[1] "The doctrine of the immortality of the soul, if it is a real
advantage, follows unavoidably from the idea of God. The _best_ Being, he
must _will_ the best of good things; the _wisest_, he must devise plans
for that effect; the _most powerful_, he must bring it about. None can
deny this."--THEO. PARKER, _Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion_,
b. ii. ch. viii. p. 205.
[2] "This institution of religion, like society, friendship, and marriage,
comes out of a principle, deep and permanent in the heart: as humble, and
transient, and partial institutions come out of humble, transient, and
partial wants, and are to be traced to the senses and the phenomena of
life, so this sublime, permanent, and useful institution came out from
sublime, permanent, and universal wants, and must be referred to the soul,
and the unchanging realities of life."--PARKER, _Discourse of Religion_,
b. i. ch. i. p. 14.
[3] "The sages of all nations, ages, and religions had some ideas of these
sublime doctrines, though more or less degraded, adulterated and obscured;
and these scattered hints and vestiges of the most sacred and exalted
truths were originally rays and emanations of ancient and primitive
traditions, handed down from, generation to generation, since the
beginning of the world, or at least since the fall of man, to all
mankind."--CHEV. RAMSAY, _Philos. Princ. of Nat. and Rev. Relig._, vol ii.
p. 8.
[4] "In this form, not only the common objects above enumerated, but gems,
metals, stones that fell from heaven, images, carved bits of wood, stuffed
skins of beasts, like the medicine-bags of the North American Indians, are
reckoned as divinities, and so become objects of adoration. But in this
case, the visible object, is idealized; not worshipped as the brute thing
really is, but as the type and symbol of God."--PARKER, _Disc. of Relig._
b. i. ch. v. p. 50.
[5] A recent writer thus eloquently refers to the universality, in ancient
times, of sun-worship: "Sabaism, the worship of light, prevailed amongst
all the leading nations of the early world. By the rivers of India, on the
mountains of Persia, in the plains of Assyria, early mankind thus adored,
the higher spirits in each country rising in spiritual thought from the
solar orb up to Him whose vicegerent it seems--to the Sun of all being,
whose divine light irradiates and purifies the world of soul, as the solar
radiance does the world of sense. Egypt, too, though its faith be but
dimly known to us, joined in this worship; Syria raised her grand temples
to the sun; the joyous Greeks sported with the thought while feeling it,
almost hiding it under the mythic individuality which their lively fancy
superimposed upon it. Even prosaic China makes offerings to the yellow orb
of day; the wandering Celts and Teutons held feasts to it, amidst the
primeval forests of Northern Europe; and, with a savagery characteristic
of the American aborigines, the sun temples of Mexico streamed with human
blood in honor of the beneficent orb."--_The Castes and Creeds of India_,
Blackw. Mag., vol. lxxxi. p. 317.--"There is no people whose religion is
known to us," says the Abbé Banier, "neither in our own continent nor in
that of America, that has not paid the sun a religious worship, if we
except some inhabitants of the torrid zone, who are continually cursing
the sun for scorching them with his beams."--_Mythology_, lib. iii. ch.
iii.--Macrobius, in his _Saturnalia_, undertakes to prove that all the
gods of Paganism may be reduced to the sun.
[6] "Varro de religionibus loquens, evidenter dicit, multa esse vera, quae
vulgo scire non sit utile; multaque, quae tametsi falsa sint, aliter
existimare populum expediat."--St. AUGUSTINE, _De Civil. Dei._--We must
regret, with the learned Valloisin, that the sixteen books of Varro, on
the religious antiquities of the ancients, have been lost; and the regret
is enhanced by the reflection that they existed until the beginning of the
fourteenth century, and disappeared only when their preservation for less
than two centuries more would, by the discovery of printing, have secured
their perpetuity.
[7] Strabo, Geog., lib. i.
[8] Maurice, Indian Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 297.
[9] Div. Leg., vol. i. b. ii. § iv. p. 193, 10th Lond. edit.
