tians, for they perceived at length the sense and meaning of those letters, and that they prognosticated salvation, and LIFE TO COME.”*

This most important evidence of the utter indifference between Christianity and any, even the grossest forms of the ancient Paganism, is supplied by a Christian historian; and independent of its fairness, as taken from such a source, and its inherent verisimilitude, is corroborated by a parallel passage from the ecclesiastical history of Sozomenes, who, about the year 443, wrote the history of the church from the reign of Constantine the Great to that of the younger Theodosius. He is speaking of the temple of the god Serapist-" It is reported that when this temple was destroyed, there appeared some of those characters called hieroglyphics, surrounding the sign of the cross, in engraven stones; and that, by the skilful in these matters, these hieroglyphics were held to have signified this inscription-THE LIFE TO COME! And this became a pretence for becoming Christians to many of the Grecians, because there were even other letters which signified this sacred end when this character appeared."

Thus in every genuine historical document, we are continually met by evidence of the superfluous prodigality of miracles, and that offence against the laws of the drama, as well as of historical probability, which makes a god appear where there was no knot worthy of a god. The Pagans, so far from needing miracles to convert them, were at all times ready to embrace any new faith whatever: no trick could be too gross to fail of success on their easy credulity. They really had not the CAPACITY of inflicting martyrdom; they were ready to be winked and whistled into Christianity.Socrates continues his account:

Εν δε τῷ ναῷ του Σεραπίδος λυομενου, και γυμνουμένου, ηυρητο γραμματα εγκε χαραγμένα τοις λίθοις, τω καλουμένῳ ιερογλυφικῳ. Ησαν δε οι χαρακτήρες σταυρών έχοντες τυπους. Τούτους ορώντες Χριστιανοι τε και Έλληνες, τη ίδια εκατεροι θρησκεια προσηρμοζοντο Χριστιανοι μεν γαρ σημείον του κατα Χριστου σωτηριώδους πάθους είναι λεγοντες τον σταυρον, οικείον είναι τον χαρακτηρα ενόμιζον. Έλληνες δε τι κοινον Χριστω και Σεραπι διελενον, ει ο σταυροειδης χαρακτηρ, αλλο μεν Χριστιανοις, αλλο δε Ελλησι ποιείται το συμβολον. Τούτων δε αμφισβητευμένων, τίνες, των Ελλήνων τω Χριστιανισμῳ προσελθοντες, τα ιερογλυφικα τε γραμματα επισταμένοι, διερμηνεύοντες τον σταυροειδή χαρακτηρα. Ελεγον σημαινειν ζωην Επερχομενην-Socrat. Eccl. Hist. lib. 5, c. 17.

+ Φασι δε του ναου καθαιρούμενου τούτου, τινα των καλουμένων χαρακτήρων, σταυρω σημείω εμφέρεις, εγκεχαραγμένοις τοις λίθοις αναφανηναι. Παρ επιστημονων δε τα τοιαδε ερμηνευθείσαν σημαναι ταυτην την γραφην ΖΩΗΝ ΕΠΕΡΧΟΜΕΝΗΝ τουτο δε προφασιν Χριστιανισμου πολλοις γενεσθαι των ελληνιστών: καθοτι και γράμματα ετέρα τουτο το ιερόν τελος εξεστιν εδηλον, ηνικά ουτος ο χαρακτηρ φανη. Lib. 2, cap. 15.

"The Christians perceiving that this made very much for their religion, made great account thereof, and were not a little proud of it. When as by other hieroglyphical letters it was gathered, that the temple of Serapis should go to ruin when the sign of the cross therein engraven came to light (by that LIFE TO COME was foreshewed), many more embraced the Christian religion, confessed their sins, and were baptized. Thus much have I learned of the cross. ."*-And thus far quote I from the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates, a Christian historian, who lived and wrote about A.D. 412, the contemporary of Damasus bishop of Rome, of Chrysostom of Constantinople, and of the events which he has here recorded. Though the god Serapis stood in so immediate a relation to the Nile, his worship was by no means confined to Egypt; he was worshipped not only in Egypt and in Greece, but also at Rome, and sometimes considered as one and the same as Jupiter Ammon, sometimes as identical with Pluto, Bacchus, Esculapius, Osiris,† and Jesus Christ. It is certain, however, that his most magnificent temple was at Alexandria in Egypt, whence all our most distinguished Christian Fathers and writers derived their education; that the bishops of Serapis, as they alone were justly entitled to be called bishops of Alexandria, while Alexandria was a Pagan city, yet called themselves bishops of Christ; and though Christianity can in no reasonable sense be said to have been established in Alexandria while the temple of Serapis remained-and Tillemont admits that the very first Christian church that was ever built, of which history gives us any certain and express information, was founded by Gregory the wonder-worker, A. D. 244, or after that time, yet have we an uninterrupted succession of bishops of Alexandria from the evangelist Mark, who we are required to believe was the first of them, downwards. The Jews, it seems, took Serapis to be identical with the patriarch Joseph the son of Sarah.§

In all the representations of the crucified King of the Jews that have come down to us, the essential requisites of the Egyptian hieroglyphic have been most religiously preserved. The ribs of the figure are almost breaking through his skin, and it seems doubtful whether the being

Lib. 5, c. 18, p. 348. Londoni Ed. anno 1649.

+ Pomey De Diis Indiget, p. 268.

