"Gratian, and afterwards Theodose, proscribed Arianism from the whole empire.... In the beginning of the fifth century, the Goths, the Burgundians, and the Vandals, spread it in Gaul and in Africa. The Visigoths introduced it in Spain, where it subsisted as long as the kings of that country were Arians themselves, until the year 660.
"Arianism was to be revived in the sixteenth century. It is probable that Arianism would have invaded the whole Orient if the Arians had been united."
Therefore, it was only long after the Council of Nice, that its decision, in favor of the doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ, prevailed among the churches which depended on the Emperor of Constantinople, and on the Bishop of Rome.
4th. We will also present a succinct view ofthe large number of Christians, who, without the pale of the communion of Rome, preserved the former belief that Jesus Christ was not God.
We have proved, in the course of this chapter, that the following Christian sects, or denominations, did not believe the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ: the Corinthians, the Carpocratians, the Ebionites, the Basilidians, the Marcionites, the Valentinians, the Ptolemaïtes, the Heracleonites, the Colarbasians, the Barules, the Bardesanists, the Marcosians, the Theodotians, the Artemonians, the Docetes, the Tatianists, the Apellites, the Ophites, the Cainites, the Hermogenians, the Hermians, the Sethians, the Severians, the Encratites, the Valesians, the Hieracites, the Samosatians, and the Manicheans. But nearly all these Christian sects of the first three centuries outlived the Council of Nice, and preserved through centuries the doctrine that Jesus Christ was not God himself: this is the unanimous testimony of historians.
From the four heads of convincing historical proofs brought forth in thisconfirmatur, we draw once more the conclusion:
1st. Then the Church of Rome, from which the self-called Orthodox Protestant Churches, in the sixteenth century, borrowed the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ, did not hold it from the apostles of Jesus Christ.
2d. We prove the second proposition of the argument of this chapter, namely, that the Churchof Rome uses, in her adoration to Jesus Christ, rites and ceremonies of a striking similarity with those used by the Pagans in their adoration to the sun, under the names of Bacchus, Hercules, Osiris, Mithra, Atys, etc.
Every year the Pagans celebrated with pomp the death of Bacchus. Those celebrations were called Titanical, and celebrations of the perfect night. They supposed that this god had been slain by the Giants; but that his mother, or Ceres, had reunited his bones. To retrace his death they killed a bull, whose raw flesh they ate, because Bacchus, represented with the horns of an ox, had been thus torn by the Titans. Julius-Firmicus, an orthodox author of the fourth century, who wrote about the legend of Bacchus, says that the Pagans considered those fictions as solar fables. He adds that the sun was irritated at being thus worshiped: here, in being immersed into the Nile river, under the names of Osiris and of Horus; there, in being mutilated under the names of Atys and of Adonis; and in other places, in being boiled or roasted, like Bacchus. The Bacchanals, or disorderly, noisy, tumultuous, and frantic scenes took place.
St. Athanase, St. Augustine, Theophile, Athenagoras, Minutius-Felix, Lactance, Firmicus, and other Christian writers of the first centuries, as well as more ancient authors, describe the general mourning of the Egyptians in the anniversary day of the death of Osiris. They describe the ceremonies practiced on his tomb, and the tears shed thereon during several days. The mysteries in which the representation of his death was exhibited, and which took place during the night, were called mysteries of night.
Likewise the death of Mithra was celebrated. To the usual magnificence of his temples succeeded a gloomy sight. The priests, during the night, carried his image in a tomb, and laid it on a litter, in the same manner as the Phœnicians laid the image of Adonis. This ceremony was accompanied with dismal songs, and with groans. The priests, after this feigned expression of grief, kindled a flambeau, called sacred; anointed the image of Mithra with chrisma, or with perfumes; and then one of them, in a solemn and loud voice, pronounced these words: "Cheer up, holy mourners, your god is come again to life; his sorrows and his sufferings will save you."
Julius Firmicus, who relates this, exclaims: "Why do you exhort those unfortunate to rejoice? Why do you deceive them with false promises? The death of your god is known; but his new life is not proved. There is no oracle that ascertains his resurrection; he has not appeared to men after his resurrection to prove his divinity. An idol you bury; upon an idol you mourn; an idol you lift up from the tomb, and having expressed your grief you rejoice," etc.
The Church of Rome practices alike ceremonies in celebrating the anniversary day of the death ofJesus Christ. All the ornaments of each church, the statues and images of saints, etc., are clothed in black. In one of the chapels of the church a tomb is prepared, in which, on the Holy Thursday morning, Jesus Christ—namely, a wafer which has been consecrated—is laid, shut up, not in the ostensorium, but in a ciborium, as a sign of mourning. The priests perform this ceremony. During the whole day the church is thronged with people, who come to express to Jesus Christ their sympathy in his sufferings. At about eight o'clock in the evening, a gloomy procession, composed of the priests and the people, march along the streets in the dark (this procession takes place only in Catholic countries,) now and then reciting in a low and dismal tone a verse of the psalm,Miserere mei Deus, [translation,] Lord have mercy on me. When this procession has taken place, hymns of suffering and of death are sung in the church, around the tomb in which Jesus Christ lays. At eleven o'clock a priest goes to the pulpit, and in an affecting manner relates to the sobbing and weeping multitude the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ. This address is called Passion's sermon.
The people spend the whole night in the church to keep company to Jesus Christ in his sufferings, they say, and to relieve him by their sympathy. In the morning of the Holy Friday the church is yet filled with mourners. The priests, processionally, but in silence, go to the tomb where Jesus Christ lays, take him out, andcarry him into the tabernacle, where they shut him up, but without leaving any taper burning in the whole church. In the evening, after the recitation of theOfficium Tenebrarum, [translation,] Office of Darkness, boys, men, women and all, fill the church with their yells, with the sharp sound of rattles, with the blows they strike on boards with small and large sticks, and with sounding, sonorous instruments, such as horns, etc. A few days after they eat the wafer, which they pretend to be the raw flesh and blood of Jesus Christ.
