen verses of the 25th; the
24th, 25th, 26th, and 27th verses of the 13th chapter in Mark; and also
the 25th, 26th, 27th, and 28th verses of the 21st chapter in Luke, as
meaning a general judgment.

_Remark._--To save the reader the trouble of referring to his Bible, we
insert here the above passages of the Gospel, which the Partialists
suppose to teach the doctrine of a general judgment.

Matthew, chap. 24.-1. "And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple:
and his disciples came to _him_ for to show him the buildings of the
temple. 2. And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily
I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another,
that shall not be thrown down.

3. And as he sat upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him
privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what _shall
be_ the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world? 4. And Jesus
answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. 5. For
many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.
6. And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not
troubled; for all _these things_ must come to pass, but the end is not
yet. 7. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against
kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes,
in divers places. 8. All these _are_ the beginning of sorrows. 9. Then
shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye
shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake. 10. And then shall
many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one
another. 11. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.
12. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
13. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. 14.
And this Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a
witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. 15. When ye,
therefore, shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel
the prophet, stand in the holy place; (whoso readeth, let him
understand;) 16. Then let them which be in Judea flee into the
mountains: 17. Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take
any thing out of his house: 18. Neither let him which is in the field
return back to take his clothes. 19. And wo unto them that are with
child, and to them that give suck in those days! 20. But pray ye that
your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day: 21. For
then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of
the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. 22. And except those days
should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's
sake those days shall be shortened. 23. Then if any man shall say unto
you, Lo, here _is_ Christ, or there; believe _it_ not. 24. For there
shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great
signs and wonders; insomuch that, if _it were_ possible, they shall
deceive the very elect. 25. Behold, I have told you before. 26.
Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go
not forth: behold, _he is_ in the secret chambers; believe _it_ not. 27.
For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the
west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 28. For wheresoever
the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together. 29.
Immediately after the tribulation of those days, shall the sun be
darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall
fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: 80. And
then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall
all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man
coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31. And he
shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall
gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to
the other.

32. Now learn a parable of the fig-tree; When his branch is yet tender,
and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: 33. So likewise
ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, _even_ at
the doors. 34. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass,
till all these things be fulfilled. 35. Heaven and earth shall pass
away, but my words shall not pass away. 36. But of that day and hour
knoweth no _man_, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. 37.
But as the days of Noah _were_, so shall also the coming of the Son of
man be. 38. For as in the days that were before the flood, they were
eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that
Noah entered into the ark, 39. And knew not until the flood came, and
took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 40.
Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken and the other
left. 41. Two _women shall be_ grinding at the mill; the one shall be
taken, and the other left.

42. Watch therefore; for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. 43.
But know this, that if the good man of the house had known in what watch
the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered
his house to be broken up. 44. Therefore be ye also ready; for in such
an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh. 45. Who then is a
faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his
household, to give them meat in due season? 46. Blessed _is_ that
servant, whom his lord, when he cometh, shall find so doing. 47. Verily
I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods. 48. But
and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his
coming; 49. And shall begin to smite _his_ fellow-servants, and to eat
and drink with the drunken; 50. The lord of that servant shall come in a
day when he looketh not for _him_, and in an hour that he is not aware
of, 51. And shall cut him asunder, and appoint _him_ his portion with
the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Matthew, chapter 25.-31. "When the Son of man shall come in his glory,
and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of
his glory: 32. And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he
shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth _his_ sheep
from the goats: 33. And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but
the goats on the left. 34. Then shall the King say unto them on his
right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared
for you from the foundation of the world: 35. For I was a hungered, and
ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger,
and ye took me in: 36. Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye
visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37. Then shall the
righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee a hungered, and fed
_thee_? or thirsty, and gave _thee_ drink? 38. When saw we thee a
stranger, and took _thee_ in? or naked, and clothed _thee_? 39. Or when
saw we thee sick, or in prison, and come unto thee? 40. And the King
shall answer and say unto them. Verily I say unto you. Inasmuch as ye
have done _it_ unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done
_it_ unto me. 41. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand.
Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil
and his angels: 42. For I was a hungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was
thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: 43. I was a stranger, and ye took me
not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye
visited me not. 44. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when
saw we thee a hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick,
or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? 45. Then shall he answer
them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did _it_ not to one
of the least of these, ye did _it_ not to me. 46. And these shall go
away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal."

