FUTURE REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS.

In the ancient Astrolatry, two different systems of future rewards and punishments were inculcated; the Oriental or East Indian, and the Occidental or Egyptian; the former, ignoring the resurrection of the body, taught but one judgment immediately after death, and the latter inculcated an individual judgment immediately after death, the resurrection of the body, and a general judgment at the end of the world, or conclusion of the 12,000 year cycle.

The Oriental System.

Considering perfect happiness to consist in absolute rest, the Oriental astrologers conceived a state of eternal and unconscious repose, equivalent to soul absorption, to which they gave the name of Nirvana, into which they taught that, by the awards of the gods, the souls of the righteous, or those who had lived what they called "the contemplative life," would be permitted to enter immediately after death. But, for the souls of sinners, they invented a system of expiatory punishments which, known as the Metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, taught that they would be compelled to successively animate the bodies of beasts, birds, fishes, etc., for a thousand years before being permitted to enter the Nirvana.

The Occidental System.

In concocting the doctrine of the first judgment the Egyptian astrologers, ignoring the Nirvana, inculcated the future sentient existence of the soul; and, while retaining the Metempsychotial expiations of the Oriental system, taught that its rewards, and principal punishments, would be enjoyed or suffered in the under or nether world, the existence of which they had conceived in constructing their system of nature. This imaginary region, known to the Egyptians as the Amenti, to the Greeks asHades, and to the Hebrews as Sheol, was divided by an impassable gulf into the two states of happiness and misery which were designated in the Grecian mythology as the Elysium, or Elysian Fields, and the Tartarus. In the lower part of the latter was located the Phlegethon, or lake of fire and brimstone, the smoke from which ascended into an upper apartment.

In this system it was taught that the souls of the two extremes of society, constituted of the righteous and the great sinners, would be consigned immediately after the first judgment, the one to the Elysium, and the other to the Phlegethon, where they were to remain until the second or general judgment; while the souls of less venial sinners, constituting the greater mass of mankind, before being permitted to enter the Elysium would be compelled to suffer the expiatory punishments of the Metempsychosis, or in the upper region, or "smoky row" of the Tartarus. Such was the Egyptian purgatory, and its denizens constituted "the spirits in prison" referred to in I. Peter iii. 19, from which the astrologers claimed to have the power to release, provided their surviving friends paid liberally for their propitiatory offices; and, from this assumption, the clergy of the Catholic church derived the idea of saying masses for the repose of the soul. These doctrines were carried by Pythagoras from Egypt toGreece about 550 years before the beginning of our era; and passing from thence to Rome, the Greek and Latin poets vied with each other in portraying Hades and the joys and terrors of its two states.

The Second or General Judgment.

The Egyptian Astrologers, recognizing the soul as a material entity, and conceiving the idea that in the future life it would require a material organization for its perfect action, taught that at the general judgment it would be re-united to its resurrected body. In conformity to this belief, Job is made to say in chapter xix. 25, 26, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." The higher class Egyptians, however, fearing that their existence would continue to be of the same shadowy and intangible character after the second judgment, as they believed it would be in the Amenti, if worms were allowed to destroy their bodies, hoped to preserve them until that time by the process of embalming.

The imaginary events to occur in connection with the second judgment, which, constituting the finale of the plan of redemption, and inculcated in what are known as the doctrines of Second Adventism, were to be inauguratedby an archangel sounding a trumpet summoning the quick and the dead to appear before the bar of the gods to receive their final awards. At the second judgment, designated in the allegories as "the last day," "day of judgment," "great and terrible day of the Lord," etc., it was taught that the tenth and last saviour would make his second advent by descending upon the clouds, and after the final awards, the elect being caught up "to meet the Lord in the air" (I. Thes. iv. 17), the heaven and the earth would be reduced to chaos through the agency of fire. In reference to that grand catastrophe we find it recorded in II. Peter iii. 10, that "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up."

After the organization of a new heaven and a new earth it was taught that upon the latter would descend a beautiful city, with pearly gates and golden streets, called the City of God, the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven or New Jerusalem, in which the host of the redeemed would, with their Lord and Saviour, enjoy the Millennium, or thousand years of happiness unalloyed with evil; and such was the Kingdom for the speedy coming of which the votaries of Astral worship were taught to pray in what is known as the Lord's Prayer.

