The Secret Vault presents: The Christian and Pagan Creeds Collated. Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
The Christian, Worshippers of the God Serapis
By the Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
But it is more than evidence of this character that summons our admiration in the charge of Serapidolatry, or the worship of the god Serapis, which was brought against the primitive Christians, by no vulgar accuser, no bigoted intolerant reviler, but by that philosophic and truth-respecting witness, the emperor Adrian. [a] In a certain letter which he writes, while in the course of his travels, to the Consul Servianus, he states, that he found the worshippers of the god Serapis in that country distinguished by the name of Christians. "Those," he says, "who worship Serapis, are Christians; and those who are especially consecrated to Serapis, call themselves the bishops of Christ." In relief of which charge, the learned Kortholt, from whose valuable work, the Paganus Obtrectator, I have taken this passage, pleads, and indeed it might be so, that when this emperor was in Egypt, some of the Christians, actuated by fear, concealing their true religion for a season, might have held out an appearance of having embraced the superstition of the Pagans.
[note. [a] In Epistola quadam ad Servianum cos. Imperator Hadranus prodidit, coluisse ipsos in AEgypto Serapidem, sive numen illud AEgyptiorum praecipuum, quod sub bovis specie eos fuisse veneratos, nemo ignorat. Illi ait qui Serapin colunt, Christiani sunt, et devoti sunt Serapi, qui se Christi Episcopos dicunt. - Kortholti Pagan. Obtrect. de Serapidolatria, lib. 2, c. 5, p. 324. - See this article at length in the chapter that adduces the testimony of the emperor Adrian.]
Thus, in the Ancient Martyrology, in the history of Epicharmus, an Egyptian martyr, it is related that all the Christians in Alexandria, upon the coming of a cruel judge, either fled away, or pretended to be still followers of the Pagan impiety: and if the approach of a judge only could produce this effect, it is no wonder that the coming of the emperor himself, and he, as they all knew, being a most strenuous asserter of the Gentile superstitions, should have a similar effect. [Kortholt in codem loco.] In Socrates's History of Constantine, he relates how that most holy emperor went about to promote the Christian religion, and to banish the rites and ceremonies of the Ethnics, he set up his own image in their idolatrical temples: and finding that there prevailed a general belief of the people of Egypt that it was the god Serapis who caused the river Nile to overflow and fertilize their country, in honour of which, a certain ell (the upright post with the transverse beam which had been used to measure the height and extent of the inundation) was annually brought with religious ceremonies into the temple of the god Serapis, the emperor commanded that ell to be brought into the church of Alexandria. Upon this profanation, the Egyptian people had wrought themselves up to the too-critical belief, that the Nile would resent the indignity, and no more condescend to overflow his banks as usual; thereby subjecting themselves to a sort of miracle, which was pretty safely promised them beforehand; for, behold! on the following year the river did not only overflow after his wonted manner, and from that time forth keep his course, (0 most miraculous of all miracles!) but also did thereby declare unto the world that Nilus was accustomed to overflow, not after their superstitious opinion, but by the secret determination of Divine Providence. [Socrates Schol. lib. 1, c. 14]
Notwithstanding, however, this adoption of the Pagan symbol of the cross into the Christian church, and the rapid propagation of Christianity, it was not till after the commencement of the fifth century, when the emperor Theodosius had given the exterminatory business, by commission, into the hands of Theophilus bishop of Alexandria, that it was completed with something like episcopal vigour. "By the procurement and industry of Theophilus the bishop, the emperor commanded that all the idol groves of the Ethnics within Alexandria should (cut) down to the ground, and that Theophilus should oversee it. Theophilus, being thus authorized, omitted nothing that might tend to the reproach and contumely of heathenish ceremonies: down goes the temple of Mithra, with all its idolatrical filth and superstition: down goes the god Serapis; their imbrued and bloody mysteries are publicly derided; their vain and ridiculous practices are publicly ridiculed in the open market-place, to their utter shame and ignominy." [a] I need not continue this hideous passage through the description which follows, and was sure to follow, of the sanguinary horrors in which it issued. [a] Socrates Schol. lib. 5, c. 16.]
To deny that Christianity was and has been the religion of the sword from first to last, and has been propagated and sustained by means of violence and fraud, and by no other means, or to assert that there ever was on earth, or could have been any other religion that ever made its professors of all sorts and in all ages, one half so savage, so bloody, and so wicked, is, as it were, to assert anything, to trample all evidence of fact and history under foot, to deny the existence of the sun, to deny that the jury who convicted the Rev. Robert Taylor of blaspheming their Lord Jesus Christ "by force and arms," were a perjured jury, to deny that there is any gaol at Oakham, any innocent man in that gaol, or truth in truth itself.
The Sign of the Cross Found in the Temple of Serapis.
