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declared that he only knew that he knew nothing,-so that he, after all his reasonings, after the fall, knew as much as Adam and Eve did by intuition, before the fall; though it must be confessed that the woman Eve's reply to the wily serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden," &c., has much of reason about it, and would lead us to imply or presume that she had some positive knowledge else, how should she know one tree from another, or how, without a power of abstraction, could she compare together certain individual roots, trunks, and branches,-note their points of similarity or dissimilarity, agreement or disagreement, and include them all under the general term trees?

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In the book of Genesis, therefore, we must look for the funda mental dogma of the Christian religion; for even in the opinions of Christians themselves, the incarnation of Christ was necessary, because the serpent had not subtilly and insidiously seduced the first woman called Eve, "because she was the mother of all living." Like the Siamese twins, these two dogmas are held together by what may be called a natural fastening; a forcible separation of the twins of Siam would probably have been fatal to both, and any theological doctor who attempts to cut the gordian knot which ties the sin of man through Adam, to the redemption through Jesus Christ, must fail; or should he succeed, he will certainly destroy the existence both of Adam and of Christ; no sin-no reparation; no fall-no redemption!

But the fall of man, or the supposition of the double state of man, at first created by God, or the good principle, enjoying all the delights of this glorious world, and afterwards passing under the dominion of the serpent Satan, Devil, or bad principle, and to a state of misery and degradation, from which he could not be saved or withdrawn but by the good deity, the principle of good or of light, is merely a cosmogonic fable, of precisely the same nature as those made by the Magi, or priests of Persia, upon Ormusd and Ahrimanes, to which fable we have already called the attention of our readers. We say, all that is related in the book of Genesis with regard to Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, is a cosmogonic fable, of the same character as that taught by the priests of Mithra, or rather, that the fable of Genesis was copied from the Persian books, where we find that the Magi were accustomed to represent the world under the emblem of an egg divided into twelve parts, six of which parts belonged to Ormusd, the god, author of good and of light, and six to Ahrimanes, author of all evil and of darkness.

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These two books also treat of the combined action of these two principles, and how the good and the evil of nature resulted therefrom.

That dogma of the two principles presiding over and governing all nature, was not peculiar to the Persian cosmogonist; but, as Plutarch has properly observed, was the basis of all theologies, to which he adds, that "It is not necessary to believe that the principles of the universe may be inanimate bodies, as Democritus and Epicurus seemed to imagine, nor that a matter without quality was organized and ordained by one only reason, or providence, mistress of all things, as said by the Stoics; for it is not possible that one only being, good or bad, could have been the cause of all things, as God, if good, could not have been the cause of evil. The harmony of this world is a combination of contraries, as the cords of a lyre, or the strings of a harp, which bend and unbend, Never, as the poet Euripides has wisely said, is good separated from evil, there is—there must be a melange, or mixture, containing the one and the other. That opinion upon the two principles (continues Plutarch) is from all antiquity; it has passed from the theologians and the legislators, to the poets and the philosophers. Its author is not known, but the opinion is substantiated and proved by the traditions of the human race; it is consecrated by the mysteries and the sacrifices with the Greeks and with the barbarians. Every where has been and is acknowledged the dogma of the two principles, opposed in their nature, which by their contrariety, produce the melange of good and evil we every where behold. It is ridiculous to suppose that there is one dispensator only, who draws events as a liquor in two casks, in order to mix them together and give to us the mixture; for nature produces nothing here below which has not both the good and the evil. But it is necessary to acknowledge two contrary causes-two opposing powers-the one carrying towards the right-the other towards the left, and which govern thus our lives and all the sublunary world, which by that reason, is subject to so many changes and alterations and irregularities of all kinds; for as no effect can be produced without a cause, and if the good cannot be the cause of the bad, it is absolutely necessary that there should be a cause for evil and a cause for good."

It will at once be perceived from the last phrase of Plutarch, that the true origin of the dogma of the two principles is to be found in the difficulty that men have had in all time to reconcile their knowledge, that misery abounds with the opinion they would wil

lingly have entertained-that a benevolent, all-wise, and all-powerful Deity, held in his hand the universe, and weighed as in a balance the destinies of men. If, said they, God be all-powerful and benevolent, why does moral evil evist ? and if he is not allpowerful, he must be controlled and thwarted in his good intentions by some evil spirit, less benevolent but no less powerful than himself. The supposition of one supreme cause could not explain away the existence of evil, nor satisfactorily account for it; and the two opposing effects led them to infer two opposing causes, antagonistic in their nature and in their actions. That dogma, adds Plutarch, "has been generally received by all people, and above all by those who have had the highest reputation for wisdom. They have all admitted two Gods, of different talents-if the expression may be permitted to me-one of whom delighteth to do good, the other delighteth to do evil; and between the two we have all the evil that exists in the world. To the first is given the title of God, and to the other, that of Devil or Demon.”

