(Vol. viii., p. 468.)
About the year 1827, when the prosecutions for blasphemy were leading
hundreds and thousands to see what could be said against Christianity, with
a very powerful bias to make the most of all that they could find, some
friends of mine, of more ingenuity than erudition, strongly recommended to
my attention the works of a shoemaker at Norwich, named Mackey, who they
said was more learned than any one else, and had completely shown up _the
thing_. It is worth a note that I perfectly remember the cause of their
excitement to have been the imprisonment of the Rev. Robert Taylor, for
publishing various arguments against revelation. I examined several works
of Mackey's, and I have yet one or two bound up among my wonders of nature
and art. As in time to come, when neither love nor money will procure a
copy of these books, some tradition may set inquirers looking after them,
perhaps it may be worth while to preserve a couple of extracts for the
benefit of those who have the sense to hunt the index of "N. & Q." before
they give up anything.
"The Virgin Andromeda, the daughter of _Cepheus_ and _Cassiopeia_, was
the representative of Palestina; a long, narrow, rocky strip of land;
figuratively called the daughter of Rocks and Mountains; because it is
a country abounding with rocks and stones. And the Greeks, really
supposing _Cepha_, a rock or stone, to have been the young ladies
father, added their sign of the masculine gender to it, and it became
Cepha-_us_. And mount Cassius being its southern boundary was called
_Cassiobi_; from its being also the boundary of the _overflowed Nile_,
called Obi, which the Greeks {566} softened into _Cassiopeia_, and
supposed it to have been her mother;..."--_Mythological Astronomy, part
second_, Norwich, 1823, 12mo., p. xiii.
"The story of ABRAHAM, notwithstanding all the endeavours of
theologians to give it the appearance of the history of human beings,
has preserved its mythological features with an outline and colouring,
easily to be recognised by every son of _Urania_ [Ur of the Chaldees is
subsequently made to contain the root of _Uranus_]. We have just seen
that the Egyptians have their harvest about the time which the sun
_passes over_ the equator, and if we go back to the time of _Abraham_
we shall find that the equator [perhaps he means equinox] was in
_Taurus_; the Egyptians must, then, have had their harvest while the
sun was in the Bull; the Bull was, therefore, in their figurative way
of speaking, the father of harvest, not only because he ploughed the
ground, but because the sun was there when they got in their harvest:
thus the Bull was doubly distinguished as their benefactor; he was now,
more than ever, become the _Bull of life_, i. e. he was not only called
_Abir_, the Bull, but _Abir-am_ or Ab'-r-am, the _Bull of life_,--the
father of harvest. And as their harvest was originally under the
direction of Iseth, or Isis, whatever belonged to harvest was _Isiac_;
but the Bull, _Abiram_, was now become the _father of Isiac_! and to
give this the appearance of a human descent, they added to Abir, the
masculine affix _ah_; then it became AB'-RH-AM who was the father of
Isiac. And we actually find _this equivoque_ in the hebrew history of
_Abram_ whom the Lord afterwards called _Abraham_, who was the _father
of Isaac_, whose seed was to be countless as the sand on the sea-shore
for multitude; even this is truly applied to _Isiac_ the offspring of
Ab'-rh-am; for countless indeed are the offspring of the _scythe and
sickle_! but if we allow _Isiac_ to be a _real son of Ab-rah-am_ we
must enquire after his _mother_. During the time that the equator
[perhaps he means the sun] is passing through the constellation of the
Bull in the spring, the Bull would _rise in the east_ every morning in
the harvest time, in Egypt,--but in the _poetical language of the
ancients_, it would be said that, when ABIR-AM _consorts_ with _Aurora_
he will produce _Isiac_. But _Aurora_ is well known to be the _golden
splendour of the east_, and the brightness of the east is called
_Zara_, and the morning star is _Serah_, in the eastern languages, and
we find a similar change of sound in the name of Isaac's mother, whom
the Lord would no longer call _Sarai_ but Sarah. _These_ ARE remarkable
coincidences!"--_Companion to the Mythological Astronomy_, Norwich,
1824, 12mo. pp. 177-179.