the rape of a young girl, and the like-at the celebration of a religious mystery; and from that mystery denominate the comedy. And, in the time of Cicero, the terms mysteries and abominations were almost synonymous. The Academic having said they had secrets and mysteries, Lucullus replies, " Quæ funt tandem ista mysteria? aut cur celatis, quasi turpe aliquid, vestram sententiam ?" What, after all, are these mysteries? or why conceal your purpose, as if it included something base. However, in spite of all occasions and opportunities, some of the mysteries, as particularly the Eleusinian, continued for many ages pure and undefiled. The two capital corruptions of the mysteries were magic and impurities. Yet, so late as the age of Apollonius Tyan, the Eleusinian kept so clear of the first imputation, that the hierophant refused to initiate that impostor, because he was a magician. And, indeed, their long-continued immunity, both from one and the other corruption, will not appear extraordinary, if we consider that, by a law of Solon, the Senate was always to meet the day after the celebration of these mysteries, to see that nothing had been done amiss during the performance. (Andoc. Orat.) So that these were the very last that submitted to the common fate of all human institutions.

And here the fathers will hardly escape the censure of those who will not allow high provocation to be an excuse for an unfair representation of an adversary. They will hardly escape censure for accustoming themselves to speak of the mysteries as gross impieties and immoralities, in their very original.* Clemens Alexandrinus, in a heat of zeal, breaks out, "Let him be accursed, who first infected the world with these impostures, whether it was Dardanus or - - &c. These I make no scruple to call wicked authors of impious fables; the fathers of an execrable superstition, who, by this institution, sowed in human life the seeds of vice and corruption." But the wisest and best of the pagan world invariably hold that the mysteries were instituted pure, and proposed the noblest end by the worthiest means.

The truth of the matter was this: the fathers bore a secret grudge to the mysteries for their injurious treatment of Christianity on its first appearance in the world. We are to observe that atheism, by which was meant a contempt of the gods, was reckoned, in the mysteries amongst the greatest crimes. So in the sixth book of the Eneid (of which more hereafter), the hottest seats in Tartarus are allotted to the atheist-such as Salmoneus, Tityus, and the Titans, &c. Now, the

* What hath been said above shows that M. Le Clerc hath gone into the other exreme, when he contends (Bibl. Univ. tom. vi. p. 73) that the mysteries were not corrupted at all. I can conceive no reason for his paradox; but as it favoured an accusation against the fathers, who have much insisted on the corruption of them. "The fathers have said that all kinds of lewdness were committed in the mysteries; but whatever they may say, it is not credible that all Greece, however corrupt it may have beɛn, has ever consented that the women and girls should prostitute themselves in the mysteries. But some Christian authors have found no difficulty in saying a thousand things little conformable to truth to defame paganism; as though there were none but pagans against whom they could discharge their calumnies."-Bibl. Univ. tom. vi. p. 120.

Christians, for their contempt of the national gods, were, on their first appearance, deemed atheists by the people; and so branded by the mystagogue, as we find in Lucian, and exposed amongst the rest in Tartarus, in their solemn shows and representations. This may be gathered from a remarkable passage in Origen, where Celsus thus addresses his adversary:

"But now, as you, good man, believe eternal punishments, even so do the interpreters of these holy mysteries, the mystagogues and initiators. You threaten others with them; these, on the contrary, threaten you."

This, without doubt, was what sharpened the fathers against the mysteries; and they were not always tender in loading what they did not approve. But here comes in the strange part of the story-that, after this, they should so studiously and formally transfer the terms, phrases, rites, ceremonies, and discipline of these odious mysteries, into our holy religion, and thereby very early vitiate and deprave what a pagan writer (Marcellinus) could see and acknowledge to be absoluta et simplex (perfect and pure) as it came out of the hands of its author. Sure, then, it was some more than ordinary veneration the people had for these mysteries, that could incline the fathers of the church to so fatal a counsel. However, the thing is notorious, and the effects have been severely felt.