According to the teachings of the Allegories, there were to be no sun, moon or stars during the Millennium, their authors having arranged it so that the light of those luminaries would not be needed, as we find recorded in Rev. xxi. 23, and xxii. 5: "The city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it," and "there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither the light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light." It must be remembered, when reading the fanciful ideas relative to the City of God, that they were composed by men who, living in a very ignorant age, gave free rein to fervid imaginations.

JEWISH OR ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY.

It is our purpose to present the evidences showing that a system of Astral worship, which we designate as Jewish Christianity, was in existence more than two centuries and a half before the institution of its modern form. In verification of this assertion we must find the initial point of our inquiry in ancient history, which teaches that in the division of the Grecian Empire among his generals, after the death of Alexander the Great, who died 332 years before the beginning of our era,the governorship of Egypt and adjacent provinces was secured by Ptolemy Lagus, or Soter, who, having subsequently suppressed a revolt in Judea, removed from that country a large body of its inhabitants to people the new city of Alexandria, which had been laid out by order of and named after the great Conqueror.

The Egyptian version of the Gospel story, being more appropriate to the Nile Valley than to the region from whence they came, the Greek colonists of Alexandria adopted it, but preferring to pay homage to Serapis, one of the ninth incarnations of God Sol, which they imported from Pontus, a Greek province of Asia Minor, they erected to his worship that celebrated temple known as the Grand Serapium; and, transferring the culture and refinement of Greece to the new city, it became, under the Ptolemian dynasty, a great seat of learning; the arts and sciences flourished, an immense library was collected, the various forms of Astral worship were represented and schools for the dissemination of the several phases of Grecian philosophy and Oriental Gnosticism were founded.

Such being the environment of the Jewish residents of Alexandria, they soon acquired the vernacular and adopted the religion of the Greeks, who, having ever attached to their incarnate saviours the title signifying the Christ, or the anointed, were known as Christians. Encouragedby the liberal policy of Philadelphus, the second Ptolemy, a body of their learned men, who had been educated in the Greek schools, founded a college for the education of their own people, which institution was ultimately known as the University of Alexandria. Under the auspices of Philadelphus the professors of that institution rendered their Hebrew sacred records into the Greek language, which translation is known as the Septuagint, or Alexandrian version of the Old Testament.

Having acquired from the Egyptian astrologers the arts of healing, thaumaturgy and necromancy, and teaching them in their school, the professors of the Jewish college of Alexandria assumed the title of Essenes, or Therapeutae, the Egyptian and Greek words signifying Doctors, Healers or Wonder Workers. Possessed of the sad and gloomy characteristics of their race, they adopted the "Contemplative Life," or asceticism of the Oriental Gnosticism, from which they derived the name of Ascetics. Founding a church for the propagation of their peculiar tenets, those who were set apart for the ministry assumed the title of Ecclesiastics. Inculcating rigid temperance and self-denial among their people, they were known as Enchratites, Nazarites or Abstainers; and the more devout among them retiring to monasteries, or to the solitude of caves and other secluded places, were alsodesignated as Monks, Cenobites, Friars, Eremites, Hermits or Solitaries.

The time having arrived, according to the cyclic teachings of Astral worship, for the manifestation of the tenth and last incarnation of God Sol, or, in other words, to, give a new name to the mythical genius of the sun, the professors of the Jewish school of Alexandria is resolved to inaugurate their own form of worship. While retaining the same title under which they had paid homage to Serapis and known as Christians, Essenes or Therapeutae, they substituted for their Christ the name of the Grecian Bacchus, which, composed of the letters ΙΗΣ, signifies Yes, Ies or Jes. In composing their version of the Gospel story, having, like their race, no inventive genius, they appropriated that of Serapis as its basis and laid its scene in the land of their ancestry, but inconsistently retained the sign of the cross and the phraseology connected there with, which, having special reference to the Nile River and its annual inundation, had no application whatever to the sterile land of Judea. Selecting what they conceived to be the best from other versions of the Gospel story, and assuming the title of Eclectics, they designated their system as the Eclectic Philosophy. In proof of the eclectic character of the Gospel and Epistles of ancient Christianity, we refer to the Asceticism inculcated therein, which, derivedfrom the Oriental Gnosticism, we find perpetuated in the scriptures of modern Christianity; we also refer to the miracle of converting water into wine, taken from the Gospel story of Bacchus, and to the statements that the Saviour was the son of a carpenter and was hung between two thieves, copied from the story of Christna, the Eighth, Avatar of the East Indian astrolatry. Thus we see that, although the scene of the Gospel story of ancient Christianity was laid in the land of Judea, its authors having adopted a Greek version of that story as its basis, given a Greek title and name to their Messiah, perpetuated a Greek name for their sect and quoted exclusively from the Septuagint, or Greek version of the Old Testament, the facts show conclusively that it was not Jews of Judea, but Hellenized Jews of Alexandria, who were the real authors of the ancient Christianity.

