The Secret Vault presents: The Christian and Pagan Creeds Collated. Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
Christian Religion.
By the Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
[LN. in this chapter Rev. Taylor compares the basic statements of Pagan and Christian belief, their closeness to each other in content and their questionable authority.]
[from end chapter 1. As our business in this treatise is, with stubborn fact and absolute evidence, I shall subjoin so much of the Christian creed as is absolutely and unquestionably of Pagan origin, and which, though not found as put together in this precise formulary, is certainly to be deduced from previously existing Pagan writings. That only, which could not, or would not, have expressed the fair sense of any form of Pagan faith, can be peculiarly Christian. That only which the Christian finds that he has to say, of which a worshipper of the gods could not have said the same or the like before him, is Christianity.]
CHAP. 2. - The Christian and Pagan Creeds collated ...The Apostle's Creed, a Forgery ... Inference that it is a Pagan document applied to Christian purposes ... Necessity of examining the pretences of all writings that lay claim to Canonical authority.
Mosheim, Lorenz von. 1693 to 1755, German Lutheran church historian.
The Apostle's creed.
This creed, though not to be found in this form in the Christian Scriptures, is evidently deducible from them as their sense and purport. "This creed still bears the name of the Apostle's Creed. From the fourth century downwards, it was almost generally considered as a production of the Apostles. All, however, who have the least knowledge of antiquity, look upon this opinion as entirely false and destitute of all foundation. There is much more reason in the opinion of those who think that this creed was not all composed at once, but from small beginnings was imperceptibly augmented, in proportion to the growth of heresy, and according to the exigencies and circumstances of the church, from which it was designed to banish the errors that daily arose." - Mosheim, vol. 1. p. 116, 117.
The Christian Creed. The Pagan Creed.
1. I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
2. And in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit
3. Born of the Virgin Mary.
4. Suffered under Pontius Pilate.
5. Was crucified.
6. Dead and "buried.
7. He descended into hell.
8. The third day he rose again from the dead.
9. He ascended into heaven.
10. And sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
11. From whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
12. I believe in the Holy
13. The Holy Catholic church.
14. The Communion of Saints.
15. The forgiveness of sins.
16. The resurrection of the immortality of the soul, body.
17. And the life everlasting. And the life everlasting. 1. I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
2. And in Jasius [a] Christ his only son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit.
3. Born of the Virgin Electra.
4. Suffered under (whom it might be.)
5. Was struck by a thunderbolt.
6. Dead and buried.
7. He descended into hell.
8. The third day he rose again from the dead.
9. He ascended into heaven
10. And sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
11. From whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
12. I believe in the Holy Ghost.
13. The Holy Catholic Divinity.
14. The Communion of Saints
15. The forgiveness of sins.
[a] "Jasiusque Pater, genus a quo principe nostrum." And father Jasius, from which Prince our race is descended. - Virgil.]
Rev. R. Taylor
This creed, though not to be found in this form in the Pagan Scriptures, is evidently deducible from them as their sense and purport.
The reader is to throw into this scale, an equal quantity of allowance and apology to that claimed by the advocate of Christianity for the opposite. He will only observe that on this side, apology and palliation for a known and acknowledged imposture and forgery for so many ages palmed upon the world, is not needed. It is not the Pagan creed that was imposed upon mankind, under a false superscription, and ascribed to an authority from which it was known not to have proceeded. Whether a church, which stands convicted of having forged its creed, would have made any scruple of forging its gospels; is problem that the reader will solve according to the influence of prejudice or probability on his mind.
Inference
As then, the so-called Apostle's Creed, is admitted to have been written by no such persons as the Apostles, and with respect to the high authority which has for so many ages been claimed for it, is a convicted imposture and forgery; the equity of rational evidence will allow weight enough, even to a probable conjecture, to overthrow all that remains of its pretensions. The probability is, that it is really a Pagan document, and of Pagan origination; since, even after the trifling alteration and substitution of one name perhaps for another, to make it sub-serve its new application, it yet exhibits a closer resemblance to its Pagan stock, than to the Christian stem on which it has been engrafted.
By a remarkable oversight of the keepings and congruities of the system, the Christian creed has omitted to call for our belief of the miracles or prophecies which constitute its evidence, or for our practice of the duties which should be the test of its utility. If then, as the learned and judicious Jeremiah Jones, in his excellent treatise on the canonical authority of the New Testament, most justly observes, "In order to establish the canon of the New Testament, it be of absolute necessity that the pretences of all other books to canonical authority be first examined and refuted:" [Vol. I. p. 16. 8vo. Ed.] much more must it be absolutely necessary to establish the paramount and distinctive challenges of Christianity, that we should be able to refute and overthrow all the pretences of previously existing religions, by such a cogency and fairness of argument, as in being fatal to them, shall admit of no application to this, which battering down their air-built castles, shall, when brought to play with equal force on Christianity, leave its defences unshaken and its beauty unimpaired.
[Rev. Jeremiah Jones.]
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Next. Chapter III. The State of the Heathen World.