Luke, chapter 21.-25. "And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the
moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with
perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; 26. Men's hearts failing them
for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the
earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. 27. And then shall they
see the Son of man coming in a cloud, with power and great glory. 28.
And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up
your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh."

Mark, chapter 13.-24. "But in those days, after that tribulation, the
sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light. 25. And
the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall
be shaken. 26. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the
clouds with great power and glory. 27. And then shall he send his
angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from
the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost parts of heaven."

Bergier, one of the most classical of the Roman Catholic theologians,
says, in the first volume of his works, article Agnoetes, that, in the
sixth century, the theologians answered the Agnoetes as follows: "In
these texts, it is not a question of the day of the general judgment,
but of the day when Jesus Christ was to come to punish the Jewish nation
by the sword of the Romans." Then the Roman Catholic theologians did not
understand these texts as meaning a general judgment.

Moreover, Bergier, writing against the Millenaries, says, article
World:--"The disciples of Christ, sometime before his resurrection,
spake to him of the structure of the temple of Jerusalem, Matthew, ch.
24, Mark, ch. 13, Luke, ch. 21. Jesus Christ told them that it shall be
destroyed; and that not one of the stones will be left upon the other.
The disciples, surprised, asked him when this shall take place; what
will be the signs of his coming, and of the end of the century. Then
there will be, he said, wars and seditions, earthquakes, pests, and
famines; ye yourselves will be persecuted and put to death; Jerusalem
will be surrounded with an army; the temple will be polluted; false
prophets will appear; there will be signs in the heaven; the sun and the
moon will be darkened, and the stars will fall from the firmament. Then
the Son of man will be seen coming in the clouds with great power and
majesty; his angels will gather the elect from one end of the world to
the other, etc. He announces all this as events to be witnessed by his
apostles; and he adds: 'Verily I say unto you, this generation shall
not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.'

"Is it a question of the end of the world in all this? Opinions are
divided on this point. Some commentators think that, in these texts,
Jesus Christ simply prophesied the ruin of the religion, republic, and
nation of the Jews; and that all the circumstances were verified when
the Romans took and destroyed the nation; that, however, a few
expressions ought not to be taken literally, such as the fall of the
stars, etc.; that Jesus Christ has used the same style, and the same
images used by prophets, when they prophesied other events. Consequently
these commentators say that these words of Jesus Christ, 'This
generation shall not pass,' etc., signify, the Jews who now live will
not all be dead when these events will take place. In fact, Jerusalem
was taken and ruined less than forty years after. In this opinion it is
not a question in these texts of the end of the world.

"Other commentators believe that Jesus Christ has joined the signs,
which were to precede the devastation of Judea, to those which will
appear at the end of the world, and before the general judgment; that
when he says: 'This generation shall not pass,' etc., he means that the
Jewish nation will not be entirely destroyed, but will subsist till the
end of the world. It cannot be denied that the word generation is used
several times in this sense in the Gospel."

From this passage of Bergier we draw the following argument:

Since the Roman Catholic theologians were, and are, divided in regard to
the meaning of the above texts, it follows that the Church of Rome did
not rest her doctrine of a general judgment on the above text. Therefore
the Church of Rome did not understand the above texts, namely, the 24th
chapter of Matthew, and the last sixteen verses of the 25th:--the 24th,
25th, 26th, and 27th verses of the 13th chapter in Mark; and also the
25th, 26th, 27th, and 28th verses of the 21st chapter in Luke, as
meaning a general judgment.

2d. We prove that nearly all the Christian sects, or denominations, of
the first and of the second centuries, did not believe the doctrine of a
general judgment.

The Basilidians, the Valentinians, the Marcionites, the Marcosians, the
Theodotians, the Carpocratians, the Docetes, the Tatianists, the
Apellites, the Montanists, the Artotyrites, the Ascites, the Ascodrutes,
the Ophites, the Cainites, and the Hermogenians believed in
Metempsychosis, and denied the resurrection of the body. From the fact
that these sects believed in Metempsychosis, and denied the resurrection
of the body, we argue:

The doctrine of a general judgment supposes the resurrection of all the
dead; but the above sects denied the resurrection of the dead. Therefore
they denied also the doctrine of a general judgment. Therefore nearly
all the Christian sects, or denominations, of the first and of the
second centuries, did not believe the doctrine of a general judgment.