THE PROPHECIES.

The clergy having ever claimed that the prophecies are Divine revelations of events yet to occur, and having incessantly agitated society by preaching their speedy fulfillment, we propose to expose the fallacy of their teachings by showing that these scriptures are not the records of future events, Divinely reavealed, but that they originated with the founders of Astral worship, who predicatedthem upon predetermined events of their own concoction, relative to the general judgment, and setting up of the kingdom of heaven, which were to occur as the finale of the plan of redemption and from which were derived the doctrines of second adventism; and, in determining the exact time when then were to occur, we have but to prove that it was coincident with the conclusion of the last half of the grand cycle of 12,000 years, which, as we have shown, was dedicated to man as the duration of his race on earth.

As evidence that the founders of the Jewish or ancient Christianity believed, like the votaries of other forms of Astral worship, that the prophecies were soon to be fulfilled, we find that the New Testament, of the original version of which they were the authors, is replete with such texts as "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand," Matt. iv. 17; "There be some standing here which shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom," Matt. xxi. 28; "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand," Mark i. 15. That the original version of the New Testament was composed when the Vernal Equinox was in the sign of Aries we are assured by reason of the fact that it inculcates homage to the Lord under the symbol of the Lamb; and that it was during the last, or 30th degree of that sign, can readily be proven byappealing to history and to astronomy, the former of which teaches that the Jews were removed from Judea to Alexandria twenty-five years before the accession to the throne of Philadelphus, the Second Ptolemy, to whom we have referred in our preceding article, and who, after reigning thirty-nine years, died 246 years before the beginning of our era. By reference to the Celestial atlas we will find that the Vernal Equinox will pass out of the sign of Pisces into that of Aquarius, or in the year 1900, and we have but to deduct that period of time from 2150, the number of years required for the cardinal points to pass through one whole sign, to determine that the Spring Equinox passed out of the sign of Aries into that of Pisces 250 years before the beginning of our era, or about 2,100 years ago. Now, from the projections of the astrological science, we are assured that the last half of the grand cycle of 12,000 years, which was allotted to man as the duration of his race on earth, was made to begin at a time corresponding to the Autumnal Equinox, when that cardinal point was passing out of the sign of Virgo, and that of necessity it had to come to an end at a time corresponding to the Vernal Equinox, when that cardinal point was passing out of the sign of Aries; from which we know why, at the last judgment, the office of trumpeter was assigned to the Archangel Gabriel, the genius of Spring, and why itwas a ram's horn with which he was to "toot the crack o' doom."

When the time arrived for the fulfillment of the prophecies we can well imagine that, fearing the wrath of the Lamb, there were weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth among the terror-stricken sinners, while those who believed they had made their calling and election sure were looking with feverish expectancy for the second advent of their Lord and Saviour; and, doubtless, clothed with their ascension robes, they watched and waited, with ears alert, to hear the sound of Gabriel's trumpet, summoning the quick, and the dead to the general judgment. But not a blast from the archangel's ram's horn was heard reverberating along the skies, no Lord appeared descending upon the clouds to meet the elect in the air, and, in the last act of the fearful drama of "judgment day," the curtain refused to be rung down upon a burning world.

With the non-fulfillment of the prophecies, the more enlightened elements of society began to scoff at the priests, who were temporarily demoralized, but true to their deceptive instincts, soon rallying with the plea of a mistake having been made in the calculations based upon the prophecies, they undoubtedly concocted scripture to meet that very emergency, for, to the taunts of the scoffers who, in reference to the second advent of the Lord, enquired"Where is the sign of His coming? for, since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation," they answered that "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise," but "as a thief in the night" he would soon come and all things be fulfilled. See II. Peter, chapter iii.

Following up the history of this interesting subject, we find that the founders of modern Christianity, to which we will refer in our next article, in composing their version of the New Testament from that of the Jewish, or ancient Christians, made no change in its verbiage relative to the prophecies; but when Constantine I., Emperor of Rome, became the patron of the church, her hierarchy, tired of figuring upon them, secured a long respite from that troublesome subject by claiming to have made other calculations, which put off the time of fulfillment to the year 1000; and from history we learn when the time arrived the whole of Christendom was fearfully agitated upon the subject: Since then every generation has been vexed with the fallacies of second adventism; and the facts of the case justify the charge that the clergy, by teaching that the prophecies refer to events yet to occur, are perpetuating a most stupendous fraud upon Christendom, and an earnest and efficient protest should be inaugurated against the further agitation of the monstrous delusion of second adventism,which is frightening thousands of weak-minded people into insanity and causing a vast amount of social distress.