The reader will not be displeased to find here an exact account of this whole matter, extracted from a very curious dissertation of a great and unexceptionable writer, Is. Casaubon, in his sixteenth Exer. on the Annals of Baronius.-[Bishop W. has given the remarks of Casaubon in the original Latin, of which the following is a translation] :

:

"When the fathers found it to be an easier way of bringing over minds corrupted by superstition to the love of the truth, they first adopted many terms used in their rites; and after thus treating of several heads of the true doctrines, they further adopted some of their ceremonies; that they might seem to be saying, as Paul said to the Gentiles,- Whom ye ignorantly worship the same do I declare unto you!' Thence it came that the fathers called the sacraments by the same names as were used to describe the (pagan) mysteries, as mueseis, teletas, teleiosei, epopteias, or epopseias, telesteria, and sometimes, but more rarely, orgies. The Eucharist they emphatically denominated the mystery of mysteries: and also, by antonomy, the mystery, or in the plural, the mysteries. And you may everywhere read in the writings of the fathers, when treating of the holy communion. the words phrieta, mysteria, or aporreton, mysterion, referring to those that were to be divulged and those that were not. So the Greek verb myesthai in the ancient writing is often employed to signify the becoming a partaker of the Lord's Supper; and the term myesin for the act itself, and mystes for the priest, who is also called mystagogon and hierotelestes. In the Greek liturgies and elsewhere hiera telete, and cryphia kai epiphobos telete( the hidden and awful mystery) means the Eucharist.

"And as certain degrees were used in the pagan rites, so in like manner Dionysius divides the whole tradition of the sacraments into three acts,

6

distinguished by their seasons and ceremonies. The first was Catharsis, the purgation, or purification, the second the myestis or initiation, and the third, teleosis or the consummation, which they also frequently called epopsian, or the revered. Tully had before affirmed that the Athenian mysteries brought to the dying better hopes. On their part, the fathers maintained, that the mysteries of Christ brought certain salvation and eternal life to those who worthily partook of them; and that for those who contemned them there was no salvation; and they did not scruple to say that the end and ultimate fruit of the sacraments was deification, when they knew that the authors of those vain superstitions had dared to promise the same honour to their initiates. And, therefore, you may read in the fathers that the end of the holy mystagogies was deification, and that those who faithfully received them should in the life to come be gods. Athanasias has used the verb theopoiesthai (to deity) in the same sense, and subsequently confirmed it by saying, that by partaking of the spirit we are united to the God-head.' Of the symbols of the sacraments by which those ceremonies are celebrated, it is not here the place to treat; but that which is called a symbol of faith is various in its kinds, and they serve as tokens or tests by which the faithful may recognize each other. And we show that the same were used in the pagan mysteries. The formula pronounced by the deacons, Depart hence all ye catachumens, all ye possessed and uninitiated,' corresponds with the procul este profani' of the pagans. Many rites of the pagans were performed in the night, and Guadentius has the expression splendidissima nox vigiliarum,' the brightest night of the vigils. And as to what we have said of the silence observed by the pagans in their secret devotions, the ancient Christians so far approved, that they exceeded all their mysteries in that observance. And as Seneca has observed, the most holy of the sacred rites were only known to the initiated; and Jamblichus on the philosophy of the Pythagoreans has distinguished between the aporreta which could not be carried abroad, and the exphora, which might; so the ancient Christians distinguished their whole doctrines into those which might be divulged to all (the exphora) and the aporreta, or arcana, which were not rashly to be disclosed. Their dogmas, says Basilius, they kept secret, their preaching was public. And Chrisostom, treating of those who were baptized for the dead, says, 'I verily desire to relate the matter fully, but I dare not be particular, because of the uninitiated.' They make a difficulty for us in the interpretation, and oblige us either to speak without precision, or else to disclose what they should not be informed of; and as the pagans used the terms exorcheiɛthai ta mysteria, touching those who divulged the mysteries, so Dionysius says, 'See that you do not disclose, nor slightly reverence the mysteries, and everywhere in Augustinus, you will read of the sacrament known to the faithful.' And thus (in Johannem, tract xvi.) 'all the catachumens already believe in Christ, but Christ does not trust them;' and if we should ask one of them whether he eat the flesh of the Son of man, he would not understand what we meant; and again,The catachumens are ignorant of what the Christians receive.' Let them blush that they are ignorant."

We have observed above, that the fathers gave very easy credit to what was reported of the abominations in the mysteries; and the easier, perhaps, on account of the secrecy with which they were celebrated. The same affectation of secrecy in the Christian rites, and the same language in speaking of them, without doubt procured as easy credit to those calumnies of murder and incest, charged upon them by the pagana. Nay, what is still more remarkable, those very specific enormities in which their own mysteries were then known to offend, they objected to in the Christians.