The Pagans, in celebrating the resurrection of Bacchus, Osiris, etc., who represented the sun, lighted the lamps of their temples with a fire, which the priests obtained by striking a piece of steel with silex, and was called new fire. That day the priests were clothed in white ornaments; the lustral waters were renewed, and also the decorations of the temples: so in every church the Romish priests strike a piece of steel with silex, and obtain a fire called new fire; with it they light the lamps, and the taper called Paschal taper. They renew the holy water, which the people piously carry to their homes, and keep for protection during the storms, etc. The priests change their priestly garments, and clothe in white.
The Pagans worshiped the sun under the name of Aries, because the Aries was one of the celestial signs: so the Church of Rome worships Jesus Christ under the form of a lamb. Formerly, the Roman Catholic parents suspended on the necksof their children the symbolic image of a lamb; and the women, instead of wearing a cross, as they do now, wore a lamb. This practice had been introduced by the Romish priests, who sold, as they sell now, Agnus Dei, which have been consecrated with prayers and sprinkled with holy water, as being the emblems of Jesus Christ.
A lamb was represented bleeding, and under it was a vessel in which the blood dropped. This practice was in use till the year 680, under the pontificate of the pope Agathon, and under the reign of the emperor Constantine III., surnamed Pogonat. Then it was ordered by the sixth council of Constantinople, canon 82, that a man nailed to a cross should be substituted to the ancient symbol of a lamb. However, this symbol was partly preserved in the church, as seen above. The symbol of a lamb is yet seen on the tabernacle, or small box of marble, or of wood, richly wrought upon, placed on the altar; also on the ostensorium, and on the forepart of the altars.
The Pagans placed a sunlike halo around the heads of the statues of Osiris, Bacchus, and other gods, who, in their opinion, represented the sun: likewise in the Church of Rome the priests place the wafer, which, they think, is Jesus Christ himself, in an ostensorium, which is shaped like the disc of the sun; and which represents his beams; the wafer itself is circular. This ostensorium is of silver, or of gold, and adorned with diamonds, or gems. Above the altar a large sun is generallyeither painted, or carved, or formed with draperies. The Pagans kept in their temples a lamp burning, in the honor of the sun: so, in the Roman Catholic churches a lamp is kept burning, day and night, near the altar, in the honor of Jesus Christ.
The Pagans built their temples so that the sanctuary was turned towards the rising sun: likewise, the Roman Catholic churches are built so that the sanctuary be turned towards the rising sun.
The Pagans carried in triumph, processionally, and with the most brilliant pomp, the statues of Bacchus, Osiris, and other gods, representing the sun: likewise, on the feast day of the body of Jesus Christ, the consecrated wafer is carried in triumph, processionally, and with the most brilliant pomp. The priestly and other ornaments are of a tissue of silver, or of gold. A multitude of people follow: the various confraternities of Penitents, the ones grey, the others blue, the others white, etc., and the many confraternities of virgins, of married women, all in variegated costumes, march before the consecrated wafer. The civil, judiciary, and military authorities, regiments of soldiers with brass bands, with drums beating, with banners and flags unfurled, escort the consecrated wafer, which is carried by the first priest of the parish, under a canopy of the most costly and magnificent tissue.
The Pagans burnt flambeaux before the statues of Osiris, Bacchus, etc., to represent the planets;and sometimes to represent the signs of the Zodiac: so, in the Roman Catholic churches, upon the altar, there are six chandeliers, with candles burning around the consecrated wafer, namely, Jesus Christ, who is in the middle.
From all the above facts we may legitimately draw the conclusion, that the Church of Rome uses, in her adoration to Jesus Christ, rites and ceremonies of a striking similarity with those used by the Pagans in their adoration to the sun, under the names of Bacchus, Hercules, Osiris, Mithra, Atys, etc.
We now come to the general conclusions of the present chapter.
It has been proved, 1st, That the Church of Rome, from which the self-called Orthodox Protestant Churches, in the sixteenth century, borrowed the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ, did not hold it from the apostles of Jesus Christ.
2d. It has been proved that the Church of Rome uses, in her adoration to Jesus Christ, rites and ceremonies of a striking similarity with those used by the Pagans in their adoration to the sun, under the names of Bacchus, Hercules, Osiris, Mithra, Atys, etc.
Then the Church of Rome, from which, in the sixteenth century, the self-called Orthodox Protestant Churches borrowed the doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ had borrowed it from the Pagans.
Therefore the doctrine of the supreme divinity of Jesus Christ is of Pagan origin.
PAGAN ORIGIN OF THE DOCTRINE OF ENDLESS HELL.
Metempsychosis, or Transmigration of the Souls.
Therulers of nations, and the authors of the initiations, had a profound knowledge of the human nature, and of the genius of the people. From the fact that an ox, unaware of his strength, yields to the leading hand of a child, so they knew that would they let the masses ignore their power, they could easily control them, mould their opinions, habits, and morals. Also aware of the terror that death impressed upon their minds, and knowing that it is an infirmity of man's nature, when uncultivated by philosophy, to fear more a distant and indefinite, but unavoidable misery beyond the grave, than the most excruciating tortures on earth, they found in those prejudices of the people a sure means to lead and rule them. Therefore they endeavored to make them believe that those who would transgress the laws, or would commit some other crimes, should be punished by the gods immortal in the future life.