ROMAN OR MODERN CHRISTIANITY.

Having presented the evidences that the Jewish, or ancient Christianity, originated at the University of Alexandria, under Greek rule, we now propose to show that its modern form emanated from the same source, under Roman rule; but, before entering upon this investigation, it is important to become conversant with the sentiments manifested towards religion by the cultured element of Roman society in that enlightened era, which, designated as the golden age of literature, was adorned by such distinguished orators, philosophers, historians, poets and naturalists as Cicero, Tacitus, Pliny, Horace and Virgil. In reference to this subject, Gibbon, in his history of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. I., chapter 2, says: "The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosophers as equally false and by the magistrate as equally useful. Both the interests of the priests and the credulity of the people were sufficiently respected.In their writings and conversation the philosophers of antiquity asserted the independent dignity of reason, but they resigned their actions to the commands of law and custom. Viewing with a smile of pity and indulgence the various errors of the vulgar, they diligently practiced the ceremonies of their fathers, devoutly frequented the temples of the gods, and sometimes condescending to act a part on the theatre of superstition, they concealed the sentiments of an atheist under the sacerdotal robe. Reasoners of such a temper were scarcely inclined to wrangle about their respective modes of faith or of worship. It was indifferent to them what shape the folly of the multitude might choose to assume, and they approached with the same inward contempt and the same external reverence to the altars of the Lybian, the Olympian or the Capitoline Jupiter." Upon the same subject Mosheim, in his church history, Book I., chapter 1, says that "The wiser part of mankind, about the time of Christ's birth, looked upon the whole system of religion as a just object of contempt and ridicule."

In determining why such adverse sentiments were entertained towards religion by "the wiser part of mankind," about the time referred to in the foregoing quotations, it will be found to have been owing to the extensive spread of the Esoteric philosophy, which taught, as previouslystated, that the gods were mythical and the scriptures allegorical. While attainable only through initiation, it was necessarily confined to a limited number, but, ultimately getting beyond the control of the priests and vast numbers acquiring the knowledge of its secrets without initiation, it became evident that it was but a question of time when there would be no respectable element left to sustain religion. At this juncture our attention is directed to the University of Alexandria, which, at that time, was in a flourishing condition. Having ceased to be an exclusively Jewish school, students from all parts of the Roman Empire, without regard to nationality, were attending it, and its professors were drawn from the ranks of both Jewish and Gentile scholars. Realizing the hopelessness of reviving the ancient faith among the enlightened clement of society, and the impossibility of proselyting them to a new form of superstition, these professors resolved to institute a system of worship exclusively for the Jews and the lower and neglected classes of Gentiles, including the slaves and criminals. To that end they rewrote the scriptures of the Jewish or ancient Christianity, which had been preserved among the secret archives of the University. Retaining their teachings relative to the finale of the plan of redemption, and its monasticism; also the land of Judea as the scene of its version of the Gospelstory, and the name of its saviour, to which they added the Latin terminal "us," thus making it Iesus or Jesus, they perpetuated the Greek name of Bacchus—the same that was ultimately perverted into the monogram which, consisting of the Roman letters I. H. S., is found in all Catholic churches, and in some Protestant ones, is falsely supposed to stand for Jesus Hominum Salvator, or Jesus, Saviour of Men. Conforming their version of the Gospel story to the lowly condition of its expected votaries, they attached to the saviour the characteristics of poverty, and made it teach that he was born in a manger, that his disciples were but humble fishermen and that the poor would be the only elect in the kingdom of heaven. Dropping the name of Essenes or Therapeutae, and retaining that of Christian, they incorporated a thread of real history corresponding to the reign of Augustus, and arbitrarily made the Christian era begin at that time. Having thus completed their scheme, they prudently destroyed the original from which they compiled their scriptures, and sending out missionaries to all parts of the Empire commissioned them to preach salvation only to the Gentile rabblement and to the Jews.