Quoted in Lardner's Credibility, vol. i, p. 594. 5 Quasi Σαρας απο

so represented had died of hunger before he was nailed to the cross, or had expired under the inconveniences of that uncouth appointment. But the most extraordinary phoenomenon attending this mystical personification, is, that his hieroglyphical history will be found to dove-tail exactly into all the various and apparently contradictory developements of the Christian theology. Thus the cross was blessed, but the figure upon it was made a curse; and accordingly, as it was the cross, or the crucified, that was referred to, so shall we find it, even in the same writings, spoken of as the blessed cross or the accursed cross, as a badge of honour or of shame, of joy or of sorrow, of triumph or of humiliation.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE TAURIBOLIA

WERE expiatory sacrifices, which were renewed every twenty years, and conferred the highest degree of holiness and sanctification on the partakers of those holy mysteries. Prudentius informs us, that in these religious ceremonies the Pagan priests, or whoever was ambitious of obtaining a mystical REGENERATION, excavated a pit, into which he descended. The pit was then covered over with planks, which were bored full of holes, so that the blood and what not of the goat, bull, or ram that was sacrificed upon them, might trickle through the holes upon the body of the person beneath; who, having been thus sanctified, and born again, was obliged ever after to walk in newness of life; to maintain a conduct of the most inflexible virtue; to shew forth God's praise, not only with his lips, but in his life, by giving up himself to God's service; and by walking before him in holiness and righteousness all his days.

Potter, however, in his Antiquities, informs us, that the Athenians had a less offensive way than this to convey the spiritual blessedness of regeneration. The person desirous of it, whether male or female, was slipped through a characteristic part of the female habiliments, and thenceforth recognized as one who had been born again. The only observable coincidence of the Tauribolia with the great sacrifice of Christianity, consists in the fact, that the grossest sense of the terms in which the Pagan obscenity

can be described, finds its excuse, if not its sanctification, by its adoption into the text of our New Testament, where we read of " the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than the blood of Abel,” (Heb. xii. 24); and "SPRINKLING of the blood of Jesus Christ," (1 Pet. i. 2). And if the blood of bulls and goats, and the what-not of an heifer, SPRINKLING the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ purge your consciences."

Thus precisely the same effects of an imaginary spiritual regeneration are ascribed to precisely the same nasty ingredients-blood, &c.-used in precisely the same mode of application-sprinkling. It may be that we, of more civilized times, and more exalted ideas, have acquired the art of producing refined sweets out of these grossnesses; but we have no right to forget that our chemistry was entirely unknown to those to whom this language was at first propounded. They who were to be converted by it from their Paganism into the new religion, must have had the one put upon them in the place of the other, without their ever being able to perceive the difference.

CHAPTER XXXI.

BAPTISM.

THE Baptæ, or Baptists, were an effeminate and debauched order of priests, belonging to the goddess Cotytto, the unchaste Venus, in opposition and contradistinction to the celestial deity of that name, who was ever attended with the Graces, and whose worship tended to elevate and exalt the moral character, and to sanctify the commerce of generation with all that is delicate in sentiment and tender in affection. No worshipper of Venus could endure the thought of impurity. Neglect of the holiness which her rites enjoined was ever punished with degradation of mind and loss of beauty and health.* The Baptists are satirized by Juvenal. They take their name from their stated dippings and washings, by way of purification, though it seems

* The man after God's own heart exhibits himself as an awful instance of the vengeance of Venus on one who turned the grace of God (for Venus was addressed, "Be thou God," or Goddess) into lasciviousness: "My wounds stink and are corrupt, through my lasciviousness; neither is there any rest in my bones, by reason of my sin."-Psalm xxxviii.

they were dipped in warm water, and were to be made clean and pure, that they might wallow and defile themselves the more, as their nocturnal rites consisted chiefly of lascivious dances and other abominations. The Baptists, or Anabaptists, as they are called, continue as an order of religionists among Christians, under precisely the same name. The licentious character of the order of religionists from whom they are descended, has received its correction from the improved intelligence, and, consequently, improved morality of the times. But the most unquestionable evidence confirms the fact, that the Christian Baptists of Germany, in the fourteenth century, and sometime before and after, came short of no impurities that could have characterized the Antinomian priests of Cotytto.

ASTROLOGICAL CHARACTER OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.

The character of John the Baptist, like all the other personages of the Gospel story, presents precisely the same analogy to the system of astronomy which we trace in every personification of the ancient heathenism. Like all the other genii or saints, he presides over his particular day, or, rather, in mythological language, is that day; and, as if no room for doubt as to his identity should be left, the calendars attached to our church of England prayer-book have fixed that day as the 24th of June, the season peculiarly adapted to baptisms or bathings, precisely the day on which the sun has exhibited one degree of descent from his highest elevation, and which stands directly over and looks down upon the 25th of December, the day fixed for the birth of Christ, when he first appears to have gained one degree of ascent from his lowest declension. In exact accordance with which astronomical positions, we find the genius of the 24th of June (St. John) looking down upon the genius of the 25th of December (the new born Jesus), and saying, "He must increase, but I must decrease," (John iii. 30), as the days begin to lengthen from the 25th of December, and to decrease or shorten from the 24th of June downwards, till they reach the shortest, of which the genius or saint is the unbelieving Thomas.

The learned and ingenious historian of the Celtic Druids, of whose labours I have greatly availed myself, maintains that "the Essenes were descended from the prophet Elijah, and the Carmelite monks from the Essenes,

P