More, we might say all the Christian sects of the first two centuries;
for, it was only at the end of the second century, that the sect of the
Millenaries, who believed in a general judgment, sprung up; and,
besides, history is silent about the belief of the Church of Rome (which
then was confined within the boundaries of the Province of Rome,) in
regard to the doctrine of a general judgment.

3d. The doctrine of a general judgment is irrational, because a first
judgment, by Jesus Christ, having taken place, a second one would be
useless.

4th. We prove that the Church of Rome did not hold the doctrine of a
general judgment from the Jews.

The Roman Catholic authors never pretended, and still now do not
pretend, that the Jews believed the doctrine of a general judgment.

Then the Church of Rome did not hold the doctrine of a general judgment
from the Jews.

We draw the general conclusions of this chapter:

It has been proved, 1st, That the Pagans held the doctrine of a general
judgment of all the then living, and of all the dead, which shall take
place at the end of the world; 2d, That there is a striking similarity
between the particularities of the doctrine of a general judgment, as
held by the Pagans, and the doctrine of a general judgment, as held by
the Church of Rome; 3d, That the Church of Rome did not hold the
doctrine of a general judgment from the apostles of Jesus Christ; and,
4th, That the Church of Rome did not hold this doctrine from the Jews.

Therefore the Church of Rome borrowed the doctrine of a general judgment
from the Pagans.

_Therefore the doctrine of a general judgment of all the then living,
and of all the dead, which shall take place at the end of the world, is
of Pagan origin._




CHAPTER XI.

PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF VICARIOUS ATONEMENT.


THE doctrine of Vicarious Atonement supposes the dogma of a Personal
Devil, the dogma of Original Sin, the dogma of Trinity, and the dogma of
the Supreme Divinity of Jesus Christ. As in four chapters of this work
we have proved that these four dogmas are of Pagan origin, we shall
examine, in this chapter, the true origin of the body itself of the
doctrine of Vicarious Atonement, which consists in the belief that a
small number of privileged Christians obtain the forgiveness of their
sins, and are exempted from the punishment of those sins through the
medium of a substitute. Our historical researches will also lead us to
the conclusion that it is of Pagan origin.

In the sixteenth century the Church of Rome held, and still now holds,
the doctrine that Jesus Christ had washed away with his blood all the
past, present and future sins of the men who would be within the pale of
his only true Church, which was herself, and also that he had exempted
them from the punishment of their sins. However, they were to enjoy
these two privileges only on the condition that they would obey her
prescriptions. The Partialist Protestant Churches rejected nearly all
the prescriptions of the Church of Rome; rejected the doctrine that she
was the only true Church of Jesus Christ; but they preserved the
substance of the doctrine, namely, that Jesus Christ had washed away all
the sins of those who would feel the descent of the Holy Spirit in their
souls; who would experience a supernatural change of heart, or, as they
commonly term it, would get religion; and also that through his
atonement they are exempted from the punishment of their sins.

Consequently, the Partialist Protestant Churches, as well as the Church
of Rome, hold the doctrine that a small number of privileged Christians
obtain the forgiveness of their sins, and are exempted from the
punishment of those sins through the medium of a substitute. Then if it
is proved that the origin of the doctrine that a small number of
privileged Christians obtain the forgiveness of their sins, and are
exempted from the punishment of those sins, through the medium of a
substitute--as held by the Church of Rome--is Pagan, it will thereby be
proved that the doctrine that a small number of privileged Christians
obtain the forgiveness of their sins, and are exempted from the
punishment of those sins, through the medium of a substitute--as held by
the Partialist Protestant Churches--is also of Pagan origin.

In this chapter we shall prove that the origin of the doctrine that a
small number of privileged Christians obtain the forgiveness of their
sins, and are exempted from the punishment of those sins through the
medium of a substitute--as held by the Church of Rome--is Pagan.

It will be evident that the origin of the doctrine that a small number
of privileged Christians obtain the forgiveness of their sins, and are
exempted from the punishment of their sins, through the medium of a
substitute--as held by the Church of Rome--is Pagan, if it is proved,
1st, That there is a striking similarity between the practices required
by the Church of Rome to obtain the forgiveness of sins, and to be
exempted from the punishment of those sins, and those which were, and
still now are, required in the Pagan religion for the same purpose; and,
2d, That those practices were not instituted among Christians in the
first two centuries. But it can be proved, 1st, That there is a striking
similarity between the practices required by the Church of Rome to
obtain the forgiveness of sins, and to be exempted from the punishment
of those sins, through the medium of a substitute, and those which were,
and still now are, required in the Pagan religion for the same purpose;
and, 2d, That those practices were not instituted among Christians in
the first two centuries.

