The Secret Vault presents: The Christian and Pagan Creeds Collated. Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
By the Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
"It was an established custom among the ancient Phoenicians, on any calamitous or dangerous emergency, for the ruler of the state to offer up, in prevention of the general ruin, the most dearly-beloved of his children, as a ransom to divert the divine vengeance. They who were devoted for this purpose, were offered mystically, in consequence of an example which had been set this people by the God Kronus, who, in a time of distress, offered up his only son to his father Ouranus. The mystical sacrifice of the Phoenicians had these requisites:
1st. That a prince was to offer it;
2nd. That his only son was to be the victim;
3rd. That he was to make this grand sacrifice invested with the emblems of royalty."
- Bryant's Observations on Ancient History, quoted in Archbishop Magee's Work on the Atonement, vol. 1, p. 388. This is the Archbishop of Dublin, whose spirit, temper, and conduct are so strikingly in harmony with those he ascribes to a God delighting in blood and bloody sacrifices, famous for his inexorable severity in the government of his diocese, and his cruel treatment of the inferior clergy; nor less distinguished for the convenient flexibility of his own orthodoxy. He is Known in private to laugh at the folly of his own doctrines, as in public he ventured to declare, that though he believed in the Articles of the Church of England collectively, he did not believe in them separately.
Here is, in fact, a first draft of the whole Christian scheme, existing in a country neighbouring on Judea, many hundreds of years before it became moulded into its present shape.
Jesus Christ, the son of a king, is offered by God to himself, to avert his own vengeance, and this is repeatedly called the mystery of the Gospel, (Col. 1-26). Had the Gospel been matter of fact, there could have been no mystery in it.
They put a robe on him And set up over his head, his accusation, written
"And they put on him a scarlet robe." Matt, 27-28. "This is Jesus, the King of the
Jews." Matt, 27-37.
"And they clothed him with purple." Mark 16-17. "The King of the Jews." Mark 15-26.
"And arrayed him in a gorgeous robe." Luke 23-11. "This is the King of the Jews." Luke 23-38.
"And they put on him a purple robe." John 19-2. "Jesus of Nazareth, the King
of the Jews." John 19-19.
Such a mockery of a dying malefactor, never, in any other instance, disgraced the judicial administration of a Roman magistrate.
The addition of the important words, Jesus of Nazareth, in the later Gospel of St. John, strongly indicates the intention of making the circumstances of a previously existing Gospel apply to a newly-invented name for the old hero.
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Next Chapter 24. Chrishna. [LN., now Krishna.]