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 would be alien from all ends of a Diegesis, or general narration of the character and evidences of the Christian religion, to have any ear or regard to the vituperations and wrangling of the various sects of Christians, who are each, if attended to, for un-Christianising all but themselves, and thus tearing the cause of their common Christianity to pieces or surrendering it undefended to the scorn and triumph of its enemies. If Christianity be not, or was not, what the majority of those who professed and called themselves Christians, through a thousand years of its existence, held it to be, there is a sheer end of all possibility of ascertaining what it was or is, since, at that rate, it amounts to no more than the ideal chimera of any cracked brain you shall meet with; and all that can be said of it is -
" As the fool thinketh, So the bell tinketh."
The intolerant and persecuting spirit of the established Protestant church, and the severity of the penalties inflicted by law on all conscientious and honest avowals of the convictions which superior learning and deeper research might lead to, has enforced on the wisest and best of men a necessity of conveying their general scepticism under cover of attacking the peculiar doctrines and practices of the church of Rome. Because this mode of attack would be endured, this only was to be tolerated. The predominant sect, so their own tenure on the profits of gospel-ling remained unendangered, would look on with indifference, or even join in the game of running down and tearing to pieces their common parent. To this contentious spirit of Christians among themselves, and their union only in the wicked policy of persecuting infidels, we owe discoveries which in no other way could have attracted equal attention. We are thus enabled to carry some or other of recognised Christian authorities all the way with us, taking up one where we set down another, till we arrive at the complete breaking up of all pretence to evidence of any sort, and bring orthodoxy itself to subscribe the demonstrations of reason. Thus M. Daille, in his attempt to show that the religious worship of his fellow Christians of the Roman Catholic communion could be distinctly traced to the institutions of Numa Pompilius, must lead every mind, capable of tracing our Protestant forms of piety to Roman Catholic institutions, to connect the first and last link of the sorites: ergo, Protestant ceremonies must have had the same origination. [LN., see SV book on Numa Pompilius.] [LN., Daille, Jean. 1594 to 1670, was a French Huguenot minister and biblical commentator.]
Dr Conyers Middleton, the most distinguished ornament of the church of England, could not, compatibly with his personal convenience, venture to go the whole length of the way which he points out to the travel of freer spirits, though, by demonstrating the utter falsehood and physical impossibility of all and every other pretended miracle that ever was in the world, not excepting one (except such as he might have been put in the pillory if he had not excepted), he leaves the conclusion to be drawn - as it may be by every mind capable of drawing a conclusion, and as he could securely calculate that it would be - with a stronger effect of conviction than if he had himself prescribed it. [LN., Dr Conyer Middleton, 1683 to 1750, he was an English clergyman, whose life was full of controversy.]
Without regarding any of the distinctions without difference upon which the jarring sects of Christians wrangle among themselves, we pass now from the comparison of the doctrines of what has been called divine Revelation, with the previously existing tenets and dogmas of Paganism, to an examination of the no less striking resemblance of Pagan and Christian forms of worship.
Priests, altars, temples, solemn festivals, melancholy grimaces, ridiculous attitudes, trinkets, baubles, bells, candles, cushions, holy water, holy wine, holy biscuits, holy oil, holy smoke, holy vestments, and holy books, state candlesticks, dim-painted windows, [h] chalices, salvers, pictures, tablets, achievements, music, &c. are found in various modifications and arrangements, not only in the sanctuaries of the Roman Catholic communion, but some or other, or all of them, even in methodistical conventicles, or in Unitarian pagodas supposed to be at the farthest remove from any intended adoption of the Pagan and Papal ceremonies.
[note. [h] In the most splendid chapel of the Methodists (Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn), the altar stands in a druidical alcove, upon which the light descends through yellow glass, to give to the countenance of their priests such a death-like tinge, as might make them seem to be standing under the immediate il-lapses of inspiration, "Creatures not of this earth, and yet being on it."]