That the sacred records of the ancient Essenes or Therapeutae constituted the basis of the scriptures of modern Christianity we have the authority of Eusebius,the church historian of the fourth century, from whom we learn nearly all that is reliable of its history during the first three centuries. In his Ecclesiastical History, Book II. chapter 17, he makes the important admission that "Those ancient Therapeutae were Christians, and that their writtings are our Gospels and Epistles." As further evidence that modern Christianity is but a survival of the Eclectic philosophy of the ancient Therapeutae, we have another important admission by the same historian, who, in quoting from an apology addressed to the Roman Emperor, Marcus Antoninus, in the year 171, by Melito, Bishop of Sardis, in Lydia, a province of Asia Minor, makes that apologist say, in reference to certain grievances to which the Christians were subjected, that "the philosophy which we profess truly flourished aforetime among the barbarous nations; but having blossomed again in the great reign of thy ancestor, Augustus, it proved to be, above all things, ominous of good fortune to thy kingdom." Thus we have indubitable evidence that it was the Eclectic philosophy of the Jewish, or ancient Christianity, which "blossomed again," in its modern form, during the reign of Augustus.

From the testimony of Philo, as referred to by Eusebius, and from the writings of Josephus, the Jewish historian, we learn that, at the beginning of our era, the descendants of the ancient Essenes were still observingthe practices and customs of monasticism. But as Josephus refers to them only as descendants of the ancient Essenes, and makes no mention of Christ or Christians—except in one paragraph which has been conceded by the best authorities to be an interpolation it is evident that, at that time, they had no connection with the University of Alexandria, and nothing whatever to do with the institution of modern Christianity. It is also apparent that the Jews of Judea had no hand in its organization, for, if they had instituted it, they would not have attached to the Messiah the Greek title signifying the Christ, but, writing their version of the Gospel story in their own dialect, would have used the Hebrew word signifying the Shiloh (see Gen. xlix. 10); and furthermore, having conceived the idea that he would manifest himself as a great temporal prince, who would re-establish the throne of David, and deliver them from the oppression of foreign rulers, they would not have attached to him the humble characteristics of the Christ of the new Testament. Again, if they had been the authors of modern Christianity, it would have been a most surprising inconsistency for them to turn right about and reject its conceptions of a savior, especially when that rejection resulted in the dire persecutions to which their race has ever been subjected by the Christians.But the Gentile riffraff, attracted by the gracious promises of enjoying in the world to come the felicities denied them in this, eagerly attached themselves to the new sect, which rapidly increased in numbers, and its votaries, glorying in the opprobrious epithet of Ebionites, or needy ones, made themselves so obnoxious by their aggression and turbulent dispositions that, barely tolerated by the Government and condemned by the cultured adherents to the established religion, many of them, courting the crown of martyrdom, suffered death at the hands of the civil authorities; and thus was engendered that spirit of hatred against their fancied oppressors which only awaited the opportunity to manifest itself in deeds of rapine and-bloodshed.

The fanacticismwhich prevailed among the earlier Christians was the direct result of their dense ignorance, and to this sole cause we may ascribe all the trouble which the Roman Government had with them, and to become convinced of this fact we have but to study church history. In reference to this subject Mosheim, in his Ecclesiastical History; Vol. 4, part 2, chap. 1, says: "It is certain 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 philosophicalkind, 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, were vehemently prepossessed in their favor." In almost any history of England we will find it recorded that, even in the ninth century, King Alfred lamented that there was at that time not a priest in his dominions who understood Latin; and even for some centuries after the bishops and prelates of the whole Christian community were marksmen, i. e., they supplied by the sign of the cross the inability to write their own names. If the bishops and priests were so supremely ignorant what can be said in reference to the literary attainments of the laity?

The Christians were alternately persecuted and tolerated by the Roman Emperors until the first quarter of the fourth century, when certain events occurred through which the Church of Rome became the recipient of Imperial Patronage. Constantine I., called the Great, having made himself sole Emperor by destroying all other claimants to the throne, applied to Sopater, one of the priests of the established religion, for absolution, and was informed that his crimes were of such an atrocious characterthat there was no absolution for him. Believing that the Phlegethon, or lake of fire and brimstone, awaited him in the future life, unless he could obtain absolution, he became very much distressed when one of his courtiers, learning the cause and referring him to the Church of Rome, he at once applied to her Bishop, Silvester, who, readily granting the desired absolution, he added another victim to his butcher bill by ordering the death of the honest priest who had refused to grant him absolution. The Christian sect having become a powerful and dangerous faction, Constantine conceived the idea of strengthening his usurped and precarious position by attaching it to his interest, and to that end he professed himself a convert to its tenets, and, taking the Church of Rome under his especial patronage, elevated her Bishop to the rank of a prince of the Empire and gave him one of his palaces for a residence.