1st. We prove that there is a striking similarity between the practices
required by the Church of Rome to obtain the forgiveness of sins, and
to be exempted from the punishment of those sins, through the medium of
a substitute, and those which were, and still now are, required in the
Pagan religion for the same purpose.

The Pagans, publicly and privately, used lustral water, which, they
thought, had the virtue of purifying the soul, and of remitting the
punishment of certain impurities and sins. The Priests, in solemn
religious ceremonies, aspersed the assistants with it; and the people
kept and used it in their families. In the same manner, the Church of
Rome believes that holy water has the virtue of purifying the soul, and
of remitting the punishment of certain impurities and sins. The Roman
Catholics use it publicly and privately. Every Sunday, before the
celebration of the high mass, the priests asperse the people with holy
water for the aforesaid end; and also pour it on the coffins of the dead
at the funerals. The laymen keep and use it in their families for the
same end.

These lustrations are practiced, even in our days, by many of the
Pagans. The Madegasses believe that they can obtain the forgiveness of
the punishment of their sins in dipping a piece of gold in a vessel full
of water, and in drinking that water. The Father Jesuit Bouchet, a
missionary in India, writes: "The Indians say that in bathing in certain
rivers sins are _entirely_ remitted; and that their mysterious waters
wash not only the bodies, but also purify the souls in an admirable
manner."

This testimony, Chateaubriand adds, is confirmed by the Memoirs of the
English Society of Calcutta. The waters of the Ganges are reputed as
having the greatest expiatory virtue: so the Church of Rome holds that
the baptismal waters remit the original and all other sins, and exempt
those baptized from punishment.

The Pagans believed that certain ceremonies, and their medals
representing the gods, had an expiatory virtue: so the Church of Rome
holds that genuflexions, the Agnus Dei, the beads, the medals of the
saints, and of the virgin Mary, have an expiatory virtue. The Pagans
believed that certain prayers remitted certain sins and their
punishment; so the Church of Rome believes that Novenas, indulgences,
the recitation of the first chapter of the Gospel of John, etc., remit
venial sins, and their punishment. The Pagans went in pilgrimage to
chapels, where the prayers of the priests, they thought, had an
expiatory virtue greater than in other temples; this practice and this
belief have been preserved even by the Mahomedans. Now there are at the
door of the Mosque of Ali, at Mesched-Aly, dervishes, who, for money,
expiate with their prayers the sins of the pilgrims: so the Church of
Rome believes that the expiatory virtue of the prayers made by priests,
in certain chapels of saints and of Mary, where multitudes of pilgrims
resort, is greater than that of the prayers made in other temples.

In China, the invocation of Omyto is sufficient to remit the punishment
of the greatest crimes. It is on account of it that the followers of the
sect of Fo repeat oftentimes, every day, the words, O-myto-Fo! The
Indians believed, and still believe, that when a man expires in
pronouncing the name of God, and in holding, at the same time, the tail
of a cow, he immediately ascends to Paradise. The Bramas never failed,
and even do not now, to read every morning the mysterious legend of
Gosgendre-Mootsjam; because it is a dogma of the Indian religion that
any one who reads this legend every morning, obtains the forgiveness of
the punishment of all his sins; so the Church of Rome holds that any one
who recites the Angelus when the bell rings, in the morning, at noon,
and at sun down, or recites the acts of faith, of hope, and of charity,
obtains the remittance of the punishment of several of his venial sins;
and, also, that any one who regularly recites the prayers of Saint
Brigitte, or who, when he dies, recites with great devotion the prayer
Memorare o piissima, etc., will go to Paradise.

Greece was flooded with rituals, ascribed to Orpheus and to Museus,
prescribing ceremonies, rites, and practices, which had the virtue of
purifying the soul, and of exempting the sinners from the punishment of
their sins. The priests of the Pagans persuaded entire towns, cities,
and nations, that they could be purified of their crimes, and be
exempted from the punishment, which the Deity would inflict upon them,
through the means of expiatory rites, of feasts, and of initiations.
They made the people believe that this purification, and this exemption,
could extend to the living and to the dead, in what they called Teletes,
or mysteries; and it was as a consequence of this belief that the
priests of Cybel, those of Isis, the Orpheotelestes and others, went
among the people to initiate them; but on the condition that they would
pay to them large sums of money. This traffic was practiced even by
priestesses, and bad women. Demosthenes informs us that the mother of
Eschine made a living by it, and also in prostituting her body.

