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.
[LN. characters mentioned in this chapter include. Emperors Constantine and Theodosius, Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, Horace, and Virgil. Doddridge (Philip Doddridge, 1702-1751 was an English nonconformist leader, educator and hymnwriter). James Macknight, 1721 to 1800, Preterist Commentaries. Edward Gibbon, 1737 to 1794, historian. Moses in Palestine. Mneues (if he be not the same) in Egypt. Minos in Crete. Lycurgus in Lacedaemon. Numa Pompilius, 2nd king of Rome. Confucius in China. Triptolemus, who pretended the inspirations of Ceres, but in the Greek version it was Demeter that taught him all about agriculture. Zaleucus of Minerva, was a Locrian law maker in 7th century BC, a most base law, under it adultery was punished by blinding, and anyone wishing to establish a new law, or alter an existing one had to appear before a citizen's council with a rope around his neck, if he failed to convince he was strangled with it, hence the law remained unchanged. Solon of Epimenides, 683 to 558BC. Another law maker and poet, but we know little else of worth. Zamolxis of Vesta, a deity of the Getae and the Dacians, his main claim to fame was that he exemplified eternal life, he was really a storm god. Aristotle. Pythagoras. Plato. Euripides. Therapeuts. Essenes, Philo. Potamon, one of the sons of Aegyptus who married a Danaid called Glaucippe who murdered him on their wedding night to preserve her virginity, however surely Mr Taylor means another Potamon, but I know of no others.]
[Content divisions by LN. Introduction. Destruction of Evidence. The great deception. Priests of ignorance. Divisions of Philosophy. Odd Admissions by the Christian Writers.]
Chapter. V. - State of Philosophy ... A general prevailing debility of the human understanding ... Vitiation of morals ... Destruction of documents ... Maxims of deceiving the vulgar, and perpetuating ignorance, approved by St. Paul ... King's College, London ... Gnosticism ... Systems of philosophy.
State of Philosophy
Introduction
There is nothing that can be known of past ages, known with more unquestionable certainty, than that in, about, and immediately after the epoch of time ascribed to the dawning of divine light, the human mind seems generally to have suffered an eclipse. The arts and sciences, intelligence and virtue, were smitten with an unaccountable palsy. The mind of man lost all its energies and sank under a generally prevailing imbecility. We look in vain among the successors of Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, Horace, and Virgil, the statesmen, orators, and poets of the golden age of literature, for a continuation of the series of such ornaments of human nature. A blight had smitten the growth of men's understandings; not only no more such clever men rose up, but with very few exceptions, no more such men as could have appreciated the talents of their predecessors or possessing so much as the relative degree of capacity, necessary to be sensible of the superiority that had preceded them. After reasonings so just, and eloquence so powerful, that even so late after the revival of literature as the present day, mankind, have not yet learned to reason more justly, or to declaim more powerfully; a race of barbarous idiots possessed themselves of the seat of science and the muses; and all distinction and renown was sought and obtained by absurdities disgraceful to reason, and mortifications revolting to nature. "The groves of the academy, the gardens of Epicurus, and even the porticoes of the Stoics, were deserted as so many different schools of scepticism or impiety, and many among the Romans were desirous that the writings of Cicero should be condemned and suppressed by the authority of the Senate." [Gibbon, chap. 16.] [Gibbon, Henry, 1737 to 1794, member of Parliament, English historian.]
Destruction of Evidence
The reasoning of which all men see the absurdity, when applied by the victorious Caliph to justify the destruction of the library of Alexandria [d] appeared unanswerable when adduced on the side of the true faith.
[d] The destruction of this celebrated library gave safety to the evidences of the Christian religion.]
Omar issued his commands for the destruction of that celebrated library, to his general, Amrus, in these words:
"As to the books of which you have made mention, if there be contained in them what accords with the book of God (meaning the Koran of Mahomet), there is without them, in the book of God, all that is sufficient. But if there be anything in them repugnant to that book, we in no respect want them. Order them, therefore, to be all destroyed." - Harris.