The Christian hierarchy, knowing that it would be a potent means of confirming the faith of the laity in the Gospel story as a literal history to have a tomb of the Saviour to which pilgrimages could be made, and appealing to Constantine to provide one, he sent his mother, Helena, to Judea to find the place and, of course, discovering what she went to look for, he had erected, under her supervision, over the designated spot, thatsplendid edifice which, known as the church of the Holy Sepulchre, remains to this day. Helena, good at finding lost things, also claimed to have discovered the veritable cross upon which the Saviour had been crucified; and her son, worthy of such a mother, claimed, as recorded by Eusebius, that he had seen with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, bearing the inscription: "In Hoc Signo Vinces," signifying "Under this sign, conquer." Those were times of remarkable and supernatural occurrences.

At the time Constantine became the patron of Christianity the bishops and presbyters of the several churches, seemingly ignorant of the teachings of the Esoteric philosophy relative to the origin of the Trinity, were divided into two factions in discussing the relation between the Father and the Son. One party, headed by Athanasius, a presbyter of Alexandria, and afterwards bishop of that see, advocated the ancient belief that the three persons in the godhead of Father, Son and Holy Ghost is but one God, that Christ is consubstantial or co-eternal with the Father, and that he became man to perform his mission of redemption. Such, in brief, is what is known as the Athanasian or Trinitarian Creed. The other party, headed, by Arius, another presbyter of Alexandria, advocated the belief in one God alone and that Christ, havingno existence until begotten of the Father, is not consubstantial or co-eternal with him. Such, in substance, constitutes what is known to the Trinitarian or Orthodox Christians as the Arian or Unitarian heresy. Could stronger evidence be adduced that this controversy was the result of ignorantly making a distinction where there is no difference, for whether Trinitarian or Unitarian the mythical genius of the sun is the God to whom they all paid supreme adoration, although the Christians of to-day would deny it most emphatically.

The faction, advocating the Trinitarian creed having converted the Emperor to their belief, and influencing him to enforce it as a fundamental doctrine of the Christian theology, he, in the year 325, summoned, at his own expense, a general council of bishops and priests to meet at Nice, in Bithynia, a province of Asia Minor. When they had assembled he appeared among them, clad in gorgeous attire, with a jewel-studded diadem upon his royal brow, and, seated upon a gilded chair, presided over their deliberations. A minority of them, holding "most contumaciously" to the Arian heresy, and refusing to change their views at the bidding of the Emperor, he banished them from their respective bishoprics, while the majority adopted the Trinitarian creed, and appealing to Constantine to suppress the writings of Arius he issued an edictfor that purpose, which we present as follows: "Moreover we thought that if there can be found extant any work or book compiled by Arius the same should be burned to ashes, so that not only his damnable doctrine may thereby be wholly rooted out, but also that no relic thereof may remain unto posterity. This we also straightway command and charge, that if any man be found to hide or conceal any book made by Arius, and not immediately bring forth such book, and deliver it up to be burned, that the said offender for so doing shall die the death. For as soon as he is taken our pleasure is that his head shall be stricken off from his shoulders." Rather a blood-thirsty, edict to be issued by the "puissant, the mighty and noble Emperor," and a very inconsistent one, considering that he soon afterwards readopted the Unitarian faith and restored the banished bishops to their respective sees; but, regardless of his action, the Church of Rome sustained the Trinitarian creed and enforced the dogma of the supreme divinity of Christ.

Thus we see that the history of Christianity, in the first half of the fourth century, cannot be written without incorporating considerable from the life of Constantine, whose ensanguined record before his pretended conversion marks him as the most brutal tyrant that ever disgraced the imperial purple; but the appalling crimes heperpetrated afterwards, among which were the scalding his inoffending wife to death in a bath of boiling water, and the murdering, without cause, of six members of his family, one of which was his own son, justify what a learned writer said of him, that "The most unfortunate event that ever befell the human race was the adoption of Christianity by the crimson-handed cut-throat in the possession of unlimited power," and yet Constantine was canonized by the Eastern church.

During the first three centuries, when Christianity was but a weak sect, her bishops addressed numerous apologies to the Roman Emperors, in which they claimed tolerance from the government on the ground that their form of worship was virtually the same as the established religion. But after Constantine's pretended conversion its hierarchy began to labor for the recognition of Christianity as the state religion, and to give to their demand some show of consistency they insisted that their scriptures were really historical, and that there was no resemblance whatever between the two forms of worship; while theirs was of Divine authenticity the Pagans was purely a human institution.