Likewise, the Church of Rome is flooded with rituals prescribing
ceremonies, rites, and practices, which have the virtue of purifying the
soul, and of exempting the sinners from the punishment of their sins.
The priests make towns, cities, and nations believe that they can be
purified of their crimes, and be exempted of the punishment they
deserve, by fasting, by going processionally to churches, or to chapels
of saints and of the virgin Mary. The priests, the monks, the
begging-friars, and even the nuns, go among the people; they pledge
themselves to obtain the forgiveness of their sins, and the exemption
from divine punishment, if they give them sums of money.

The priests of the Pagans offered expiatory sacrifices for the living
and for the dead for money; so, in the Church of Rome, the priests offer
the sacrifice of Mass for the expiation of the sins of the living and
of the dead, if they are well paid. The Pagans believed that the
foundation of temples, their endowment, and other gifts presented to the
gods and to their priests, had an expiatory virtue. Socrates portrayed
the unjust man in saying, that initiation to mysteries caused them to
despise the Tartarus with all its torments. He made the following
remark: "The apologist of injustice says, they frighten us with the
threat of the pains of the Tartarus; but who ignores that we find in the
initiations a remedy to that fear? They are a great resource to us; and
they inform us that there are gods who exempt us from the punishment
deserved by crime. True, we have committed injustice, but injustice has
been pecuniarily profitable to us. We are told that the gods are
appeased by prayers, sacrifices, and offerings." Biache, one of the
interlocutors in the Ezourvedam, said, that there is in the country
called Magouodechan, a sacred spot, where, through some offerings,
ancestors can be freed from the tortures of hell.

Likewise, the Church of Rome holds that the foundation of churches, of
priest's houses, of monasteries, of convents, and of nunneries, and
their endowment; or any other gift, presented to the saints, bishops,
priests, monks, and nuns have a virtue so much the more expiatory for
sins, as they are greater and more valuable. It is owing to this
horrible doctrine, that the Church of Rome has acquired so much church
property that its valuation is beyond any approximate calculation. The
French poet, Boileau, spoke the truth when, in his ninth satire, he
said:

       "Si l'on vient a chercher pour quel secret mystere,
       Alidor, a ses frais, batit un monastere....
       C'est un homme d'honneur, de piete profonde,
       Et qui veut rendre a Dieu ce qu'il a pris au monde."

_Translation_: "If we wish to inquire for what secret mystery Alidor, at
his own expense, built a monastery.... He is a man of honor, of profound
piety, and who wishes to restore to God what he stole from the world."

The Pagans believed that in piously gazing upon certain statues of the
gods their souls were purified; and that the punishment of their sins
was remitted; so, even now, the Indians believe that in simply gazing
upon the shrub Toulouschi they obtain the forgiveness of their sins, and
obtain the exemption from their punishment. Likewise the Church of Rome
holds, that, in gazing piously upon the cross, the Catholics obtain the
forgiveness of their venial sins, and the exemption from their
punishment. The ancient initiations of the Pagans had tribunals of
penance, where a priest, under the name of Koes, heard from the mouth of
the sinners themselves the avowal of their sins, of which their souls
were to be purified, and from the punishment of which they wished to be
exempted. One day the famous Lysandre, confessing his sins to one of
those Koes, was asked by him impudent questions. Lysandre answered him
with this question, "Do you address me those questions in your own name,
or in the name of the Deity?" The Koes answered: "In the name of the
Deity." "Well," Lysandre rejoined, "let me be; if God questions me, I
will answer him." Likewise the Church of Rome has tribunals of penance,
where priests hear from the mouth of the sinners themselves the avowal
of their sins, of which their souls are to be purified, and from the
punishment of which they wish to be exempted. Through the absolution of
the priests the greatest sins, without any exemption, are remitted
entirely, so that they not only are forgiven, but even their punishment.