Precisely similar in spirit, and almost in form, are the respective decrees of the Emperors Constantine and Theodosius, which generally ran in the words, "that all writings adverse to the claims of the Christian religion, in the possession of whomsoever they should be found, should be committed to the fire," as the pious Emperors would not that those things which they took upon themselves to assume, tended to provoke God to wrath, should be allowed to offend the minds of the pious. If Mr. Gibbon, in his usual strain of caustic sarcasm, mentions the elaborate treatises which the philosophers, more especially the prevailing sect of the new Platonicians, who Gibbon, endeavoured to extract allegorical wisdom from the fictions of the Greek poets, composed; and the many elaborate treatises against the faith of the Gospel, which have since been committed to the flames, by the prudence of orthodox emperors. The large treatise of Porphyry against the Christians, consisted of thirty books, and was composed in Sicily about the year 270. It was against the writings of this great man especially, who had acquired the honourable addition to his name, of the virtuous, that the exterminatory decree of Theodosius was more immediately directed. There is little doubt, that had the discoveries of his writings would have made, and been permitted to come to general knowledge, all the pretended external evidence of Christianity must have been given up as wholly untenable. But while what the virtuous Porphyry had really written, was committed to the flames, a worse outrage was committed against his reputation, by Christians, who, aware of the great influence of his name and authority, ascribed the vile trash which they had composed themselves to him, for the purpose of making him seem to- have made the admissions which it was for the interest of Christianity that he should have made, or to have attacked it so feebly, as might serve to show the advantage of their defences. The celebrated treatise on the Philosophy of Oracles, which even the pious Doddridge, and the learned Macknight, have ascribed to this great man, and availed themselves of, for that fraudulent purpose, has, by the greater fidelity and honesty of Lardner, been demonstrably traced home to the forging hands of Christian piety.
The great deception
Before the Christian religion had made any perceptible advance among mankind, two grand and influential principles characterized all the moving intelligence that then existed in the world; and to these two principles, Christianity owed its triumph over all the wisdom and honesty that feebly opposed its progress. These principles were, - the SUPPOSED NECESSITY OF DECEIVING THE VULGAR, and THE IMAGINED DUTY OF CULTIVATING AND PERPETUATING IGNORANCE. Of the former of these principles, the most distinguished advocates were the whole train of deceptive legislators; Moses in Palestine, Mneues (if he be not the same) in Egypt, Minos in Crete, Lycurgus in Lacedaemon, Numa in Rome, Confucius in China, Triptolemus, who pretended the inspirations of Ceres, Zaleucus of Minerva, Solon of Epimenides, Zamolxis of Vesta, Pythagoras, and Plato. [e] For Euripides maintained that in the early state of society, some wise men insisted on the necessity of darkening truth with falsehood, and of persuading men that there is an immortal deity, who hears and sees and understands our actions, whatever we may think of that matter ourselves.): Strabo shows at great length the general use and important effects of theological fables. "It is not possible for a philosopher to conduct by reasoning a multitude of women, and of the low, vulgar, and thus to invite them to piety, holiness, and faith; or the philosopher must also make use of superstition, and not omit the invention of fables, and the performance of wonders. For the lightning, and the aegis, and the trident, and the thyrsus arms of the gods, are but fables; and so is all ancient theology. But the founders of states adopted them as bugbears to frighten the weak minded." [f]
[LN. Plutarch, in like manner, tells of the early religion of the Romans, that it was imageless and spiritual. He says Numa "forbade the Romans to represent the deity in the form either of man or of beast. Nor was there among them formerly any image or statue of the Divine Being; during the first one hundred and seventy years they built temples, indeed, and other sacred domes, but placed in them no figure of any kind; persuaded that it is impious to represent things Divine by what is perishable, and that we can have no conception of God but by the understanding." This would have been around 715 to 673BC. Odd indeed, although Numa was an out an out pagan, Plutarch also suggests that he played on superstition to give himself an aura of awe and divine allure, in order to cultivate more gentle behaviours among the warlike early Romans, such as honouring the gods, abiding by law, behaving humanely to enemies, and living proper, respectable lives.]
[e] Quoted in the pseudo-Plutarchian treatise, de Placitas philos. B. 1, Ch. 7.]
[f] Dr Isaac Vossius, when asked what had become of a certain man of letters, answered bluntly, "he has turned country parson., and is deceiving the vulgar."- See Desmaiseaux's Life of St. Evremond.]
Varro says plainly, "that there are many truths which it is useless for the vulgar to know, and many falsities which it is fit that the people should not know are falsities." [g] August, de Cio. Dei. B. 4.]
