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 Philolaüs, 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 Indiæ 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 Nicolaïtes, 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._