Even the Church of Rome goes farther in regard to the pretended virtue
of her expiatory practices, than the Pagans ever went. Indeed, it was a
common thing among the Pagans to stigmatize certain crimes, and to call
them irremissible--unexpiable. They excluded from the sanctuaries of
Eleusis, the murderers, the traitors to their country, in a word, all
those who were guilty of atrocious crimes; they were to be excluded from
the Elysium forever, and to be endlessly tortured in the Tartarus. There
were purifications for murder, it is true, but only for involuntary or
necessary murder. When the ancient heroes had committed a murder, they
resorted to expiation; after the sacrifices which were required,
lustral water was poured on the murderous hand; from that moment they
were readmitted in society; and they prepared themselves to new deeds of
bravery. Hercules resorted to expiation when he had slain the Centaurs.
But those sorts of expiations did not purify the soul from all
impurities and crimes.

The great criminals had to dread all their lifetime the horrors of the
Tartarus, or could not expiate their crimes, except by constantly
practicing virtue, and constantly doing good to their fellow men. The
legal purifications were not considered as having the virtue of securing
to all criminals the hope of bliss, to which the righteous were
entitled. Nero did not dare present himself to the temple of Eleusis;
because he was debarred from entering its sanctuary on account of his
atrocious crimes.

The famous Constantine I., to whom the Church of Rome is indebted for
all her past and present aggrandizement, wealth, and power; and whose
name has been, is, and shall always be, accursed by nations, because of
the rivers of blood, of the deluge of ignorance, of superstition, in one
word, of the ocean of crimes against God, against Christ, and against
mankind, which the Church of Rome, enabled by his protection, poured
over the world: Constantine, we say, guilty of all sorts of crimes; his
hands reeking with the blood of his own mother, whom he had slain; and
with the blood of the many, whom he had murdered; and guilty of many
perjuries, presented himself to the Pagan priests to obtain the
absolution of those atrocious crimes, and the exemption from their
punishment.

Constantine was answered, that, among the various sorts of expiations,
there was not one which had the virtue of purifying his soul from so
many and so atrocious crimes, and of exempting him from the punishment
they deserved; and that no religion had resources enough to appease the
justice of the irritated gods; and, let us mark: Constantine was a
mighty emperor. One of his courtiers, seeing the trouble and agitation
of his soul, devoured by the restless and undying remorse, told him that
his sufferings were not hopeless; that there were in the Church of Rome,
purifications which had the virtue of expiating all crimes, without any
exception, that this Church held, that whoever joined it, whatever may
be his crimes, might hope that all his crimes will be forgiven by the
Deity, and that the exemption from their punishment will be obtained.

From that time Constantine took the Church of Rome under his protection.
He was a wicked man who tried to deceive himself, and to appease the
remorse of his conscience. He gave then full scope to his
flagitiousness; and he postponed being baptized until the hour of his
death, because it was, as it is now, a dogma of the Church of Rome, that
baptism purifies the soul from the original and all other sins and
crimes, and that it has also the virtue of exempting those baptized
from the punishment of all their sins. Thus the entry of the temple of
Eleusis was interdicted to Nero; and yet the Church of Rome would have
admitted him within her pale; would have purified his soul; and would
have exempted him from the punishment of all his monstrous crimes, if he
had taken her under his protection. How abominable a Church must be,
when she deals so with tyrants and monsters with a human face! What! if
Nero had been a Roman Catholic and had protected the Church of Rome, she
would have canonized him! Why not? Constantine, as great a criminal as
he was, has been canonized. In the ninth century his name was invoked at
Rome in the ceremonies of the Church, and even now he is considered as a
saint.

In England several churches have been built under the invocation of this
pretended Saint Constantine, who founded at Constantinople a vast and
costly establishment of ill fame. Such are the saints worshiped by the
Church of Rome when she obtains their protection. Christ, reason, and
nature, would never have absolved Nero from his crimes, and from the
punishment they deserved; and yet the Church of Rome would have done it.
Sophocles, in his Aedipe, says, that all the waters of the Danube, and
of the Phase, would have been insufficient to purify, from their crimes,
the souls of the family of Laius; and yet the Church of Rome would have
done it. How truly the Arab poet Abu-Naovas exclaimed: "Lord, we have
indulged to sin and to crime, because we saw that forgiveness soon
followed them."

Therefore there is a striking similarity between the practices required
by the Church of Rome, to obtain the forgiveness of sins, and to be
exempted from the punishment of those sins, through the medium of a
substitute, and those which were required in the Pagan religion for the
same purpose.

2. We prove that the practices required by the Church of Rome to obtain
the forgiveness of sins, and to be exempted from the punishment of those
sins, through the medium of a substitute, were not instituted among
Christians in the first two centuries.