In the cosmogony, or Genesis of the Hebrews, we see the same two principles-the one called God, the author of all excellence, who exclaims, after his daily toils, that he sees this that he has made is good, " And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he seas; and God saw that it was good," &c.; and after him comes another principle, called Demon, or Devil, or Satan, who corrupts the good the first has made, and introduces evil, death, and sin, among the human family; for though the serpent was much honored by the Judiens and Egyptians, and symbolized with them as wisdom and eternity, with the Jews the serpent was despised and held in abomination; indeed, almost all those things held in veneration by the Egyptians as symbolical of physical or moral phenomena, were execrated by the Jews, who were peculiar people, with very confined notions of things, and were, in consequence, filled with antipathy and groundless prejudice against the customs and manners of other nations, whose gods they were taught to abhor, whose altars they were commanded to throw down, and whose people they were bidden to put to the edge of sword. So that we need not wonder that the serpent, so much venerated by the Egyptians, should have been despised by the Jews, and in their cosmogony made the symbol of the spirit of evil or of darkness. The cosmogony itself, we wish our readers to bear in mind, was copied from the ancient cosmogony of the Persians, as may be seen by a reference to their books. All

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the dogmas usually attributed to Moses were, in fact, borrowed from the books of Zoroastre, who equally admitted two principles, according to Plutarch, the one called Oromaze and the other Ahrimanes. The Persians say of the first, that he was of the nature of light; and of the other, that he was of the nature of darkness. With the Egyptians, the first was called Osiris, and the second Typhon-eternal enemy of the first.

All the sacred books of the Persians and the Egyptians, contain marvellous recitals and strange allegories respecting the divers combats that Ahrimanes and his angels delivered to Oromaze, and that Typhon delivered to Osiris. These fables have been repeated by the Greeks in the wars of the Titans and Giants with feet in the form of serpents, against Jupiter, or against the principle of good or of light; for Jupiter, in the theology of the Greeks, as Plutarch very well observes, " answers to the Oromaze of the Persians, and the Osiris of the Egyptians.

To these examples, cited by Plutarch, which are drawn from the theology of the Persians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Chaldeans, many more might be added in justification of what is here advanced as to the belief so generally spread, that the universe is under the dominion of two rural chiefs, who are eternally struggling for mastery, and that this dogma belongs to all theologies.

The people of Madagascar acknowledge the two principles; they give, like the Jews, to the bad, the attributes of the serpent. They call the good principle Jadhar, or the great God, all-powerful, and the bad principle they call Angat; but, like the Christians, though they make their God all-powerful, they say he has either not the power or the will to destroy Angat, or, as we call him, the Devil; but neither the priests of Madagascar nor the priests of Europe can afford to destroy the devil-his services are so valuable and necessary to the welfare of governments and religions—that is, governors and theologians, that they cannot possibly be dispensed with. The people of Madagascar, of Pegu, of Java, and the Hottentots, pray not at all to the good deity-he, they consider, is quite good enough to do without it, so that, the very reason given by Christians why we should pray to God, is the self-same reason why the Madagas cars and others, think we should not, so true it is that

Custom and fancy oft our fate decide;

And what is this man's shame is 'tother's pride.

London: H. Hetherington; A. Heywood, Manchester; and all Booksellers.
J. Taylor, Printer, 29, Smallbrook Street, Birmingham.

EXISTENCE OF CHRIST

AS A HUMAN BEING,

DISPROVED!

BY IRRESISTIBLE EVIDENCE, IN A SERIES OF LETTERS,

FROM A GERMAN JEW,

ADDRESSED TO CHRISTIANS OF ALL DENOMINATIONS.

LETTER 20.

WEEKLY.

ONE PENNY.

"I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel. Before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am the Lord, and besides me there is no Saviour."-ISAIAH XLIII. 3, 10, 11.

CHRISTIANS,

In Genesis we read (chapter 1, v. 31)-" And God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day." (Chap. 2, v. 1, 2) "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made." These texts require some explanation.

Time, says the author of the Boundesh, or Genesis of the Persians, is in all, twelve thousand years; the six thousand of God include the signs of the lamb, the bull, the twins, the lion, and the virgin, making six thousand years; for the Persians supposing, that from time without bounds, or from eternity, arose a certain limited period, which, however, renewed itself unceasingly; they divided such period in twelve thousand parts, that in the eastern style of allegory, they named years. Six thousand of these periods or years, they said, belonged to God or the good principle, and the other six, to the Devil or had principle-or as they call them, Ormusd and Ahrimanes. And, in order that their meaning might not be mistaken, the Persian priests made each of these divisions, or each of these thousand parts, answer to one of the signs through which the Sun passes, or seems to pass, during the earth's annual revolution,

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