For centuries after the convocation of the council of Nice the peace and harmony of the several churches were disturbed by the rancorous discussion of the same oldquestions of Trintarianism and Unitarianism, the Western church adhering to the former while a majority of the Eastern congregations maintained their faith in the latter; but ultimately the Trinitarian party, gaining the ascendency, and persecuting the adherents of the Unitarian faith, the greater part of them retired into northern Arabia where they founded numerous monasteries; and from history we learn that, having impressed their Unitarian faith upon the populace of that country, it was ultimately incorporated into the Koran, the sacred book of Mohammedanism; and, while becoming votaries of that form of worship, still retained the belief that Christ was but one of the prophets.

The cultured adherents to the established form of worship, becoming alarmed at the growing power and influence of the Christians and at the prospect of such an ignorant and vicious rabble obtaining control of the government, regardless of their pledge to keep the Gnosis secret, publicly announced that the Gods were mythical and the scriptures allegorical, and engaged in a heated controversy with the Christians upon the subjects. The character of their discussions is well, although supposititiously, expressed by Gerald Massey, in his work entitled, "The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ;" page 179, American edition, where he makes the Gnostics say to theChristians, "You poor ignorant idiots; you have mistaken the mysteries of old for modern history, and accepted literally all that was only meant mystically." To which the Christians responded, "You spawn of Satan, you are making the mystery by converting our accomplished facts into your miserable fables; you are dissipating and dispersing into thin air our only bit of solid foothold in the world, stained with the red drops of Calvary. You are giving a satanic interpretation of the word of revelation and falsifying the oracles of God. You are converting the solid facts of our history into your newfangled allegories;" to which the Gnostics replied, "Nay, it is you who have taken the allegories of Mythology for historical facts."

But it was impossible to stem the rising tide; the lessons which the priesthood had taught the ignorant masses had been too well learned. They were sure that their scriptures were historical; that Jesus Christ was truly the incarnate saviour who had died and rose again for the salvation of the elect, and that being the elect it would be pre-eminently just and proper that the old Pagan form of worship should be abrogated and theirs recognized as the state religion. Thus the conflict raged until the year 381, when, under the reign of the Emperor Theodosius the Great, this demand having been formallymade, and the Senate, fearing the tumult a refusal would excite, with a show of fair dealing ordered the presentation, before that body, of the respective merits of the two forms of worship. In that memorable discussion, which lasted a whole week, Symmachus, a senator, advocated the old system, and Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, the new, which resulting, as a foregone conclusion, in the triumph of Christianity, a decree to that effect was promulgated.

Then the long deferred opportunity having arrived, the vengeful bishops, hounding on a no less vengeful laity, ruthlessly murdered the priests of the old religion, and, appropriating its emoluments to their own use, they seized upon its temples, and demolishing some, converted others into churches. With iconoclastic hands they destroyed some of the statues representing the ancient divinities, or after mutilation exposed others in public places to the derision of the populace. Subjecting the adherents to the older form of worship, whom they designated as infidels, to the most diabolical indignities and persecutions, they destroyed their works of art, burned their libraries, suppressed their schools of learning, and either killed or exiled their professors. Among the atrocious acts perpetrated by these fiends in human shape none was more barbarous than the one committed in Alexandria, in the year 415, when Hypatia, the beautiful and accomplisheddaughter of Theon, who had succeeded her father as professor of mathematics and philosophy in the Alexandrian University, while on her way to deliver a lecture, was, by order of Bishop Cyril, dragged from her chariot and murdered in a most revolting manner.

One of the successors of Theodosius justified himself in decreeing the spoliation of the old religion upon the grounds that "It was unbecoming a Christian government to supply the infidels with the means of persevering in their errors." Another one of the Emperors, more zealous than his predecessors, decreed the death penalty against all persons discovered practicing any of the rites and ceremonies of the old religion. Thus the onslaught of Christian savagery obliterated the civilization of Greece and Rome, and inaugurated that long reign of intellectual night known as the Dark Ages, which, materially aiding in effecting the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, made it possible to erect upon its ruins that Italian Oligarchy, which, since then, has ruled the greater part of Christendom.

