The purest morals in the ordinary life, joined with obscene and impious rites of worship; a just notion of the moral attributes of the Deity, accompanied with a belief in the subordinate power of impure and cruel dæmons; a clear understanding of the nature of the human mind as an immaterial substance and a voluntary agent, connected with a persuasion of the influence of the stars on the affairs of men, not only in the revolutions and commotions of empires, but on the private fortunes of every individual: - these were the inconsistencies, not only of the popular creed and of the popular practice, but of the creed and of the practice of the wisest and the best of their philosophers. Socrates himself, pure as his morality and sublime as his theology were, so far as the supreme God was their object, worshipped the gods of his country according to the established rites.* Now, how may we account for these contradictions in the opinions, and these inconsistencies in the conduct, of wise and conscientious men? for such, it must be confessed, many of the heathen philosophers were, notwithstanding the abuse which is sometimes so liberally bestowed upon them by ignorant declaimers. Whence was it, that the same men should practise rational devotion in the closet, and come abroad to join in a rank superstition? that they should form themselves to the general habits of sobriety and temperance, and yet occasionally partake of the indecent liberties of a Greek festival? unless it was that they found the principles of true religion and the rites of an idolatrous worship established on what appeared to them the same authority, upon the credit of their sacred * That he died a martyr to the doctrine of the unity of the Divine substance, is a vulgar error. books, in which both were alike inculcated; books, to which they could not but allow some authority, at the same time that they had no certain means of distinguishing the authentic part from later and corrupt additions. Be that as it may, whether this might be the true source of that inconsistency of principle and practice which was so striking in the lives of virtuous heathens, and is really a phenomenon in the history of mankind, (which I mention, only because it affords a collateral argument for the truth of perhaps the only supposition by which it may be satisfactorily explained ;) the existence of such books as I have described, composed of fable joined with true history and of false prophecies of great antiquity, added to more ancient predictions of God's true prophets, will hardly bear a doubt. Since it is the necessary consequence of principles which cannot reasonably be disputed, that in early ages the worshippers of the true God would use all means to preserve the memory of the first revelations, and that the first idolaters, retaining a blind veneration for these ancient collections, when they no longer knew the real importance of them, would not be less careful to preserve the false oracles in which they equally believed. such books existed, it cannot bear a doubt that they made the ground-work of all the idolatrous worship of later ages, and, together with the corruption, were the means of perpetuating some disguised and obscure remembrance of true prophecies. So wonderfully hath Providence over-ruled the follies and the crimes of men, rendering them the instruments of his own purpose, and the means of general and lasting good. It was to the remains of these books, which I have shown you to have been in fact the corrupted and mutilated records of the patri If archal church, that the Greek philosophers were probably indebted for those fragments of the patriarchal creed, from which they drew the just notions that we find scattered in their writings, of the immortality of the soul, a future retribution, the unity of the Divine substance, and even of the trinity of Persons; for of this the sages of the Pythagorean and Platonic schools had some obscure and distorted apprehensions. And to no other source can we refer the expectation that prevailed in the heathen world at large, of a great Personage to arise in some part of the East for the general advantage of mankind. you And in this, I think, you will now agree with me, if bear in mind the fact that I set out with proving from historical evidence, that certain books which were preserved as a sacred treasure in the heathen temples, contained explicit prophecies of Christ; which are more likely to have been ancient prophecies preserved in the manner I have described, though not without a mixture of corruption, for which, too, I have accounted, than the involuntary effusions of the impostors of later ages, occasionally uttering true predictions under a compulsive influence of the Divine Spirit an opinion which, I am persuaded, would never have been adopted, had not the severe notions that too long prevailed of an original reprobation of the greater part of mankind, made men unwilling to believe that heathens could be in possession of the smallest particle of true prophecy, and of course cut off all enquiry after the means by which it might be conveyed to them. Beside that, in all questions of difficulty, as this must be confessed to be, men are apt rather to consult their ease, by taking up with the first plausible solution their invention may devise, than to submit to the labour of an accurate investi gation of facts, and a circumspect deduction of consequences. The fact, however, that books were preserved in the heathen temples, which contained true prophecies of Christ, rests, as I have shown you, upon the highest historical evidence. Nor does it rest alone upon the contents of those books which were preserved at Rome under the name of the Oracles of the Cumæan Sibyl; the same, perhaps, might be established by another work, which was of no less authority in the East, where it passed for the work of Hystaspes, a Persian Magus of high antiquity. I forbear, however, to exhaust your patience by pushing the enquiry any farther, and shall now dismiss the subject by cautioning you not to take alarm at the names of a Sibyl or a Magus. I assert, not that any of the fabled Sibyls of the old mythology uttered true prophecies, but that some of the prophecies which were ascribed to Sibyls were true prophecies, which the ignorant heathens ascribed to those fabulous personages, when the true origin of them was forgotten. For Hystaspes, I will not too confidently assert that he was not the compiler of the writings which were current under his name; but I conceive he was only the compiler from originals of high authority. And a Magus, in the old sense of the word, had nothing in common with the impostors that are now called magicians. The Magi were wise men who applied themselves to the study of nature and religion. The religion of the Persians in the latest age that can be given to Hystaspes, if it was at all tainted with idolatry, was only tainted in the first degree. And even in much later times Eastern Magi were the first worshippers of Mary's Holy Child; which should remove any prejudice the name of a Magus might create. |