Paul of Tarsus, whose fourteen epistles make up the greater part of the bulk of the New Testament, repeatedly inculcates and avows the principle of deceiving the common people, talks of his having been upbraided by his own converts with being crafty and catching them with guile, [h] and of his known and wilful lies, abounding to the glory of God. [i] For further avowals of this principle of deceit, the reader may consult the chapter of Admissions. [h] 2 Corinth, 12-16. Be that it as it may, I have tricked you. Yet crafty man that I am, I caught you by trickery. [i] Romans 3-7. Someone might argue, "If my falsehood enhances God's truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?"]
Accessory to the avowed and consecrated principle of deceit, was that of ignorance. St. Paul, in the most explicit language, had taught and maintained the absolute necessity of extreme ignorance, in order to attain celestial wisdom, and gloried in the power of the Almighty as destroying the wisdom of the wise, and bringing to nothing, the understanding of the prudent; and purposely choosing the foolish things, and the weak things, and the base things, [j] as objects of his adoption, and vessels of his grace. And St. Peter, or whoever was the author of the epistles ascribed to him, inculcates the necessity of the most absolute prostration of understanding, and of a state of mind, but little removed from slobbering idiocy, as necessary to the acquisition of divine knowledge; that even as new born babes, they should desire the sincere milk of the word, that they might grow thereby." [k] for upon the sense of which doctrine, the pious and orthodox Tertullian glories in the egregious ridiculousness of the Christian religion, and the debilitating effects which the sincere belief of it had produced on his own understanding: his main argument for it, being, "I reverence it, because it is contemptible; I adore it, because it is absurd; I believe it, because it is impossible." [l]
[j] 1 Corinth, i. 27. [k] 1 Peter ii. 2. 1 Thess. ii. 7, "Even as a nurse cherishes her children." Compare also 2 Corinth, xi. 23, where Paul says, "I speak as a fool," which he need not have said. [l] De carne Christi Semleri, Edit. Halae Magdeburgicae, 1770, vol. 3, p. 352.]
Nothing was considered more obnoxious to the cause of the gospel, than the good sense contained in the writings of its opponents. The inveteracy against learning, of Gregory the Great, to whom this country owes its conversion to the gospel, was so excessive, that he not only was angry with an Archbishop of Vienna, for suffering grammar to be taught in his diocese, but studied to write bad Latin himself, and boasted that he scorned to conform to the rules of grammar, whereby he might seem to resemble a heathen. The spirit of superstition quite suppressed all the efforts of learning and philosophy. [LN., Napoleon said, "Religion is excellent for keeping common people quiet". Or as Paul as good as said, "Morality has nothing to do with such a man as I am."]
Priests of ignorance.
Christianity was first sent to the shores of England by the missionary zeal of Pope Gregory the First, not earlier than the sixth or the beginning of the seventh century. Our King Alfred, who is said to have founded the University of Oxford, in the ninth century, lamented that there was at that time not a priest in his dominions who understood Latin and even for some centuries after, we find that our Christian bishops and prelates, the "teachers, spiritual pastors, and masters," of the whole Christian community, were Marksmen, i.e. they supplied by the sign of the cross, their inability to write their own names.
Though philology, eloquence, poetry, and history, were sedulously cultivated among those of the Greeks and Latins, who in the fourth century still held out their resistance against the Christian religion: it's just and honourable historian, Mosheim, admonishes his readers by no means to conclude that any acquaintance with the sciences had become universal in the church of Christ. [m] It is certain, (he adds) that "the greatest part both of the bishops and presbyters, were men entirely destitute of learning and education. Besides, that savage and illiterate party, who looked upon all sorts of erudition, particularly that of a philosophical kind, as pernicious, and even destructive of true piety and religion, increased both in number and authority. The ascetics, monks, and hermits, augmented the strength of this barbarous faction, and not only the women, but also all who took solemn looks, sordid garments, and a love of solitude, for real piety, (and in this number we comprehend the generality of mankind) were vehemently prepossessed in their favour." [LN., thus our saying, 'ignorance is bliss,'
[m] Ecclesiastical History, Cent. 4, part 2, chap. 1, sec. 5, p. 346.]
