Gonzales also writes, that among the Indians he found a temple Parituræ Virginis, (of the virgin about to bring forth. The good Christian Father Epiphanias glories in the fact, that the prophecy, " Behold a virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son," had been revealed to the Egyptians.Celtic Druids, p. 163. This prophecy, however, should rather have been revealed to the Irish, as its literal accomplishment is so strikingly of a piece with the equally authentic miracles of their patron saint, who sailed across the ocean upon a mill-stone, and contrived to heat an oven red-hot with nothing but ice." Life of the glorious Bishop St. Patrick, by Fr. B. B., St. Omers, 1625, by licence of the Censors of Louvaine, of the Bishop of St. Omers, and of the Commissary and Definitor-general of the Seraphic Order." THE WORD-JESUS CHRIST. The celebrated passage, " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," &c. (John i. 1.) is a fragment of some Pagan treatise on the Platonic philosophy, and as such is quoted by Amelius, a Pagan philosopher, as strictly applicable to the Logos, or Mercury, the WORD, as early as the year 263; and is quoted appropriately as an honourable testimony borne to the Pagan deity, by a barbarian. With no intention further off, than that of recognizing the claims of any human being to that title, Amelius has the words," And this plainly was the WORD, by whom all things were made,; he being himself eternal, as Heraclitus also would say; and by Jove, the same whom the barbarian affirms to have been in the place and dignity of a principal, and to be with God, and to be God, by whom all things were made, and in whom every thing that was made, has its life and being; who, descending into body, and putting on flesh, took the appearance of a man, though even then he gave proof of the majesty of his nature; nay,and after his dissolution,he was deified again."* This is the language of one, of whom there is not the least pretence to show that he was a believer of the * Και στις αρα ην ο λογος, καθ' ον αει οντα τα γινόμενα εγενετο, ως αν και ο Ηρακλειτος αξιώσεις και νη δι', ον ο βαρβαρος αξιοι εν της αρχής ταξει τε και αξία καθεστηκότα προς θεον ειναι, δι ε πανθ' απλως γεγενησθαι εν ω το γενομένων ζων και ζην, και αν πεφυκεναι και εις σώματα πιπτειν, και σαρκα ενδυσάμενον, φανταζ εσθαι ανθρωπον, μετα και το τηνικαυτα δεικνυειν της φύσεως το μεγαλείον αμελεί και αναλυθέντα παλιν αναθεεοθαι και θεον είναι, οιος ην προ το εις σώμα και της σακα Kaι TOν AνðρWжOV KATAXIEIVAL.—Euseb. præp. Evan. lib. xi. c. 19. Citante Lardnero, tom 4, p. 200. Gospel, or even if he had ever heard of it, that he did not reject it; it was the language of clear, undisguised, and unmingled Paganism. The Logos then, or Word, was a designation purely and exclusively appropriate to the Pagan mythology. The Valentinians, a sect of Christian heretics of the first century, approximated so closely to Paganism, as to respect and believe a regular theogony, holding, according to Cyrill, that Depth produced Silence, and upon Silence begat the Logos.* CHAPTER XXVII. BACCHUS-JESUS CHRIST WAS the god of good-cheer, wine, and hilarity; and as such, the poets have been eloquent in his praises. On all occasions of mirth and jollity, they constantly invoked his presence, and as constantly thanked him for the blessings he bestowed. To him they ascribed the greatest happiness of which humanity is capable, the forgetfulness of cares, and the delights of social intercourse. It has been usual for Christians invariably to represent this God as a sensual encourager of inebriation and excess; and reason enough it must be admitted that they have, for giving such a colouring to the matter; since, only by so doing, could they conceal the resemblance which an impartial observance would immediately discover between the Phoenician YESUS, who taught mankind the culture of the vine, and so without a miracle changed their drink from mere water into wine," which cheereth God and man,” (Judges, ix. 13), and the Egyptian Jesus, who, by a manœuvre upon half a dozen water-pots, was believed to have persuaded a company of intoxicated guests, that he had turned water into wine; of which the narrator of the story, with a striking tone of sarcasm, remarks, "This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him," (John ii. 11). As much as to say, that his disciples only would be the advocates of so egregious an imposture." He manifested forth his glory;" that is, his * Βυθος εγέννησε Σιγην, και απο της Σιγης ετεκνοποιεί Λόγον. +"For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."-Matt. xviii. 20. YESUS.-Volney has shown that YES was one of the names of Bacchus, which, with the Latin termination, is nothing else than Yesus, or Jesus. peculiar mythological character, as THE GOD OF WINE, which was in like manner the peculiar characteristic of Bacchus. The real origin of the mystical three letters I HS, surrounded with rays of glory, to this day retained even in our Protestant churches, and falsely supposed to stand for Jesus Hominum Salvator, is none other than the identical name of Bacchus-YES, exhibited in Greek letters, YHZ. -See Hesychius on the word YHΣ, i. e. YES, Bacchus, Sol, the Sun. The well-paid apologists of this and all other absurdities that have obtained their translation from Pagan into Christian legends, in vain endeavour to blink the obscenity betrayed in their Greek text. This miracle was not performed till all the witnesses of it were in the last stage of intoxication. "Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine, and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse; but thou hast kept the good wine until now," is the remark of the Architriclinus, or ruler of the feast, the only individual, perhaps, except those who contributed to the juggle, who could speak at all. "Hast kept the good wine until now;" that is to say, "Till now, that it is all over with them, and