They had to invent the nature of that punishment, and as there were many degrees of wickedness, they had to admit, also, various degrees in the punishment. To more easily and more surely make the people believe their invention, they thought it was wise to make the punishment, and its degrees, coincide with the then universally established religion, which was but one, though there were many systems of theology. That religion was the one we have examined in the first chapter of this work, and which consisted in the belief that nature was an uncreated but animated being, whose vast body comprised the earth, the sun, the planets, and the stars, to which one great soul impressed motion and life; and that those principal parts, or members, of the body of the universe were animated by emanations or irradiations of the great soul of the universe, or nature.
This pantheistic doctrine was materialist; for it supposed that the great soul of the universe was the purest substance of the fire ether, and thereby man's soul was of the same nature. It was the belief even of the famous philosopher Pythagoras, and of his disciples. All animals, according to Servius, the commentator of Virgil, draw their flesh from the earth, their humors from water, their breath from the air, and their soul from the breath of the Deity. Thus the bees have a small portion of the Deity. Our soul is like a drop of water which is not annihilated,whether it evaporates in the air, or condenses and falls again in rain, or rolls into the sea to add its littleness to the massy waters. When we die our life melts, reenters into the great soul of the universe, and the remains of our body mix again with the elements of the air.
Virgil believed that our death is not annihilation, but that it is a separation of two sorts of matters, the one thereof remains here below, and the other reunites to the sacred fire of the stars, as soon as the matter of which our soul is composed has reacquired all the purity of the subtle matter, from which it had emanated,auræ simplicis ignem. Nothing, Servius says, is lost in the great whole, and in the pure fire which constitutes the substance of the soul. Virgil says of the souls:igneus est ollis vigor, et cœlestis origo; that they are formed of the active fire that shines in the heaven, and that they return thither when they are separated from the body by death.
The same doctrine we find in the dream of Scipio: "It is from there," he says, speaking of the regions of the fixed stars, "that the souls descended, thereto they shall return; they were emanated from those eternal fires we name stars. What ye call death is but a return to true life; the body is but a prison, in which the soul is momentarily chained. Death breaks her ties, and restores her to liberty, and to her true state of existence."
From this pantheistic doctrine, it followed that man's soul is immortal though material.
Upon this sort of immortality of our soul, the rulers built a system of punishment, called Metempsychosis, or transmigration of the souls. This system was so much the better adapted to the then received religion, that all the souls being simply different emanations from the same fire ether, the consequence was that all the souls were homogeneous, and differed only in appearance, and by the nature of the bodies to which the fire-principle, which composed their substance, united. Virgil said that the souls of all animals are an emanation of the fire ether, and that the difference of their operations on earth is to be ascribed only to the difference of vases, or organized bodies, which receive this substance; or, according to the words of Servius, the lesser or greater perfection of their operations is in ratio of the nature of the bodies.
The Indians, among whom, even in our days, the system of Metempsychosis prevails, think that man's soul is absolutely of the same nature as that of other animals. They say that man is superior to them, not in his soul but in his body, whose organization is more perfect and more apt to receive the action of the great Being, viz., of the universe, than theirs are. They ground their opinion on the example of children and of old men, whose organs being too weak yet, or having been weakened, do not permit their senses to have the same activity which is displayed in a mature age.
The soul, in the exercise of her operations, beingnecessarily in submission to the body which she animates; and all souls flowing from the immense reservoir called universal soul, it follows that the portion of the fire ether which animates a man, might as well animate an ox, a lion, an eagle, a whale, or any other beast. Fate caused that she would animate a man, and such a man; but when the soul will be disengaged from this first body, and will return to her source, she will be able to pass into the body of another animal; and her activity will be lesser or greater, in ratio of the organization of the new body into which she will pass.
All the great work of nature being reduced to successive organizations and destructions, in which the same matter is ten thousand times used under ten thousand forms, the subtle matter of the soul, carried in that current, brings life to all the moulds which open to receive her. Thus the same water flown from a same reservoir, enters the various pipes which are opened, rolls on and empties either as a fountain, or as a cascade, according to the forms of the orifices of the pipes; then it congregates, evaporates, and forms clouds which brings it back down to the earth, to experience again an infinity of modifications. It is the same of the fluid of the soul spread in the various canals of the animal organization, flowing from the bright mass of which the ethereal substance is composed; thence being carried to the earth by the generating force distributed among the animals, continuallyascending and descending in the universe, and circulating within new bodies diversely organized.
Such was the basis of Metempsychosis, which became one of the most powerful political engines in the hands of the ancient rulers, legislators and mystagogues. Pythagoras brought this doctrine from the Orient to Greece, and to Italy. This philosopher, and Empedocles after him, taught that the souls of the criminals, when death separated them from the bodies they animated, passed into the bodies of beasts in order to suffer, under those divers forms the punishment of their wickedness, until they might recover, by expiation, their native purity. So this transmigration of the souls was a punishment of the gods. The Stoicians held this doctrine; and the emperor Marcus-Aurelius, in the ninth book of his Works, said: "The spiritus, or breath, which animates us, passes from one body into another."
To give the reader a general idea of what was the belief of the ancients, and of their philosophers, in regard to Metempsychosis, we take from the tenth and last book of the Republic of Plato the following lengthy but instructive extract:—
"It is not the narration of Alcinoüs (namely, a false story, such as the one of Ulysse to the Pheacians,) that I will tell you; but that of a noble man, of Her, the Armenian, a native of Pamphily. He had been killed in a battle; but when, ten days after, the dead bodies were taken away for inhumation, his, instead of being in putrefaction likethe others, was found natural and entire. It was carried to his house, and, on the twelfth day, when laid on the wood-pile, he came again to life; and he related to the assistants what he had seen in the other world.