We have seen the pontifical mitre, the augural staff, the keys of Janus, and the Capitoline chickens, emblazoned on the armorial bearings, not of Popish, but of our Protestant bishops. The religious faction that seemed very reasonably to object to the "pomp's and vanities of this sinful world, while in the possession of those who had corrupted the pure faith of Christianity, very meekly and consistently take upon themselves the burthen of three times the revenues of that corrupt church. [See the Table of Ecclesiastical Revenues.] Those who were shocked at so flagrant a violation of the precepts of their divine master, as that of the bishop of Rome, who styled himself servant of the servants of God, were content to be known only as - Right Reverend and Most Reverend Fathers in God, His Grace the Lord Archbishop, Bishop, Prelate, Metropolitan, and Primate, next in precedency to the blood royal, &c. &c. We have only to hope that Lactantius might have carried the matter too far where he says, that "among those who seek power and gain from their religion, there will never be wanting an inclination to forge and to lie for it." [Lactant. De fals. Relig. 1. 4.] [LN., Lactantius, Lucius Caecilius Firmainus, around 250 to 325AD. Was an early Christian author and adviser to Emperor Constantine, his most important book was the 'the Divine institutes'.]
Crosse d'or eveque de bois'.
The smaller a bishop's staff,
the more virtue shines,
pomp first corrupted prelacy. Cotgrave.
"That Popery has borrowed its principal ceremonies and doctrines from the rituals of Paganism," is a fact which the most learned and orthodox of the established church have most strenuously maintained and most convincingly demonstrated.
That Protestantism has borrowed its principal ceremonies and doctrines from the rituals of Popery, is a fact which the most learned and orthodox of the Catholic church as strenuously maintain, and as convincingly demonstrate. - The conclusion, that Christianity is altogether Pagan, is as inevitable, as that if it be to be found neither among Catholics nor Protestants, there can be no such thing upon earth.
The White Surplice,
As worn by all our Protestant clergy, was the dress of the Pagan priesthood in a part of their public officiations, and is so described by the satirist Juvenal, [Qui grege liniger circumdatus et grege calvo. - Juv. 6. 3.] and the poet Ovid. [NuncDea linigera colitur celeberrima turba. - Ovid. Met. 1. 746.] It was the peculiar habiliment of the priests of Isis; and Isis herself being believed to have been the invent-tress of linen, of which these surplices are made, her effeminate priests were distinguished from more manly imposters by the still-applicable epithet of surplice or linen-wearers. Silius, [Silius Italicus, around 28 to 103AD, he was a Roman orator, poet and consul.] however, speaking of the rites used in the Gaditan [LN., the temple at Gades, Spain] Temple of Hercules, instructs us that the priests of Hercules were also distinguished by wearing the white surplice. "They went barefoot, practised chastity, had no statues, wore white linen surplices, and paid tithe to Hercules;" that is, they were liberal in subscriptions to keep up the system that kept them up. [LN., Juvenal, Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, he was a Roman satirist poet who in the late 1st century and early 2nd best known for his satires, of which there are 16.]
Holy Water
Water, wherein the person is baptised in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. - Church of England Catechism.
The Baptismal Font
In our Protestant churches, and we can hardly say more especially the little cisterns at the entrance of our Catholic chapels, are not imitations, but an unbroken and never interrupted continuation of the same aquaminaria or amula, which the learned Montfaucon, in his Antiquities, shows to have been vases of holy water, which were placed by the heathens at the entrance of their temples to sprinkle themselves with upon entering those sacred edifices. "And with pure dews sprinkled, enter the temples," Euripides stands only in paraphrase in our Heb. x. 22, "Let us draw near with a true heart, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water." The same vessel was called by the Greeks the sprinkler. Two of these, the one of gold, the other of silver, were given by Croesus to the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Justin Martyr, the second in succession of the Christian Fathers, next to those who are called apostolic, says, that "this ablution, or wash, was invented by demons, in imitation of the true baptism, that their votaries might also have their pretended purifications by water." There certainly must have been something supernaturally ingenious in the inventions of these diabolical imitators, who always contrived to be the authors of the very first-specimens of what they imitated, and to get their imitations into full vogue before the originals from which they copied were in existence. The "sanctification of water to the mystical washing away of sin," and in signification of "a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness," had not only been used, but most abundantly abused, before its original institution as a Christian sacrament; as we find Ovid in verse, [Ah minium faciles qui tristia cri dina caedis Fluminea tolli posse putetis aqui. - Ovid. Fast. 2. 45. At animi labes nec diuternitate evanescere nec illis amnis elui potest. - Cicero.] [LN., Cicero, Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106 to 43BC, was a Roman politician and lawyer.] and the best and wisest of the whole human race, Cicero, in his philosophical writings, severely rebuking the egregious absurdity of expecting moral improvement from any such foolish and contemptible superstitions.