[10] The hidden doctrines of the unity of the Deity and the immortality of
the soul were taught originally in all the Mysteries, even those of Cupid
and Bacchus.--WARBURTON, apud Spence's _Anecdotes_, p. 309.
[11] Isoc. Paneg., p. 59.
[12] Apud Arrian. Dissert., lib. iii. c. xxi.
[13] Phaedo.
[14] Dissert. on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, in the Pamphleteer,
vol. viii. p. 53.
[15] Symbol. und Mythol. der Alt. Völk.
[16] In these Mysteries, after the people had for a long time bewailed the
loss of a particular person, he was at last supposed to be restored to
life.--BRYANT, _Anal. of Anc. Mythology_, vol. iii. p. 176.
[17] Herod. Hist., lib. iii. c. clxxi.
[18] The legend says it was cut into _fourteen_ pieces. Compare this with
the _fourteen_ days of burial in the masonic legend of the third degree.
Why the particular number in each? It has been thought by some, that in
the latter legend there was a reference to the half of the moon's age, or
its dark period, symbolic of the darkness of death, followed by the
fourteen days of bright moon, or restoration to life.
[19] Mystères du Paganisme, tom. i. p. 6.
[20] Notes to Rawlinson's Herodotus, b. ii. ch. clxxi. Mr. Bryant
expresses the same opinion: "The principal rites in Egypt were confessedly
for a person lost and consigned for a time to darkness, who was at last
found. This person I have mentioned to have been described under the
character of Osiris."--_Analysis of Ancient Mythology_, vol. iii. p. 177.
[21] Spirit of Masonry, p. 100.
[22] Varro, according to St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, vi. 5), says that
among the ancients there were three kinds of theology--a _mythical_, which
was used by the poets; a _physical_, by the philosophers, and a _civil_,
by the people.
[23] "Tous les ans," says Sainte Croix, "pendant les jours consacrés au
souvenir de sa mort, tout étoit plongé dans la tristesse: on ne cessoit de
pousser des gémissemens; on alloit même jusqu'à se flageller et se donner
des coups. Le dernier jour de ce deuil, on faisoit des sacrifices funèbres
en l'honneur de ce dieu. Le jour suivant, on recevoit la nouvelle
qu'Adonis venoit d'être rappelé à la vie, qui mettoit fin à leur
deuil."--_Recherches sur les Myst. du Paganisme_, tom. ii. p. 105.
[24] Clement of Alexandria calls them μυστήρια τὰ πρὸ μυστηρίων, "the
mysteries before the mysteries."
[25] Les petits mystères ne consistoient qu'en cérémonies
préparatoires.--_Sainte Croix_, i. 297.--As to the oath of secrecy, Bryant
says, "The first thing at these awful meetings was to offer an oath of
secrecy to all who were to be initiated, after which they proceeded to the
ceremonies."--_Anal. of Anc. Myth._, vol. iii. p. 174.--The Orphic
Argonautics allude to the oath: μετὰ δ' ὁρϗια Μύσῖαις, ϗ. τ. λ., "after
the oath was administered to the mystes," &c.--_Orph. Argon._, v. 11.
[26] The satirical pen of Aristophanes has not spared the Dionysiac
festivals. But the raillery and sarcasm of a comic writer must always be
received with many grains of allowance. He has, at least, been candid
enough to confess that no one could be initiated who had been guilty of
any crime against his country or the public security.--_Ranae_, v.
360-365.--Euripides makes the chorus in his Bacchae proclaim that the
Mysteries were practised only for virtuous purposes. In Rome, however,
there can be little doubt that the initiations partook at length of a
licentious character. "On ne peut douter," says Ste. Croix, "que
l'introduction des fêtes de Bacchus en Italie n'ait accéleré les progrès
du libertinage et de la débauche dans cette contrée."--_Myst. du Pag._,
tom. ii. p. 91.--St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, lib. vii. c. xxi.) inveighs
against the impurity of the ceremonies in Italy of the sacred rites of
Bacchus. But even he does not deny that the motive with which they were
performed was of a religious, or at least superstitious nature--"Sic
videlicet Liber deus placandus fuerat." The propitiation of a deity was
certainly a religious act.