"'As soon,' he says, 'as my soul left my body, I arrived, in company with a great number of souls, at a mysterious place, where were seen two openings near each other, and two others corresponding in the sky. Between these two regions were judges sitting: when they had pronounced their sentence they ordered the righteous to take the right hand side route through one of the openings of the sky, after having previously placed on their breast a mark containing the judgment rendered in their favor; also they ordered the wicked to take the left hand side route through one of the openings of the earth, carrying on their back a mark containing all their evil actions. When I was presented to the judges, they decided that I should return to the earth to inform men of what was done in the other world; and they bade me listen and observe all I was to witness.
"'First I saw the souls of those who had been judged, the ones ascending to the heavens, and the others descending below the earth through the two corresponding openings. Withal I saw, through the other opening of the earth, many souls coming out, covered with filthiness and dust; and also, through the other opening in the sky, I saw souls pure and spotless descending: they seemed to return from a long voyage, and to stop with pleasure in the meadow, as if in a place of reunion. Those who knew each other mutually inquired what they had seen in the heaven, and in the earth. The ones related their adventures with groans and tears, caused by the recollection of the sufferings they had endured, or seen others endure, during their voyage below the earth, whose duration was of a thousand years. The others, who returned from the heaven, related the rapturous pleasures they had enjoyed, and the marvellous things they had seen.'
"It would be too long, my dear Glaucon, to relate the whole discourse of Her on this subject. It might be summed up in saying that the souls were punished ten times for each injustice they had committed while on earth; that the duration of each punishment was of one hundred years, natural length of man's life, in order that the punishment be ever tenfold for each crime. Thus those who had contaminated themselves with murder; who had betrayed States and armies, and reduced them to servitude; or who had committed similar crimes, were punished tenfold for each one of those crimes. Whereas those who had done good to their fellow men, who had been holy and virtuous, received in the same proportion the reward of their good deeds. In regard to children who die immediately, or a short time after they are born, Her gave details which it is useless to relate. According to his narration there were great recompenses for those who had honored the gods, and had respected their parents; and also there were extraordinary tortures for the parricides, and for impious men.
"'I was present,' said he, 'when a soul asked another where was the great Ardiee. This Ardiee had tyrannized over a city of Pamphily a thousand years before; he had killed his father, who was an old man, and he was guilty, it was said, of many other atrocious crimes. He does not come, the soul answered, and he will never come here. We all have witnessed, in relation to him, the most dreadful spectacle. When we were about leaving the subterraneous abyss after our pains ended, we saw Ardiee, and a great number of others, the most of whom had been tyrants like himself; there were also others, who, though in a private condition, had been great criminals.
"'When those souls were about going out, the opening was closed; and whenever one of those wretched souls, whose crimes were irremissible, tried to get out of the abyss, she howled. Thereupon hideous and firelike beings came. They violently wrested away several of those criminals; then they seized Ardiee and others, tied their feet, their hands and their heads; and after throwing them on the ground and torturing them with lashes, they dragged them through bleeding thorns, telling the shadows which they met on their route the reason why they treated so those souls, and adding that they were going to throw them intothe Tartarus. Those souls added, that of the various fears they had on the route none was so horrible as that of hearing that howl; and that it had been an inexpressible pleasure for them not to have heard it when they were released from the abyss.
"'Behold what took place in regard to the judgments, tortures, and rewards. After each one of those souls had spent seven days in the meadow they left on the eighth, and arrived, after a march of four days, at a designated spot, wherefrom was seen a light crossing the heaven and the earth, as straight as a column, and similar to the rainbow, but brighter and purer. They reached this light in one day's march. There they saw that the extremities of the heaven meet at the middle of this light, which united them fast, and which embraced all the circumference of the heaven, in nearly the same manner as the beams which girdle the sides of galleys, and which bear their frame. At the extremities the spindle of Necessity hung, and determined the revolutions of the celestial spheres.'"
Here Her describes the spindle. This description we omit, for it does not relate to our subject.
Her continues:—
"'Near the spindle, and at equal distances, sat on thrones the three Parques, daughters of Necessity, Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos, dressed in white, and their heads crowned with a bandelet. They united their chant to that of the Sirenes; Lachesis sung the past, Clotho the present, andAtropos the future. Clotho, now and then, touched the spindle with her right hand, and made it revolve externally. Atropos, with her left hand, impressed motion to each one of the interior whirls, and Lachesis, with both hands, touched now the spindle, and then the interior whirls. When the souls arrived they appeared before Lachesis. First a Hierophant assigned a rank to each one; then taking from the lap of Lachesis the fates and the various conditions of human life, he mounted on a high stand, and spake thus:—
"'This is what the virgin Lachesis, daughter of Necessity, says: Voyaging souls you are to commence another career, and return into a mortal body. The genius will not choose for you: each one of you shall choose hers. The first one that fate will designate shall choose first, and her choice shall be irrevocable. Virtue has no master; she clings to him who honors her, and flies from him who despises her. The error of the choice shall fall on you. God is innocent.
"'Thereupon the Hierophant casting the fates, each soul picked up the one that fell before her, except myself who had been forbidden it. Each one knew then in which rank she had to choose. Then the same Hierophant placed before them callings of all kinds, whose number was greater than that of the souls who were to choose; for all the conditions of men and beasts were assembled therein. There were tyrannies, the ones were to last till death; and the others were to be suddenlyinterrupted, and were to end by exile, poverty and indigence. Also there were seen conditions of illustrious men, the ones for beauty, for strength, for fame in the combats; and the others by their nobleness, and the great qualities of their ancestors; there were seen also obscure conditions. There were destinies of women of the same variety. But there was no regulation for the rank of the souls, because each one was necessarily to change of nature according to her choice. Besides, wealth, poverty, and diseases, were found in all conditions: here without any mixture, there in a just proportion of advantages and disadvantages.'