Happily, the security and permanency given to the once won triumphs of learning over her barbarous foes, by the invention of the art of printing, [n] the now extensive spread of rational scepticism, and the never again to be surrendered achievements of superior intelligence, have forced upon the advocates of ignorance, the necessity of expressing their still too manifest suspicions and hostility against the cause of general learning, in more guarded and qualified terms. But what they still would have, the sameness of their principle, the identity of their purpose, and the sincerity of their conviction that the cultivation of the mind, and the continuance of the Christian religion, are incompatible, is indicated in the institution of an otherwise superfluous university in the city of London, for the avowed purpose of counteracting the well foreseen effects of suffering learning to get her pass into the world untrammelled with the fetters of superstition. The advertisement of subscriptions to the intended King's College, in the Times newspaper, even so late as the 16th of this present month of August, in which I write from this prison, in the cause and advocacy of intellectual freedom, avows the principle in these words: - "We, the undersigned, fully concurring in the fundamental principles on which it is proposed to be established, namely, that every principle of general education for the youth of a Christian community, ought to comprise instruction in the Christian religion, as an indispensable part; without which, the acquisition of other branches of knowledge, will be conducive neither to the happiness, nor to the welfare of the state." In other words, and most unequivocally in the sense intended, the utmost extent of learning which the university propounds, will never reach to the rendering any of its members competent to conflict with the learning of the enemies of the Christian faith; to produce either orators who dare attempt to vie on equal grounds with their orators; readers, who dare trust their conscious inferiority of understanding to read, or writers that shall have ability or disposition to answer their writings. The old barbarous policy of Goth and Vandal ignorance, to suppress and commit to the flames the writings of Infidels, to decry their virtues, and to imprison their persons; to shelter conscious weakness under airs of affected contempt; to crush the man when they can no longer cope with his argument, to destroy the reasoner, when they dare not encounter his reasoning, is still the dernier resource of a system, that cannot be defended by other means, but must needs be left in the dust from whence it sprang, whenever the mind of man Khali be allowed to get a fair start, without being clogged with it.
[n] In the year 1444, Caxton published the first book ever printed in England. In. 1474, the then Bishop of London, in a convocation of his clergy, said, "If we do not destroy this dangerous invention, it will one day destroy us." The reader should compare Pope Leo the Tenth's avowal, that "it was well known how profitable this fable of Christ has been to us:" with Mr. Deard's Apology for it, in his third letter to the Rev. Robert Taylor, page 74, and Archdeacon Paley's declaration, that "he could not afford to have, a conscience." - See Life of the Author attached to his work on the Evidences of Christianity, p. 11. London 12mo. edit. 1820".]
"In consequence of the conquests of the Romans, there arose imperceptibly, but entirely by the operation of natural and most obvious causes, a new kind of religion, formed by the mixture of the ancient rites of the conquered nations with those of the Romans. Those nations, who before their subjection, had their own gods, and their own particular religious institutions, were persuaded by degrees, to admit into their worship, a great number of the sacred rites and customs of their conquerors." [Mosheim, Cent. 1.] And from this conjunction, helped on or retarded from time to time, by those exacerbations and paroxysms, which ever attend the fever of religion, as it afflicts the sincerely religious, and the policy of those wicked tacticians, who have always known how to raise or lower the spiritual temperament to their purpose, arose that heterogeneous compound of all that was good and all that was bad in all religions, which, after having existed under various names and modifications, and gained by gradual usurpations a considerable ascendancy over any or all the idolatrous forms from which it had been collected, began to be called Christianity.
"The wiser part of mankind, however, (says Mosheim) about the time of Christ's birth,
looked upon the whole system of religion, as a just object of contempt and ridicule."
[Mosheim, Cent. 1. Ch. I.]
Divisions of Philosophy
"About the time of Christ's appearance upon earth, [o] there were two kinds of philosophy which prevailed among the civilized nations. One was the philosophy of the Greeks, adopted also by the Romans; and the other, that of the Orientals, which had a great number of votaries in Persia, Syria, Chaldea, Egypt, and even among the Jews." [o] Our author means any time about or near the era of Augustus.]
The Greek and Roman mode of thought and reasoning, was designated by the simple title of Philosophy! That of the eastern nations, as opposed to it, was called Gnosticism. The Philosophy, signified only the love and pursuit of wisdom. The Gnosis, signified the perfection and full attainment of wisdom itself.