you see them sprawling under the table, or scarce knowing whether their heads or heels are uppermost." The original text supports this sense, as the same will be found in the drunken odes of Anacreon: "To arms! But I shall drink. Boy, bring me the goblet! for I had rather lie dead drunk, than dead." Nothing short of a debility of intellect produced by religious enthusiasm, similar to the sedative effects of frequently-repeated intoxication, could have hindered Christians from seeing the deep and pungent sarcasm on their religion involved in this drunken miracle, which a moment's rational reflection would expose. In any sense but that of an imposition preached upon men's senses, the miracle involves a physical impossibility, and a moral contradiction. In no idea that a rational mind can form of the power of God himself, can we conceive that he could make a thing to be and not to be, at the same time; or so operate on the past, as to cause that to have been which really had not been. That fluid, therefore, Οπλιζ εγω δε πινω Anacreon. Πας άνθρωπος πρώτον τον καλον οινον τίθησι, και οταν μεθυσθωσι τότε τον ελάσσω. St. John. whatever it was, which had not been pressed out of the grape,-which had not been generated, concocted, matured and exuded through the secretory ducts of the vine, drawn up by its roots out of the earth, circulated through its capillary tubes, and effunded into its fruit, could not be wine, nor could God himself make it to be so. "That were to make Strange contradiction, which to God himself Millon. The more shrewd and political among those who profess and call themselves Christians, have avowed themselves not a little ashamed of this miracle, have seen and recognized its palpably Pagan character, and sighed, and wished that it were peacefully apocryphized out of its place in the sacred volume. Our only moral use of these Christian admissions shall be to remind our readers, for the advantage of some further stage of our argument, that we have here, in the very volume which has so long been pretended to contain "truth without any mixture of error," an affair not only decidedly and unequivocally fabulous, but physically impossible; and this re-edited under an apparatus of Christian names, and told with circumstances of time, place and character-stet exempli gratia! The Egyptian Bacchus was brought up at Nysa, and is famous as having been the conqueror of India. In Egypt he was called Osiris, in India Dionysius, and not improbably Chrishna, as he was called Adoneus, which signifies the Lord of Heaven, or the LORD AND GIVER OF LIGHT, in Arabia; and Liber, throughout the Roman dominions, from whence is derived our term liberal, for every thing that is generous, frank, and amiable. Though egregiously scandalized by the moderns, as all the Pagan divinities are, where Christians are the carvers, he was far otherwise understood by the ancients. The intention of his imagined presence at the festive board was to restrain and prevent, and not to authorize excess. His discipline prescribed the most strict sobriety, and the most rational and guarded temperance in the use of his best gift to man, which wisely used, exalts as much our moral as it does our physical energies, endears man to man, gives vigour to his understanding, life to his wit, and inspiration to his discourse. Bacchus was, in the strictest and fairest sense of the word, a pure and holy god; he was deity rendered amiable. He is called by Horace in general the modest God, the decent God. The finest moral of his allegorical existence is, that he was never to be seen in company with Mars; so that he had juster claims than any other to be designated “the Prince of Peace." Orpheus, however, directly states that Bacchus was a lawgiver, calls him MOSES, and attributes to him the two tables of the law. It is well known, however, that his characteristic attribute was immortal boyhood; and since it is admitted that no real Bacchus ever existed, but that he was only a mask or figure of some concealed truth, (see Horace's inimitable ode to this deity,) there can be no danger of our dropping the clue of his allegorical identification, in winding it through all the mazes of his vocabulary of names, and all the multifarious personifications of the same primordial idea. But the most striking circumstance of this particular emblem of the SUN is, that in all the ancient forms of invocation to the SUPREME BEING, we find the very identical expressions appropriated to the worship of Bacchus; such as, Io Terombe!-Let us cry unto the Lord! Io! or Io Baccoth!-God, see our tears! Jehovah Evan! Hevoe! and Eloah!- The Author of our existence, the mighty God! Hu Esh!-Thou art the fire! and Elta Esh!-Thou art the life! and Io Nissi !-O Lord, direct us! which last is the literal English of the Latin motto in the arms of the City of London retained to this day, " Domine dirige nos." The Romans, out of all these terms, preferred the name of BACCOTH, of which they composed Bacchus. The more delicate ear of the Greeks was better pleased with the words Io NISSI, out of which they formed Dionysius. That it was none other than the SUN which the Jews themselves understood to be meant, and actually worshipped, under his characteristic epithet of THE LORD, see" confirmation strong as proof of holy writ" in the Jewish general's address to the Sun: "Then spake Joshua to THE LORD, and said, SUN, stand thou still upon Gibeon! So THE SUN stood still in the midst * Orpheus, who for the most part is followed by Homer, was the great introducer of the rites of the heathen worship among the Greeks, being charged with having invented the very names of the gods. He wrote, that all things were made by One Godhead with three names, and that this God is all things,-Hebrew Lexicon, 347. + Bacchum, Orpheus vocat μoon hoc est Moses et beaμopopov-Legislatorem, et eidem tribuit dinλaka Deoμov quasi duplices legis tabulas.-Porney. Panth. Mythicum, p. 57. |