"But this is evidently, my dear Glaucon, the redoubtable trial for mankind.... The Hierophant added: he who chooses the last, provided he be judicious, and then be consistent in his conduct, may hope to be blessed in life. Therefore let him who is to have the first choice, be not presumptuous; and let him who has the last choice, despair not. When the Hierophant had thus spoken, he to whom the first fate had been devolved, hastily advanced, and took, without any deliberation, the greatest tyranny; but when he had considered it, and seen that his destiny was to eat his own children, and to commit other enormous crimes, he lamented; and, forgetting the recommendation of the Hierophant, charged upon the fortune and the gods, with the wretchedness of his fate. This soul was one of those who came from heaven; she had previously lived in a wellgoverned state, and had been virtuous more from temper and habit, than from philosophy.
"On the contrary, the souls who had sojourned in the subterranean region, and who had both the experience of their own sufferings, and the knowledge of the misfortunes of others, were cautious in their choice. This experience on one side, and that inexperience on the other, together with the fate which decided the rank for the choice, were the cause that the most of the souls exchanged a good condition for a bad one, and a bad one for a good one. He also said, that it was a strange spectacle to see in what manner each soul made her choice, nothing was more extraordinary, nor more pitiful; the most of them were guided in their choice by the habits they had contracted in their previous life. He had seen the soul of Orpheus choosing the condition of a swan, from hatred to women who had killed him, and from whom he did not wish to receive birth. He saw the soul of Thamyris choosing the condition of nightingale; likewise he saw a swan and several other birds choosing the human condition.
"Another soul had chosen the condition of a lion; it was that of Ajax, son of Telamon, who, remembering the offense she had received in the judgments rendered about the arms of Achilles, refused to take again a human body. Then came the soul of Agamemnon, who, from antipathy against mankind on account of her past sufferings, chose the condition of an eagle. The soul of Atalante,desirous of the athletic honors, chose to be a champion. The soul of Epee, son of Panope, preferred the condition of a woman skillful in handiworks. The soul of the buffoon Thersite came one of the last, and entered the body of a monkey. There were, Her added, souls of animals which exchanged their condition against ours, and human souls which passed into bodies of beasts. The souls indistinctly passed from the bodies of animals into human bodies, and from human bodies into bodies of animals; those of the righteous into species of a higher order.
"When all the souls had chosen their new condition of existence, according to the rank determined by fate, they came to Lachesis in the same order. She gave to each one the genius of her choice, and this genius was to be her guardian during her mortal life, and was to aid her in the accomplishment of her destiny. This genius first led her to Clotho, who, with her hand, and with a revolution of the spindle confirmed the chosen destiny. When the soul had touched the spindle, the genius took her to Atropos, who rolled the thread in her fingers, to render irrevocable what had been already spun by Clotho. After that, the soul proceeded to the throne of Necessity, under which the soul and her genius, or demon, passed together. When all had passed, they went to the plain of the Lethe river, where they were oppressed by an intense heat; for there was in this plain, neither tree nor shrub. The eveningcame and they spent the night near the river Ameles, whose water can be contained in no vessel. Every soul was obliged to drink some of its water. They fell asleep; but at about midnight the thunder roared, and all the souls suddenly waking up were dispersed, like shooting stars, towards the various places where they were to commence their new life.
"As to Her, he had been forbidden to drink of the water of the Lethe river; nevertheless, he knew not in what manner his soul had returned into his body, but having opened his eyes in the morning, he had seen that he was laying on a wood-pile.
"This tradition, my dear Glaucon, has been handed down to us; and if we believe it, it is very apt to save us; we will safely cross the Lethe river, and we will preserve our soul free from stain."
The reader has undoubtedly remarked the last sentence of this extract, which proves the antiquity of the doctrine of the transmigration of the souls. Burnet wrote, that it was so ancient and so universally spread in Egypt, Persia, India, and other countries of the Orient, that it seemed it had descended from heaven, and been believed by the first inhabitants of the earth. Herodote found it established in Egypt in the remotest ages. It was the basis of the theology of the Indians, and the subject of the celebrated Metamorphosis and incarnations of their legends. Metempsychosis hasbeen immemorially believed in Japan, where the people, even in our days, according to Kœmpsfer, abstain from meat, and live exclusively upon fruits and vegetables. In Siam, where the Talapoins or monks hold it as a sacred dogma; in China by the Tao-See; also among the Kalbouls and the Mongols, and among the Thibetans, who admit that the souls pass even into the plants, into the trees, and even into the roots. However, the Thibetans believe that it is only by uniting to human bodies, that the souls can, after successive changes, be restored to their former purity.
The aim of the doctrine of Metempsychosis was to accustom man to detach himself from the gross matter, to which he is tied here below, and to excite in him the desire of promptly returning there, wherefrom he had formerly descended. The rulers of the people frightened them with the pictures of humiliating transformations of their souls, as the Catholic priests and the Partialist preachers do among us, with their teaching of an endless hell. The people, amazed and terrified, for the masses were ignorant, believed all those politico-religious fables. They firmly believed that the souls of the wicked passed into vile bodies; that they were punished with cruel and loathesome diseases; that those who did not reform after a certain number of transmigrations were delivered up to the Furies and to the evil spirits (or devils) to be tortured; and that, after that, they were sent again to the earth, as in a new school, and wereobliged to run a new race. Thus we see that the whole system of Metempsychosis rested on the false supposition, that it was necessary, in order to govern the people here below, to frighten them with absurd and visionary tales of atrocious tortures beyond the grave, which were the more terrifying for the very reason of their absurdity and atrociousness.
