ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES

CHRISTIAN SACRAMENT

Compared.

1. "But as the benefit of 1. "For as the benefit is great,

initiation was great, such as were convicted of witchcraft, murder, even though unintentional, or any other heinous crimes, were debarred from those mysteries."-Bell's Panth. in lo

co quo res.

2. At their entrance, purifying themselves by washing their hands in holy water, they were at the same time admonished to present themselves with pure minds, without which the external cleanness of the body would by no means be accepted.

3. The priests who officiated in these sacred solemnities, were called Hierophants, or revealers of holy things.

4. After this, they were dismissed in these words :

Κογξ Ομπαξ.

if, with a true penitent heart and lively faith, we receive that holy sacrament, &c. if any be an open and notorious evil-liver, or hath done wrong to his neighbour, &c. that he presume not to come to the Lord's table.". -Communion Service.

If it were possible to be mistaken in the significancy of the monogram of Bacchus, the IH S, to whose honour, in conjunction with CERES, these holy mysteries were distinctively dedicated, the insertion of those letters in a circle of rays of glory, over the centre of the holy table, is an hieroglyphic that depends not on the fallibility of translation, but conveys a sense that cannot be misread by any eye on which the sun's light shines. I H S are Greek characters, by ignorance taken for Roman letters; and YES, which is the proper reading of those letters, is none other than the very identical name of BACCHUS, that is, of the SUN, of which BACCHUS was one of the most distinguished personifications; And YES, or IES, with the Latin termination us, added to it, is Jesus. The surrounding rays of glory, as expressive of the sun's light, make the identity of Christ and Bacchus as clear as the sun.

These rays of glory are a sort of universal letter that cannot be misread or misinterpreted; no written lan

guage, no words that man could utter, could so distinctly, so expressively say that it was the SUN, and nothing but the Sun, that was so emblemized. And these rays are seen alike surrounding the heads of the Indian CHREESHNA, as he is exhibited in the beautiful plate engraved by Barlow, and inscribed to the Archbishop of Canterbury; round the Grecian Apollo; and in all our pictures of Jesus Christ. Nay, more the epithet THE LORD, as we have seen, was peculiarly and distinctively appropriate to the SUN, and to all personifications of the Sun; so that the SUN and the LORD were perfectly synonymous, and Sun's day and the Lord's day the same to every nation on whom his light hath shone.

As it was especially to the honour of Bacchus, as the SUN, that the mysteries were celebrated, so the bread and wine which the Lord (or Sun) had commanded to be received, was called the Lord's supper. Throughout the whole ceremony, the name of the Lord was many times repeated, and his brightness or glory, not only exhibited to the eye by the rays which surrounded his name, but was made the peculiar theme or subject of their triumphant exultation. Now bring we up our most sacred Christian ordinance ! That also is designated, as the ceremony in honour of Bacchus was, the Lord's supper. In that also all other epithets of the deity so honoured, are merged in the peculiar appropriation of the term THE LORD. It would sound irreverently, even in Christian ears, to call it Jesus's supper, or Jesus's table; it is always termed the Lord's. And as in the Lord's supper of the ancient idolators at Eleusis, it was the benefit which they received from the sun's rays or glory that were commemorated, so in our Christian orgies, it is the glory or brightness of the same deity which is peculiarly symbolized and honoured. A poor Jewish peasant never was, nor could have been called the LORD. Let us take words according to the meaning of words, and not suffer our reason to be sophisticated by mere sounds, which have in themselves no meaning at all, and we shall see that our English word GLORY is but a ridiculously sonorous mouthing of its original, CLARY. The exact meaning of clary is brightness; the attribute of brightness is peculiarly characteristic of the SUN use only the meaning of the word, instead of its unmeaning sound, wherever it occurs, and the heliolatrous sense and origination of our Christian Communion Service, and its absolute identity with the Pagan myste

ries of Eleusis, can no longer evade detection; for thus run the Eleusinian and the Christian mysteries, like linked horses in a chariot, step for step, and phrase for phrase, together.

THE DOXOLOGY.

"Brightness be to God on high! We praise thee, we brighten thee (that is, we say that thou art bright), we give thee thanks for thy great brightness. Heaven and earth are full of thy brightness. Brightness be to thee, O Lord (that is, O Sun) most high !""