"In the temple of Serapis, now overthrown and rifled, throughout, there were found engraved in the stones certain letters which they call hieroglyphical; the manner of their engraving resembled the form of the cross. The which, when both Christians and Ethnics beheld before them, every one applied them to his proper religion. The Christians affirmed that the cross was a sign or token of the passion of Christ, and the proper symbol of their profession. The Ethnics avouched that therein was contained something in common, belonging as well to Serapis as to Christ; and that the sign of the cross signified one thing unto the Ethnics, and another to the Christians. - While they contended thus about the meaning of these hieroglyphical letters [b] many of the Ethnics became Christians, for they perceived at length the sense and meaning of those letters, and that they prognosticated salvation, and LIFE TO COME."
[note [b] We see at this day, without any countenance of Scripture, the letters I.N.R.I engraved in all our idolatrical representations of the crucifixion. It is obvious that they would bear any other reading as well as that which Christian conceit may give them.]
This most important evidence of the utter indifference between Christianity and any, even the grossest forms of the ancient Paganism, is supplied by a Christian historian; and independent of its fairness, as taken from such a source, and its inherent versimilitude, is corroborated by a parallel passage from the ecclesiastical history of Sozomenes, who, about the year 443, wrote the history of the church from the reign of Constantine the Great to that of the younger Theodosius. He is speaking of the temple of the god Serapis - "It is reported that when this temple was destroyed, there appeared some of those characters called hieroglyphics, surrounding the sign of the cross, in engraved stones; and that, by the skilful in these matters, these hieroglyphics were held to have signified this inscription - the life to come! And this became a pretence for becoming Christians to many of the Grecians, because there were even other letters which signified this sacred end when this character appeared."
Thus, in every genuine historical document, we are continually met by evidence of the superfluous prodigality of miracles, and that offence against the laws of the drama, as well as of historical probability, which makes a god appear where there was no knot worthy of a god. The Pagans, so far from needing miracles to convert them, were at all times ready to embrace any new faith whatever: no trick could be too gross to fail of success on their easy credulity. They really had not the capacity of inflicting martyrdom: they were ready to be winked and whistled into Christianity. - Socrates continues his account:
"The Christians perceiving that this made very much for their religion, made great account thereof, and were not a little proud of it. When as by other hieroglyphical letters it was gathered, that the temple of Serapis should go to ruin when the sign of the cross therein engraved came to light (by that life to come was foreshowed), many more embraced the Christian religion, confessed their sins, and were baptized. Thus, much have I learned of the cross." [Lib. 5, c. 18, p. 348. London Ed. anno 1649.] - And thus far quote I from the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates, a Christian historian, who lived and wrote about 412AD, the contemporary of Damasus bishop of Rome, of Chrysostom of Constantinople, and of the events which he has here recorded. Though the god Serapis stood in so immediate a relation to the Nile, his worship was by no means confined to Egypt; he was worshipped not only in Egypt and in Greece, but also at Rome, and sometimes considered as one and the same as Jupiter Ammon, sometimes as identical with Pluto, Bacchus, Aesculapius, Osiris, [Pomey De Diis Indiget, p. 268.] and Jesus Christ. It is certain, however, that his most magnificent temple was at Alexandria in Egypt, whence all our most distinguished Christian Fathers and writers derived their education; that the bishops of Serapis, as they alone were justly entitled to be called bishops of Alexandria, while Alexandria was a Pagan city, yet called themselves bishops of Christ ; and though Christianity can in no reasonable sense be said to have been established in Alexandria while the temple of Serapis remained - and Tillemont admits that the very first Christian church that was ever built, of which history gives us any certain and express information, was founded by Gregory the wonder-worker, 244AD, or after that time, [Quoted in Lardner's Credibility, vol. i, p. 594.] - yet have we an uninterrupted succession of bishops of Alexandria from the evangelist Mark, who we are required to believe was the first of them, downwards. The Jews, it seems, took Serapis to be identical with the patriarch Joseph the son of Sarah.
In all the representations of the crucified King of the Jews that have come down to us, the essential requisites of the Egyptian hieroglyphic have been most religiously preserved. The ribs of the figure are almost breaking through his skin, and it seems doubtful whether the being so represented had died of hunger before he was nailed to the cross or had expired under the inconveniences of that uncouth appointment. But the most extraordinary phenomenon attending this mystical personification, is, that his hieroglyphical history will be found to dove-tail exactly into all the various and apparently contradictory developments of the Christian theology. Thus, the cross was blessed, but the figure upon it was made a curse; and accordingly, as it was the cross, or the crucified, that was referred to, so shall we find it, even in the same writings, spoken of as the blessed cross or the accursed cross, as a badge of honour or of shame, of joy or of sorrow, of triumph or of humiliation.
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