The form of the aspergillum, or sprinkling-brush, as used by the clergy of the Catholic communion in sprinkling our Christian congregations, is yet to be seen in bas-reliefs and ancient coins} wherever the insignia or emblems of the Pagan priesthood are described. It may be seen at this day on a silver coin of Julius Csesar, as well as on the coins of many other emperors. The severe ridicule and sarcasm heaped by our Protestant clergy on their Catholic brethren, for extending the benefit of these mysterious sprinklings to their horses, asses, and other cattle, would come with a better grace, if they themselves would explain what there is of a more rational and dignified significance in sprinkling new-born infants, who, in the eye of reason and common sense, might seem as little capable of receiving any benefit from the ceremony as the brute creation.
The ancient Pagans had especial gods and goddesses who presided over the birth of infants. The goddess Nundina took her name from the ninth day, on which all male children were sprinkled with holy water, as females were on the eighth, at the same time receiving their Pagan name; of which addition to the ceremonial of Christian baptism, we find no mention in the Christian Scriptures. When all the forms of the Pagan nundination were duly complied with, the priest gave a certificate to the parents of the regenerated infant; it was thenceforth duly recognized as a legitimate member of the family and of society, and the day was spent in feasting and hilarity.
Facsimile of a Pagan Certificate of Nundination.
I certify you, that in this case all is well done, and according unto due order, concerning the
nundination of this child, who, being born in original sin, and in the wrath of God, is now, by
the laver of regeneration in baptism, received into the number of the children of God, and
heirs of the right of life.
Arcan. Probabilium. Copy of the form of a Christian Certificate of Baptism.
I certify you, that in this case all is well done, and according unto due order, concerning the baptizing of this child, who, being born in original sin, and in the wrath of God, is now, by the laver of regeneration in baptism, received
into the number of the children of God, and heirs of everlasting life. - Church of England Baptismal Service.
The old stories and impostures of the ancient Paganism, and the new versions of them, as adopted and sanctified by the faith of Christian believers, may be compared by juxta-position. thus -
pagan.
Cicero, concerning the origin
of divination, relates -
That a man being at plough in a certain field of Etruria and happening to strike his plough somewhat deeper than ordinary, there started up before him, out of the furrow, a Deity, whom they called Tages. The ploughman, terrified by so strange an apparition, made
such an outcry, that he alarmed all his neighbours, and in a short time drew the whole country around him; to whom The God,
in the hearing of them all, explained the whole art and mystery of divination: which all their writers and records affirmed to be the genuine origin of that discipline for which the old Tuscans were afterwards so famous. - Cic. de Dimn. 2.23. Cicero, however, subjoins, that to attempt to confute, such stories would be as silly as tobelieve them. CHRISTIAN.
The whole collegiate church of regidar canons, concerning the origin of St. Mary of Impruneta, [a] relate - When the inhabitants of Impruneta had resolved to build a church to the Virgin, and were digging the foundations of it with great zeal, on a spot marked out to them by heaven, one of the labourers happened to strike his pickaxe against something underground, from which there issued presently a complaining voice or groan. - The workmen being greatly amazed, put a stop to their work for a while; but having recovered their spirits, after some pause they ventured to open the place from which the voice came, and found the miraculous image. This is delivered that by their writers, not grounded, as they say, on vulgar fame, but on public records and histories, confirmed by a perpetual series of miracles - Middleton's Pref Disc. to Letter from Rome.
[a] Impruneta, small town six miles from Florence.]
Our modern Iconoclasts [Image breakers.] will be ready to cry out, that the asserters of these popish stories were no Christians: not seeing the dilemma they rush on, in subjecting- themselves to the utterly unanswerable challenge. Who then were Christians? Let them strike from their list, if they please, all the writers, whose faith and credibility has been pawned and forfeited on stories, - than which the best are than this - no better; let them join the laugh against their Eusebius, for taking owls for angels; their St. Augustin, for preaching the gospel to a whole nation of men and women that had no heads; their Origen, for being a priest of the goddess Cybele and of Jesus Christ at the same time; their Tertullian, for believing the resurrection of Christ, because it was impossible; their Gregory for writing letters to the Devil, yes! and their great Protestant reformer Martin Luther, for seriously believing, that the Devil ran away with children out of their cradles and put his own imps in their places. And then produce all the testimonies they shall have left, of the existence of a religion that was not essentially and absolutely pagan, at any time before the period of their pretended reformation.