Timee of Locre, one of the disciples of Socrates, wrote, that among the various means of governing those who are not able to reach the truth of the principles, on which nature has established justice and morals, Metempsychosis is an efficacious one. He said: "Let them be taught those dogmas which inform us that the souls of effeminate and pusillanimous men transmigrate into female bodies; those of murderers into bodies of wild beasts; those of licentious men into bodies of wild boars and hogs; those of fickle and inconstant men into bodies of birds; those of idle, ignorant and silly men into bodies of fishes. The just Nemesis regulates those pains in the future life conjointly with the gods of the earth, avengers of the crimes they have witnessed. The supreme God has entrusted them with the government of this inferior world. Let them be frightened, even, by the religious terrors conveyed to the soul by those discourses which describe the vengeance of the celestial gods, and the unavoidable torments reserved to the criminals in the Tartarus; and also by the other fictions which Homer has found in the ancient sacredopinions. Sometimes the body is cured by poisonous substances; so the souls can be ruled by fables when they cannot be governed by truth."
This philosopher plainly gives us his secret, which has been, and still is, the secret of all legislators and priests. True, the belief of these fables has restrained many from vice and crime; nevertheless we firmly believe that men ought to be led to justice by the bright light of the truth, and not by the dismal light of error, and of superstition: the one elevates man, but the other keeps him in an eternal infancy and ignorance. How sad it is to see, even now-a-days, in free and enlightened America, priests, and Protestant ministers themselves, keeping down in intellectual, moral and religious bondage, millions of Christians, who, from fear of endless curse, kiss the very chains which heavily they drag through life; who believe that God will endlessly roast men—his children—in an undying fire! More surely, and more easily, could those purely minded, but unfortunate Christians, be guided to love God, if they knew that he is not worse than a tiger; that, on the contrary, he is truly good and loving; more virtuous they would be if they were taught that virtue is the source, and the only true source, of happiness. Truer fraternity would reign in our communities, if priests and pretended Protestants, who tyrannize over the souls of their misled victims, and, like the Pharisees of old, lay upon their shoulders a burden they would not be willing to touch with theirown fingers—yea, they lay upon their mind and heart the leaden weight of the dogma of endless misery, which they, at least the leaders of the leaders, reject—truer fraternity would exist, we say, for there would not be in our communities, a class of Christians, believing that they are the elect of God for righteousness and eternal bliss, while all the others shall be endlessly damned. Hence their indifference, or rather aversion for them; hence a spirit of Pharisaism: hence a spirit of religious aristocracy, which unfortunately ramifies into a social aristocracy!
Tartarus.
When legislators, priests and philosophers had invented the doctrine of Metempsychosis, the mystagogues and the poets took hold of it, and endeavored to spread it among the people, in consecrating it, the ones in their chants, and the others in the celebration of their mysteries. They clothed it with the charms of poetry, and presented it with magical illusions. All united to deceive the people, under the specious pretext of bettering and governing them with a surer hand. The widest field was opened to fictions; and the genius of the poets, as well as the cunning of the priests, were inexhaustible in portraying the bliss of the righteous hereafter, and the horror of the horrible prisons wherein crime was to be punished.
Each one portrayed them according to his own fancy, and added new scenes and views to the descriptions of those unknown lands; of that world of new creation, which the imagination of poets peopled with shadows, chimeras and phantoms, for the purpose of frightening the people: for rulers wrongly thought that their minds could not rise up to the abstract notions of metaphysics and morals. The Elysium and the Tartarus were more pleasing and more vividly striking to the imagination of the people: therefore darkness and light were successively presented to the gaze of those initiated to the mysteries. To the darkest night, and to frightful spectres, succeeded a bright day, whose light shone around the statue of the Deity: one could not help feeling a mysterious terror, when entering that sanctuary, where all was disposed to represent the Tartarus and the Elysium. It was in this sanctuary that the one initiated, being finally introduced, saw the picture of charming meadows, lighted by a pure sky: there he heard harmonious voices, and the majestic chants of sacred choirs. It was then that, entirely free, and rid of all evils, he joined the multitude of those initiated; and that, a crown of flowers on his head, he celebrated the holy orgies.
Thus the ancients represented here below, in their initiations, what was, they said, to happen hereafter to the souls, when they would be disengaged from their bodies; and would be liberated from the obscure prison, wherein fate had chainedthem by uniting them to terrestrial matter. In the mysteries of Isis, of which we hold the details from Apuleo, the candidate passed through the dark region of the empire of the dead; thence into a vast enclosure, which represented the elements; and then he was admitted into the bright region, where the brightest sun succeeded to the darkness of the night, namely, in the three worlds, the terrestrial, the elementary, and the celestial. He who had been initiated said: "I have approached the boundaries of death in treading the thresh hold of Proserpine; therefrom I have returned through the elements. Then I saw a bright light, and I found myself in the presence of the gods." This was the autopsy.
What mystagogy exhibited in the sanctuaries, poets, and even philosophers, in their fictions, publicly taught to the people: hence the descriptions of the Elysium and of the Tartarus found in Homer, Virgil and Plato, and all those given us by many systems of theology. We never had a description of the earth and of its inhabitants, a description as complete as that transmitted to us, by the ancients, about those countries of new creation, known under the names of Hell, Tartarus, and Elysium. Those men, whose geographical knowledge was so limited, have given us the minutest details of the abode of the souls beyond the grave; of the government of each one of the two empires, which form the domain of the shadows; of their habits; of their diet; of theirpains and pleasures; and even of the costume of the inhabitants of these two regions. The same poetical imagination which had invented that new world, arbitrarily traced out its plan and distribution.