The followers of both these systems, as we might naturally suppose, split and subdivided into innumerable sects and parties. It must be observed, however, that while the Philosophers, or those of the Grecian and Roman school, were infinitely divided, and held no common principle of union among themselves, some of them being opposed to all religion whatever; the Gnostics, or adherents of the oriental system, deduced all their various tenets from one fundamental principle, that of their common deism, and universally professed themselves to be the restorers of the knowledge of God, which was lost in the world. St. Paul mentions and condemns both these modes of thought and reasoning; that of the Greeks, in his Epistle to the Colossians, and that of the Orientals, in his first to Timothy. [p]
[p] Beware, lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit. - Colossi. li 8. Avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely so called. - 1 Tim. vi. 20.]
The Gnosis, or Gnosticism, comprehends the doctrine of the Magi, [q] the philosophy of the Persians, Chaldeans, and Arabians, and the wisdom- of the Indians and Egyptians. It is distinctly to be traced in the text and doctrines of the New Testament. It was from the bosom of this pretended oriental wisdom, that the chiefs of those sects, which, in the three first centuries, perplexed the Christian church, originally issued. The name itself signified, that its professors taught the way to the true knowledge of the Deity.
[q] The Magi, or wise men of the east, (Matthew ii. 1,) I. e. the Brahmins, who first got up the allegorical story of Krishna]
Odd Admissions by the Christian Writers.
Deity. Their most distinguished sect inculcated the notion of a triumvirate of beings, in which the Supreme Deity was distinguished both from the material evil principle, and from the creator of this sublunary world.
The Philosophy, comprehended the Epicureans, the most virtuous and rational of men, who maintained that wisely consulted pleasure, was the ultimate end of man; the Academics, who placed the height of wisdom in doubt and scepticism; the Stoics, who maintained a fortitude indifferent to all events; the Aristotelians, who, after their master, Aristotle, held the most subtle disputations concerning God, religion, and the social duties, maintaining that the nature of God resembles the principle that gives motion to a machine, that it is happy in the contemplation of itself, and entirely regardless of human affairs [Aristotle. 384 to 322BC. Greek philosopher, student of Plato, who amongst other things was invited by Philip 2nd of Macedon to tutor the young Alexander the Great in 343BC, and who Alexander would often write to about things he encountered during his great conquest of the known world.]; the Platonists, from their master, Plato, who taught the immortality of the soul, the doctrine of the trinity, of the manifestation of a divine man, who should be crucified, and the eternal rewards and punishments of a future life; and from all these resulting, the Eclectics, who, as their name signifies, elected and chose what they held to be wise and rational, out of the tenets of all sects, and rejected whatever was considered futile and pernicious. The Eclectics held Plato in the highest reverence. Their college or chief establishment was at Alexandria in Egypt.
Their founder was supposed to have been one Potamon. The most indubitable testimonies prove, that this Philosophy was in a flourishing state, at the period assigned to the birth of Christ. The Eclectics are the same whom we find described as Therapeuts or Essenes of Philo and whose sacred writings are, by Eusebius, shown to be the same as our gospels. Nought, but the supposed expediency of deceiving the vulgar, and of perpetuating ignorance, hinders the historian to whom I am, for the substance of this chapter, so much indebted, from acknowledging the fact, that in every rational sense that can be attached to the word, they were the authors and real founders of Christianity. [LN., Eusebius of Caesarea, somewhere between 260-5 to 339-40BC. Was a historian of Christianity, exegete ("to lead out" and generally consists of a critical analysis of a religious text), and Christian polemicist. A polemicist is one uses contentious rhetoric that is intended to support a specific position by aggressive claims and undermining of the opposing position. A person who often writes polemics, or who speaks polemically, is called a polemicist. The word is derived from Greek polemikos, meaning 'warlike, hostile', polemos, meaning 'war'.
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Next Chapter VI. part 1. Admissions of the Christian Writers. [contents- Admissions of Christian writers ... Deficiency of evidence ... Christians before the Christian era ... Christian frauds. ... Christian scriptures not in the hands of the laity ... Christianity and Paganism hardly distinguishable ... Miraculous powers, dreams, visions, charms, spells ... Name of Jesus a spell.]