The only difference was, that Jupiter was turned into Jehovah, Apollo into Jesus Christ, Venus's pigeon into the Holy Ghost, Diana into the Virgin Mary, a new nomenclature was given to the old Materia Theologica: the demigods were turned into saints; the exploits of the one were represented as the miracles of the other; the pagan temples became Christian churches; and so ridiculously accommodating were the converters of the world to the prejudices of their pagan ancestors and neighbours, that we find, that for the express and avowed purposes of accommodating matters that the change might be the less offensive, and the old superstition as little shocked as possible, they generally observed some resemblance of quality and character in the saint whom they substituted to the old deity. "If in converting the profane worship of the Gentiles to the pure and sacred worship of the church, the faithful were wont to follow some rule and proportion, they have certainly hit upon it here, (at Rome) in dedicating to the Virgin Mary, the temple formerly sacred to the Bona Dea, or Good Goddess." [b] In a place formerly sacred to Apollo, there now stands the Church of Saint Apollinaris, built there, as they tell us, in order that the profane name of that Deity might be converted into the glorious name of this martyr.
[b] Si nel rivoltare il profuno culto de gentili nel sacro e vero, osservarono i fedeli qualche proportione, qui la ritrovarono assai conveniente nel dedicare a Maria virgine un tempio, ch'era della Bona Dea. - Rom. Med. Gior. 2. Rion di Rissa, 10.]
Where there anciently stood the temple of Mars, they have erected a Church to Saint Martina, with this inscription,
Mars hence expelled; Martina martyr'd maid
[Martyrii gestans virgo Martina coronam]
Claims now the worship which to him was paid.
[Ejecto hinc Martis numina Templa tenet.]
It is certain that in the earlier ages of Christianity, the Christians often made free with the sepulchral stones of heathen monuments, which being ready cut to their hands, they converted to their own use, and turning downwards the side onwhich the old epitaph was engraved, used either to inscribe a new one on the other side, or leave it perhaps without any inscription at all. This has frequently been the occasion of ascribing martyrdom and saint ship to persons and names of mere Pagans.
The Pantheon
The noblest heathen temple now remaining in the world, is the Pantheon or Rotunda, which, as the inscription over the portico informs us, having been impiously dedicated of old by Agrippa to Jove and all the Gods, was piously re-consecrated by Pope Boniface the Fourth, to the Mother of God and all the Saints.
Inscription on the Partheon reads
AB AGRIPPA AUGUSTI GENERO
IMPIE JOVI, CAETERISQUE MENDACIBUS DUS
A BONIFACIO IIII. PONTIFICE
DEIPARAEI ET S. S. CHRISTI MARTYRIBUS PIE
DICATUM,
&c
Inscriptions in Pagan Temples Inscriptions in Christian Churches
1. To Mercury and Minerva, Tutelary Gods. 1. To St. Mary and St. Francis, My Tutelaries.
2. To the Gods who preside over this Temple. 2. To the Divine Eustorgius, who presides over this Temple.
3. To the Divinity of Mercury, the availing, the powerful, the unconquered. 3. To the Divinity of St. George, the availing,
the powerful, the unconquered.
4. Sacred to the Gods and Goddesses with
Jove the Best and the Greatest. 4. Sacred to the presiding helpers, St. George and St. Stephen, with God the Best and Greatest.
5. Apollo's Head, surrounded with rays of glory. 5. Venus's Pigeon, surrounded with rays of glory.
6. The mystical letters I HS, surrounded with rays of glory. 6. The mystical letters IHS, surrounded with rays of glory.
Latin versions.
Gruter's Inscriptions. Boldoniuss Epigraphs.
1. Mercurio et Minervae, Diis Tutelarib. 1. Marie et Francisce, Tutelares mei.
2. Dii qui huic ternplo praesident. 2. Divo Eustorgio, qui huic templo praesidet.
3. Numini Mercurii, pollenti, potenti, invicto. 3. Numini Divi Georgii, pollenti, potenti, invicto.
4. Diis Deabus que cum Jove. 4. Divis praestitibus juvantibus, Georgio
Stephanoque, cum Deo Opt. Max.