Is not this the real, the only sense, of both mysteries? If it be not, our ignorance has, at least, one consolation: we shall not have to quarrel with any body who can tell us what is! Safe enough are we from any thing like an idea on the part of the partakers of those holy mysteries: a sensible person who had received the sacrament, might be shown for a week afterwards at the menagerie.

PAGAN MYTHOLOGY

Compared.

more

1. Titan, the eldest of the children of heaven, yielded to Saturn the kingdom of the world, provided he raised no children; but on the birth of Jupiter, he rebelled, and raising war in heaven, prevailed not, neither was his place found any more in heaven. He and all his host of rebel angels were cast out, and imprisoned under mountains heaped upon them. Their vain attempts to rise is the supposed cause of earthquakes and volcanoes.

"Or from our sacred hill, with fury thrown,

Deep in the dark Tartarean gulph shall groan." Jupiter's threat to the inferior gods, Iliad, 6. Pope's Version. 2. Latona was driven out of heaven, and having been got with child by Jupiter, without knowledge of a man, she brought forth her son, our Lord and Saviour Phoebus-Apollo, "the

CHRISTIAN REVELATION

1. Satan, the eldest of the children of heaven, yielded to Jehovah the kingdom of the world, provided he raised no more children; but on the birth of Messiah, he rebelled, and raising war in heaven, " prevailed not, neither was his place. found any more in heaven," (Rev. xii. 8.) "And the angels which kept not their first estate, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day."-Jude 6.

"God spared not the angels to Hell."-2 Pet. ii. 4. that sinned, but cast them down Note well! the original word signifies TARTARUS.

2. Eve was driven out of Paradise, and in her representative Mary, "seeing she knew not a man," brought forth her son, our Lord Jesus Christ, "being the brightness of his glory, and

PAGAN MYTHOLOGY

Compared.

CHRISTIAN REVELATION

the express image of his person," (Heb. i. 3,)" she laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn," (Luke ii. 7.) “And the dragon persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child."-Rev. xii. 13.

3. And the seed of the woman bruised the serpent's head, "and her child was caught up to God, and to his throne."Rev. xii. 5.

Another edition.

4. Jehovah, in the shape of a pigeon, obumbrates the wife of Joseph, who becomes with child by him.-Luke i.*

5. The incarnation of Christ.

6. The Logos, or Word of God, an epithet of Jesus Christ. -St. John's Gospel.

7. "So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many." Heb. ix. 28.

8. "To God the Father, Son,

And Spirit, ever blest-
Eternal Three in One-

All worship be addrest." Such are the words of the orthodox Christian Doxology.

*The editors of the Unitarian New Version of the New Testament, who very modestly wish to shovel all these spurcities and salacities out of the sacred text, have the impudence to tell us, in a note, that they were interpolated to lessen the odium attached to Christianity, from its founder being a crucified Jew, and to elevate him to the dignity of the heroes and demi-gods of the heathen mythology. So then, the argument of the primitive Christians with their Pagan opponents was good-natured enough-If you won't adopt our religion,—why, we'll adopt yours.

"Thus have I attempted to trace, with a confidence continually increasing as I advanced, a parallel between the gods adored in Greece, Italy, and India; but which was the original system, and which the copy, I will not presume to decide. I am persuaded, however, that a connection existed between the old idolatrous nations of Egypt, India, Greece, and Italy, long before the birth of Moses."

So concludes the pious Sir William Jones, Asiatic Researches, vol. 1, p. 271. The reader is to conclude as he pleases.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

PYTHAGORAS, B. c. 586.

As all ideas of man are derived from his senses, and consequently may be traced to their origination from that their only source, the gods and goddesses, or any god that conceit could form to itself, would still admit of being referred to its primordial type in something the like of which experience had first been impressed on the senses. Having found innumerable pre-existent models of the imaginary supernatural character of Christ. we discover in the Samian sage every thing that could have furnished forth the calmer and more philosophic personification of Unitarian Christianity, the mere man Jesus.

Pythagoras, as his name signifies, had been born under precisely the circumstances ascribed to Jesus Christ; having been the object of a splendid dispensation of pro