[27] Hist. Greece, vol. ii. p. 140.
[28] This language is quoted from Robison (_Proofs of a Conspiracy_, p.
20, Lond. edit. 1797), whom none will suspect or accuse of an undue
veneration for the antiquity or the morality of the masonic order.
[29] We must not confound these Asiatic builders with the play-actors, who
were subsequently called by the Greeks, as we learn from Aulus Gellius
(lib. xx. cap. 4), "artificers of Dionysus"--Διονυσιαϗοι τεχνιταὶ.
[30] There is abundant evidence, among ancient authors, of the existence
of signs and passwords in the Mysteries. Thus Apuleius, in his Apology,
says, "Si qui forte adest eorundem Solemnium mihi particeps, signum dato,"
etc.; that is, "If any one happens to be present who has been initiated
into the same rites as myself, if he will give me the sign, he shall then
be at liberty to hear what it is that I keep with so much care." Plautus
also alludes to this usage, when, in his "Miles Gloriosus," act iv. sc. 2,
he makes Milphidippa say to Pyrgopolonices, "Cedo signum, si harunc
Baccharum es;" i.e., "Give the sign if you are one of these Bacchae," or
initiates into the Mysteries of Bacchus. Clemens Alexandrinus calls these
modes of recognition σωθηματα, as if _means of safety_. Apuleius elsewhere
uses _memoracula_, I think to denote passwords, when he says, "sanctissimè
sacrorum signa et memoracula custodire," which I am inclined to translate,
"most scrupulously to preserve the signs and passwords of the sacred
rites."
[31] The Baron de Sainte Croix gives this brief view of the ceremonies:
"Dans ces mystères on employoit, pour remplir l'âme des assistans d'une
sainte horreur, les mêmes moyens qu'à Eleusis. L'apparition de fantômes et
de divers objets propres à effrayer, sembloit disposer les esprits à la
crédulité. Ils en avoient sans doute besoin, pour ajouter foi à toutes les
explications des mystagogues: elles rouloient sur le massacre de Bacchus
par les Titans," &c.--_Recherches sur les Mystères du Paganisme_, tom. ii.
sect. vii. art. iii. p. 89.
[32] Lawrie, Hist. of Freemasonry, p. 27.
[33] Vincentius Lirinensis or Vincent of Lirens, who lived in the fifth
century of the Christian era, wrote a controversial treatise entitled
"Commonitorium," remarkable for the blind veneration which it pays to the
voice of tradition. The rule which he there lays down, and which is cited
in the text, may be considered, in a modified application, as an axiom by
which we may test the _probability_, at least, of all sorts of traditions.
None out of the pale of Vincent's church will go so far as he did in
making it the criterion of positive truth.
[34] Prolog. zu einer wissenshaftlich. Mythologie.
[35] In German _hutten_, in English _lodges_, whence the masonic term.
[36] Historical Essay on Architecture, ch. xxi.
[37] Bishop England, in his "Explanation of the Mass," says that in every
ceremony we must look for three meanings: "the first, the literal,
natural, and, it may be said, the original meaning; the second, the
figurative or emblematic signification; and thirdly, the pious or
religious meaning: frequently the two last will be found the same;
sometimes all three will be found combined." Here lies the true difference
between the symbolism of the church and that of Masonry. In the former,
the symbolic meaning was an afterthought applied to the original, literal
one; in the latter, the symbolic was always the original signification of
every ceremony.
[38] /P "Was not all the knowledge Of the Egyptians writ in mystic
symbols? Speak not the Scriptures oft in parables? Are not the choicest
fables of the poets, That were the fountains and first springs of wisdom,
Wrapped in perplexed allegories?"