The dogmatic element of the ancient astrolatry, as incorporated into the Christian creed, underwent no material change until the inauguration of the dark ages, when the bishops of the several churches, in the delirium of metaphysical speculation, concocted the previously unheardof doctrine of pre-existence of spirit, in conformity to which God was declared to be purely a spiritual deity, who, existing before matter, created the universe of nothing. Being the sole custodians of the scriptures; and changing the six periods of a thousand years each to the six days of creation, they altered Gen. i, 1, to read, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," which in the original read: "In the beginning, when the Gods (Elohim or Alehim) had made (shaped or formed) this heaven and this earth." These radical changes necessitating others, they made two distinct and independent beings of the principles of Good and Evil personified in the God Sol; the former they embodied in Jesus the Christ and the latter in the Christian Devil, thus supplanting old Pluto; the presiding genius of the under world.

Rejecting the ancient doctrines relative to the soul, and teaching that, having proceeded from a purely spiritual deity, it would exist eternally as an independent spiritual entity, they substituted for the ancient system of limited rewards and punishments the one inculcating their endless duration. These changes in the creed, which were confirmed at the general council of Constantinople, in the year 553, necessitating further alterations of the scriptures, the righteous were promised "eternal life" in the Paradise of God beyond the stars; and, While consigninggreat sinners to "everlasting punishment" in the Tartarian fires of the under world, the less venial were to expiate their crimes in the same old Purgatory. Thus, having invented an endless heaven and an endless hell for purely spiritual souls, and neglecting to expunge the doctrines of the resurrection of the body, the setting up of the kingdom of heaven upon a reorganized earth and other materialistic teachings of the ancient religion, they made of the creed and scriptures such a conglomeration of "things new and old" that, without the Astrological key, it would be impossible to determine what they originally taught.

At the Reformation in the 16th century Luther and his coadjutors, while projecting into the Protestant creed all the cardinal tenets of Catholicism, excepting that of Purgatory, made no change in the verbiage of the scriptures. Thus retaining the awful doctrine of endless hell, the reformers constructed a creed which they intended for the government of Protestants for all time; but, doing what had never been done before in the history of the world, they gave the scriptures to the laity, and, whether or not they secured the right of private judgment or individual interpretation, it has been taken all the same; and thus opening the door to investigation, it must ultimately result not only in the abrogation of hell, butin the relegation to the limbo of oblivion of the whole dogmatic element of religion.

As a fitting conclusion to this article, we again direct the attention of our readers to the subject of the primary source of religious dogmas. Prior to the establishment of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire, the philosophers who wrote against it invariably made the charge that its theology was derived from the ancient Paganism. After its establishment as the state religion of the Empire, the hierarchy of the church, knowing that this charge was unanswerable, instigated the Emperor Theodosius I. to promulgate an edict decreeing the destruction of all books antagonistic to Christianity. This edict, directed more particularly against the writings of Celsus, was carried out so effectually that we know nothing of what he wrote, only as quoted by Origen, the distinguished church father of the third century, who attempted to answer in eight books what Celsus had written in one, entitled "The True Discourse." In one of his quotations from Celsus' work he makes that philosopher say "that the Christian religion contains nothing but what Christians held in common with heathens, nothing that was new or truly great." See Bellamy's translation, chapter 4. During the earlier centuries the Christians were divided into numerous sects, entertaining very divergentviews, and each faction, holding all others to be heretical, charged them with having derived their doctrines from the Pagan religion. Upon this subject we find that Epiphanius, a celebrated church father of the 4th century, freely admits that all that differed from his own were derived from the heathen mythology. Such was the position of all orthodox writers during the Middle Ages, and since the Reformation the Protestant clergy have uniformly made the same charge against the Catholic; a few quotations from their writings we present for the edification of our readers.

Jean Daille, a French Protestant minister of the 17th century, in his treatise entitled La Religion Catholique Romaine Institute par Nama Pompile, demonstrates that "the Papists took their idolatrous worship of images, as well as all their ceremonies, from the old heathen religion." Bishop Stillingfleet of the English church and a writer of considerable eminence in the 17th century, said, in reference to the complaisant spirit of the early church towards the Pagans, that "it was attended by very bad consequences, since Christianity became at last, by that means, nothing else but reformed Paganism, as to its divine worship." See Stillingfleet's defense of the charge of idolatry against the Romanists, vol. 5, page 459. M. Turrentin, of Geneva, Switzerland, a learned Protestantwriter of the 17th century, in one of his orations describing the state of Christianity in the 4th century, says "that it was not so much the Empire that was brought over to the faith, as the faith that was brought over to the Empire; not the Pagans who were converted to Christianity, but the Christians who were converted to Paganism." Thus, having shown that the Catholics derived all their cardinal tenets from the Pagan mythology, the Protestants must surely have obtained theirs from the Catholics, for they teach all of them except that of Purgatory.

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