"A catachumen is a candidate for baptism, or a person who prepares himself for receiving it. Towards the end of the first century, Christians were divided into two orders, distinguished by the names of believers and catachumens. The latter, as contra-distinguished from the former, were such as had not yet been dedicated to God and Christ by baptism, and were, therefore, admitted neither to the public prayers, nor to the holy communion, nor to the ecclesiastical assemblies. As they were not allowed to assist at the celebration of the eucharist, the deacon dismissed them, after sermon, with this formula, proclaimed three times, "Ite catachumeni missa est."—(Rees.) "Missa is derived from mitto, to send. Missa has been used for missio. Ite missa est or missio est. You may all return home."—(Bailey.)

"Quod norunt fideles, what the faithful know. These words, or, as expressed in Greek, isasin oi pemuemenoi, forms what may be called the watchword of the secret, and occur constantly in the fathers. Thus St. Chrysostom, for instance,-in whose writings Casaubon remarked the recurrence of this phrase at least fifty times, in speaking of the tongue (comment in Psalm 153), says, 'Reflect that this is the member with which we receive the tremendous sacrifice-the faithful know what I speak of. Hardly less frequent is the occurrence of the same phrase in St. Augustin, who seldom ventures to intimate the eucharist in any other way than by the words Quod norunt fideles.”—(Travels in search of a Religion, Phila. ed. p. 82.)

This precaution needs no apology when referring to religious rites, which if exposed, would subject its votaries to punishment. "It was," says the saine writer, "in the third century, when the followers of Christ were most severely tried by the fires of persecution, that the discipline of secrecy, with respect to this (the Eucharist) and the other mysteries, was most strictly observed." "A faithful concealment (says Tertullian, is due to all mysteries from the very nature and constitution of them. How much more must it be due to such mysteries as, if they were once discovered, could not escape immediate punishment from the hands of man."—(Ibid, p. 73.)

The persecuted, when they obtained the majority, became the persecutors, and the Druids of England were under the same necessity of concealing their dogmas and rites as the Christians formerly had been. But what excuse have the masons of the present day for making a mystery of the same rites when not in danger of persecution?

There can be no pretext for retaining a secret, when the cause that

gave it birth no longer exists. Besides, the masons do not profess the doctrines of paganism, they merely repeat the ceremonies, parrot-like, without any regard to or knowledge of the original intention.

That the mysteries were invented, established, and supported by lawgivers, may be seen.

From the place of their original; which was Egypt. This Herod. otus, Diodorus, and Plutarch, who collect from ancient testimonies, expressly affirm; and in this all antiquity concurs; the Elusinian mysteries, particularly, retaining the very Egyptian gods in whose honour they were celebrated; Ceres and Triptolemus being only two other names for Isis and Osiris.*

Hence it is, that the universal nature, or the first cause, the object of all the mysteries, yet disguised under diverse names, speaking of herself in Apuleius, concludes the enumeration of her various mystic rites, in these words "The Egyptians, skilled in ancient learning, worshipping me by ceremonies perfectly appropriate, call me by my true name, queen Isis."

But the similitude between the rites practised, and the doctrines taught in the Grecian and Egyptian mysteries, would be alone sufficient to point up to their original: such as the secrecy required of the initiated; which, as we shall see hereafter, peculiarly characterised the Egyptian teaching; such as the doctrines taught of a metemsychosis, and a future state of rewards and punishments, which the Greek writers agree to have been first set abroach by the Egyptians;† such as abstinence enjoined from domestic fowl, fish, and beans (see Porphyrius De Abstin.) the peculiar superstition of the Egyptians; such as the Ritual composed in hieroglyphics, an invention of the Egyptians. would be endless to reckon up all the particulars in which the Egyptian and Grecian mysteries agree; it shall suffice to say, that they were in all things the same.

But it

Thus

Again; nothing but the supposition of this common original to all the Grecian mysteries can clear up and reconcile the disputes which arose amongst the Grecian states and cities concerning the first rise of the mysteries; every one claiming to be original to the rest. Thrace pretended that they came first from thence; Crete contested the honour with those barbarians; and Athens claimed it from both. And at that time, when they had forgotten the true original, it was impossible to settle and adjust their differences; for each could prove that he did not borrow from others; and, at the same time, seeing a

* Mr. Le Clerc owns that Plutarch, Diodorus, and Theodoret have all said this, yet, the better to support his scheme in the interpretation of the history of Ceres, he has thought fit to contradict them. Yet he in another place, could see that Astart was certainly Isis as Adonis was Osiris; and this, merely from the identity of their ceremonies.

Timæus the Locrain, in his book of the soul of the world, speaking of the necessity of inculcating the doctrine of future punishments, calls them Timopiai xenai, foreign torments; by which name both Latin and Greek writers generally mean Egyptian, where the subject is religion.