The Roman Catholic theologians do not pretend that the Christians of the
first two centuries held those practices, nor that the Church of Rome
herself held them; but they say that the Church of Rome established them
successively, as the good of Christians required it, according to the
power of government and infallibility granted to her, and to her alone,
by Jesus Christ.

Consequently, the practices required by the Church of Rome, to obtain
the forgiveness of sins, and to be exempted from the punishment of those
sins, were not instituted among Christians in the first two centuries.

We draw the general conclusions of this chapter:

It has been proved that there is a striking similarity between the
practices required by the Church of Rome to obtain the forgiveness of
sins, and to be exempted from the punishment of those sins, and those
which were, and still now are, required in the Pagan religion for the
same purpose; and that those practices were not instituted among
Christians in the first two centuries.

Therefore the Church of Rome borrowed from the Pagans the doctrine of
Vicarious Atonement, namely, that a small number of privileged
Christians obtain the forgiveness of their sins, and are exempted from
the punishment of their sins, through the medium of a substitute.

Since, though the other Partialist Christian Churches rejected the most
of the practices used by the Church of Rome to obtain the forgiveness of
sins, and the exemption from the punishment of those sins, they
preserved the substance of the doctrine, namely, that Jesus Christ had
washed away, or, in other words, atoned for all the sins of those who
would feel the descent of the Holy Spirit in their souls; who would
experience a supernatural change of heart, or, as they commonly term it,
would get religion; and also that through his atonement they were
exempted from the punishment of their sins--the doctrine which they hold
is nothing but the very doctrine, though modified in its circumstances,
of the Church of Rome. Therefore its origin is the same. But it has been
proved that the Church of Rome borrowed from the Pagans, the doctrine
that a small number of privileged Christians obtain the forgiveness of
their sins, and are exempted from the punishment of those sins, through
the medium of a substitute--as she holds it. Therefore it is thereby
proved, that the other Partialist Christian Churches truly borrowed,
from the Pagans, though through the medium of the Church of Rome, the
doctrine that a small number of privileged Christians obtain the
forgiveness of their sins, and are exempted from the punishment of those
sins, through the medium of a substitute--as she holds it.

Therefore the doctrine that a small number of privileged Christians
obtain the forgiveness of their sins, and are exempted from the
punishment of those sins, through the medium of a substitute, is of
Pagan origin. And as, on another hand, it has been proved, in four other
chapters of this work, that the doctrine of a Personal Devil, the
doctrine of Original Sin, the doctrine of Trinity, and the doctrine of
the Supreme Divinity of Jesus Christ, are of Pagan origin--then we
logically draw the conclusion that all the characteristics of the
doctrine of Vicarious Atonement are of Pagan origin. Since all the
characteristics of the doctrine of Vicarious Atonement are of Pagan
origin, then the body itself of the doctrine of Vicarious Atonement is
of Pagan origin.

_Therefore the doctrine of Vicarious Atonement is of Pagan origin._




CONCLUSION OF ALL THE CHAPTERS.

THEREFORE PARTIALIST DOCTRINES ARE OF PAGAN ORIGIN.


_Corollary._--Since the Partialist doctrines are of Pagan origin they
are not taught in the Scriptures, for the Scriptures do not reveal
Paganism. Consequently they ought to be rejected from Christian
Churches, as being Heathen doctrines.




VALEDICTORY.


_Dear Reader_,--Before I drop the pen permit me to address to you a few
valedictory words. If you believe the _Impartialist_, namely,
Universalist doctrines, you are now in possession of an irrefutable
historical proof corroborating your beloved faith, which is satisfactory
to your mind, and sweet to your heart. If from your infancy up to this
day you have been taught, and have believed, the Partialist doctrines,
perhaps you say to yourself: My religious creed is now shaken to its
very foundation; what then will my religious belief be, for the want of
religious principles is the most earnest longing of my soul? Friend,
study the _Impartialist_, namely, Universalist doctrines; compare them
with the teaching of the Scriptures, and you will find them recorded
therein. They truly are the embodiment of the teaching of the
Scriptures, which are themselves embodied in these two vital maxims of
Jesus Christ, written in golden letters on the Universalist banner:
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind.--This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself.--On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."




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Transcriber's note:

  Blank pages have been eliminated.

  Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the
  original.

  A few typographical errors have been corrected.



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