Aringhus, in his account of subterraneous Rome, acknowledges this conformity between the Pagan and Christian forms of worship, and defends the admission of the ceremonies of heathenism into the service of the church, by the authority of the wisest prelates and governors, who found it necessary, he says, in the conversion of the Gentiles, to dissemble and wink ["And the times of this ignorance God winked at." - Acts 17-30.] at many things, and yield to the times; and not to use force against customs which the people were so obstinately fond of, nor to think of extirpating at once everything that had the appearance of profane, but to supersede in some measure the operation of the sacred laws, till these converts convinced by degrees, and informed of the whole truth, by the suggestions of the Holy Spirit, should be content to submit in earnest to the yoke of Christ. [c]
[c] Ac maximi subinde pontifices quam plurima prima quidem facie dissimulanda duxere, optimum scilicet rati tempori deferendum esse; suadebant quippe sibi, haud ullam adversus gentilitios ritus vim, utpote qui mordicus a fidelibus retinebantur, adhibendam esse; neque ullatenus enitendum, ut quicquid profanos sap eret mores, omnino tolleretur, quinimo quam maxima utendum lenitate, sacrarumque legum ex parte intermittendum imperium arbitrabantur. - Tom. 1, lib. 1, c. 21.]
The reader will do himself the justice of collating this admission with the same accommodating policy of St. Gregory, adduced in our Chapter of Admissions, p. 48
Saints and Martyrs that never Existed
The last of ten thousand features of resemblance between Paganism and Christianity, which might be adduced to establish their absolute identity, which we shall care to notice, is the striking coincidence that the Christian personages, like the Pagan deities, were frequently created by errors of language, mistakes of noun substantives for proper names, ignorance of the sense of abbreviated words, substitution of one letter for another, &c. &c. so that words which had only stood for a picture, a cloak, a high-road, a ship, a tree, &c. in their original use, were passed over in another language as names of gods, heroes, saints, and martyrs, when no such persons had ever existed. Thus, have we a Christian church erected to Saint Amphibolus, another to Saint Viar - Christian prayers addressed to the holy martyr Saint Veronica; and Chrestus adored as a god, by the ignorance that was not aware that Amphibolus was Greek for a cloak; Viar. abbreviated Latin for a perfectus Viarum, or overseer of the highways; Vera Icon, half Latin and half Greek for true image; and Chrestus [d] the Greek in Roman letters for any good and useful man or thing.
[d] This mistake originates in what is called the "Iotacism, which consists in pronouncing the [GK] like [GK]. The modern Greeks give them both the sound of the Italian I or English E. This prevailed much in Egypt, and hence is frequently Been to take place in the Alexandrine MSS. Hence also [ GK ] and [ GK ] have been confounded; and Suetonius has written, "Judseos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantes Roma. Expuli" - Elsley's Annotations on the Gospels, vol. 1, p. xxz. But surely this will read quite as well if taken exactly the other way. It was as easy for the Christian-evidence manufacturers to change E into I, as for Suetonius to have changed I into E.]
Notwithstanding" the idiot's dream of an imaginary pre- Protestant state of Christianity, or of Christianity in its primitive purity, ere what are called the corruptions of the Romish church had mingled with and defiled the stream, our Protestant historians are not able to make good their evidence of the existence of Christianity, in any time or place, in separation from the most exceptionable of those corruptions. Never was there the day or the hour in which Christianity was, and its corruptions were not. The thing of supposable rational evidence, historical fact, sublime doctrines, moral precepts, and practical utility, which we hear of in the coxcomb-divinity of a Unitarian chapel, is a perfect ens rationis, the beau ideal of conceit, that never had its type in history. Though the most accurate calculations satisfactorily prove that not more than a twentieth part of the Roman empire had embraced the Christian name before the conversion of Constantine, yet on the occasion of that prince's death, his historian, Eusebius, [Euseb. Hist, of Constantine, book 4, Ch. 71.] tells us of masses which were celebrated, and prayers which were said for his soul in the Apostle's church, as a thing of course, and in a way in which it was impossible that such performance of mass and prayers for the dead could have been spoken of, had there been any contrary doctrine or practice known to Christ's church, of higher antiquity or of better sanction than they.
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next Chapter 36. Specimens of Pagan Piety