Socrates, in the Phædo of Plato, a work intended to prove the immortality of our soul, and the necessity of practicing virtue, speaks of the place where the souls go after death. He imagines a sort of ethereal land, superior to the one we inhabit, and situated in a sunnier region. There is nothing on our earth that can compare to the beauties of this wonderful abode. There colors are brighter, the vegetation richer; the trees, flowers and fruits are infinitely superior to those of our earth. There precious stones are so bright that those of our earth are but their shadow. This ethereal land is strewed with pearls of the purest crystal; everywhere gold and silver are dazzling. There beasts are more beautiful, and more perfectly organized than ours. There the air is the sea, and ether is the air. There seasons are so harmoniously combined, that the fortunate inhabitants are not subject to infirmities and to diseases. There the temples are inhabited by the gods themselves, who familiarly converse with men. The inmates of this delightful mansion are the only ones who see the sun, the moon, and the stars, as they truly are.
To this Socrates adds, that men, who, here below, distinguish themselves for their piety andexactitude in discharging their social duties, will be admitted in this abode of happiness when death destroys their mortal form. There all those whom philosophy has led to wisdom will dwell. Socrates concludes thus:
Then it is for us a strong inducement to study wisdom, and to practice virtue, while we are on earth. These expectations are high enough for us to risk the chances of this opinion, and not to break its charms.
This is a plain avowal of the motive of the fiction: such is the secret of nearly all legislators, and the deceitfulness of the most renowned philosophers.
The second part of the land of the dead, called Tartarus, the leaders of the people also minutely described. According to their description, this abode of the wicked presents the horrid view of precipices, caverns, and abysses, more frightful than those we see on earth. Those caverns communicate to each other in the profundities of the earth, through the medium of sinuosities vast and dark, and of subterraneous canals, in which waters flow; the ones cold, and the others warm: also in several of those canals flow torrents of fire, and in others the filthiest mire. The vastest of those caverns is in the center; and into it four main rivers ebb, to spring out again. The first is the Acheron, which forms beneath the earth a shoreless marsh, wherein the souls assemble. The second is the Pyriphlegeton, which rolls torrentsof burning sulphur. The third is the Cocyte; and the fourth is the Styx.
In this horrible abode divine justice tortures the criminals. At the gate of the Tartarus the frightful Tisiphon, whose gown is reeking with blood, watches day and night. The gate is also defended by a strong tower, backed by three walls, which are surrounded by the burning waves of the Phlegeton river, that rolls huge stones on fire. There are incessantly heard the rattle of chains dragged by wretched victims; their groans; and the strokes of lashes that tear their flesh. There is seen an hydra with a hundred heads, whose mouths are ever gaping for new victims to be devoured. There a vulture is constantly feeding on the ever re-growing entrails of a criminal. Other victims carry a heavy rock to the summit of a mountain, where they must set it; but, vain are their efforts, it rolls down to the bottom of the valley. Other criminals, tied to a wheel, relentlessly revolving, are not permitted the slightest rest in their torture. Others, placed near refreshing waters, and near trees loaded with fruit, are ever devoured with unquenchable thirst and hunger. If they stoop to drink the water flies from their mouth, and a stinking mire sticks to their lips. If they lower a limb to cull a fruit, the limb slips from their hand.
Farther, fifty female victims are forced to fill up with water a cask, whose bottom is riddled. Indeed, there is no sort of torment that was notinvented by legislators, mystagogues, poets, and philosophers, to frighten the people, under the false assumption of making them better; but the truth is that it was rather to keep them down in subjection. Those terrifying pictures were painted on the walls of the temple of Delphos. Those fables were repeated to infants by nurses and mothers. Thus their souls grew weak and pusillanimous, for strong and durable are the first impressions, and more especially, when the general opinion, the example of the credulity of others, the authority of philosophers, of poets, of learned Hierophants, and the sight of pompous rites, and ceremonies in the overpowering sacredness of sanctuaries; when the monuments of arts, music, statues, and pictures, in short, when all tends to insinuate in the soul, through the senses stricken with hope and terror, a great error presented as a sacred truth revealed by the gods themselves for man's bliss.
Such was the general teaching and belief of the Pagans in regard to future punishment, before the coming of Jesus Christ, and the preaching of his Gospel.
As to the Jewish nation, not the slightest vestiges of any kind of belief regarding future punishment, can be traced out, neither in the Old Testament, nor in Josephus, nor in the writings of other historians, at least before the captivity of Babylon, which took place in the year 598 before the Christian era. Afterwards the Jews divided into four sects, the Essenes, the Sadducees,the Samaritans, who denied the existence of any future punishment, and the Pharisees, who, according to the testimony of Josephus, adopted the belief of Metempsychosis, or transmigration of the souls.
Did the Christians of the First Centuries believe in Endless Hell?
We emphatically answer, no. If the Christian Fathers of the first centuries, have neither taught the dogma of endless hell, nor mentioned, in their writings, that their fellow-Christians knew or believed it, and if the same is proved by the testimony of the then existing Christian sects or denominations, it is evident that the first Christians did not believe in endless hell. But the Christian Fathers of the first centuries have neither taught the dogma of endless hell, nor mentioned, in their writings, that their fellow-Christians knew or believed it; and the same is proved by the testimony of the then existing Christian sects. These two members of the proposition we are to successively prove: 1stmember: In the first century the four Gospels, and other books of the New Testament were written by the apostles, but history does not inform us of any other Christian writing, or author, in that age, except perhaps Clement, bishop of Rome, who, it is said, has left a letter to the Corinthians: critics call it Apocryphal. We have not read it. Thereforein order to know whether the first Christians believed in endless hell or not, we must recur to the works of the Christian Fathers who lived and wrote in the following centuries, and particularly to those who lived and wrote during the second.
St. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, who suffered martyrdom at Rome, in the year 107, was the first apostolic Father of the second century. There are in the collection of the works of the holy Fathers, six letters ascribed to him by some authors; some others, Saumaise, Blondel, Daillé, etc., say that they are apocryphal. Mosheim, in his Histor. Christ., says, that it is doubtful whether they are of Ignatius or not. We have read those six letters, of which five are addressed to different Churches, and one to Polycarpus. Although they treat of the most important points of the Christian faith and duties, they are silent upon the question of endless hell. In the year 131, St. Quadratus presented to the emperor Adrian an apology of the Christian religion, which contained the principal Christian doctrines. Adrian was so pleased with this apology, that, if we must believe what Lampride says in his Life of Alexander Severus, he designed to rear a temple to Jesus Christ, and to place him among the gods of the empire. A fragment of this apology can be found in the works of Eusebe; but not a word is said about the dogma of endless hell.
St. Justin, a Platonician philosopher, was born at Naplouse, Palestine, in 103. He was convertedto Christianity in 133. He wrote the following works: Exhortation to Gentiles; two Apologies of the Christian religion, the one to the emperor Antonine, and the other to the emperor Marcus-Aurelius; a Dialogue with the Jew Triphon; a treatise on Monarchy, or Unity of God; and an Epistle to Diognet, in which he states the reasons why Christians left the worship of the gods, and did not adopt that of the Jews. He composed other works, but they exist no more. The main editions of his works are those of Robert Etienne in 1551 and 1771, in Greek and Latin; that of Commelin in 1593, in Greek and Latin; that of Morel in 1656, and that of Don Marand in 1742, in folio. All these editions, and afterwards that of Migne, we have compared in the voluminous library of the theological seminary of Brou, France, where we have been ordained a priest. Although there were alterations of the text, we did not find any passage referring to the dogma of endless hell. True, addressing the Romans, he says: "Come, O Romans, to find instruction! Formerly I was like you, now be what I am. The power of the Christian religion has enlightened me, and freed me from servitude to my senses and passions: it has afforded me peace and serenity. The soul thus free is sure to reunite to her Creator, because it is right that she return to him from whom she emanated." But this passage neither explicitly nor implicitly supposes that he believed, or that the first Christians believed, in endless hell; it is simply a Platonician and Christian doctrine, in regard to the purity of our soul which is worthy of God only when unstained. However Bailly, a Catholic theologian, says that on page 74 of the first Apology there is a passage proving his belief in endless hell. We did not find it.
Meliton, bishop of Sardes, Lybia, under the reign of Marcus-Aurelius, presented to this emperor an Apology of the Christian religion, in 171. Eusebe and several other authors praise it. Only a few fragments of it are found in the Bibliotheca Patrum; in none of them is a question of the dogma of endless hell.
Athenagoras, a Platonician philosopher, was converted to the Christian religion, and presented, in 177, an Apology of the Christian doctrines to the emperors Marcus-Aurelius and Lucius-Aurelius-Commode. He justified the Christians, who were charged by the Pagans with atheism: with sacrificing and eating a child in their assemblies; and with indulging to impudicity. In this Apology he ascribed to God but a general providence; and he expressed the Platonician opinion, that angels, or spirits, had the government of this world. He admitted that there were pains and rewards in the future life. Let us not infer from this that he referred to the dogma of endless hell. No; he merely meant, by those pains and rewards, the Platonician doctrine about Metempsychosis.
Ireneus was born in Greece, in 140. He became bishop of Lyons, Gaul. He wrote several theological works in the Greek language. He believed in a general judgment, and in the millenium, namely, in a temporal kingdom of Jesus Christ on earth, which was to last one thousand years immediately before the general judgment. During this reign of Jesus Christ, the Christians were to enjoy a happiness which was to be a foretaste of the happiness they should enjoy after the general judgment. Not only this Father did not teach the dogma of endless hell, but according to the ultramontane Bergier, he has been charged by the pretended Orthodox divines with having expressed himself in an heterodox manner upon the divinity of the Word; upon the spirituality of the angels and of the human soul; upon free agency and the necessity of grace; and upon the state of the souls after death. He seemed to be inclined to believe Metempsychosis—this, however, is our private opinion, resting on his general views on the state of the souls after death. The Catholics invoke but one passage of his writings against this opinion. Grabe, a Protestant, published at Oxford, in 1702, an edition of his works; it is quite different from the Catholic editions.
Theophile was promoted to the episcopal see of Antioch, in 168. We have from his pen but three Books to Autolic; they have been edited by Don Prudent Marand. He is the first Father who used the word Trinity. His works are a refutation of Paganism, and an apology of Christianism. We could not find in them the dogma of endless hell;he only vaguely speaks of rewards and pains hereafter.
We have seen that the above Fathers, who compose the complete list of the Fathers of the second century, neither taught the dogma of endless hell, nor have recorded that the first Christians held such a dogma. Therefore we may draw the conclusion that the first Christians did not believe the doctrine of endless hell.
We pass to the Fathers of the third century. Titus Flavius Clement, of Alexandria, a Platonician philosopher, became a Christian, and succeeded to Pantenus, a professor of the school of Alexandria, in 190; and he died in 217. Alexander of Jerusalem and the celebrated Origen were his disciples. He wrote many works, the principal thereof are: Exhortations to Pagans; his Pedagogue; his Hypotyposes; and his Stromatas, which are divided into eight books. It is said that the best edition of his works is that of Potter, published at Oxford, in 1715, in two vols. folio. I read only the Paris edition, published in 1696. In his Exhortations to Pagans, he pointed out the absurdity of idolatry, and of the fables of Paganism. In his Stromatas he compared the doctrines of the philosophers with those of Jesus Christ. In the treatise headed, Which rich man will be saved? he shows that he who will use his riches properly will obtain salvation: he does not say salvation from endless hell. His Pedagogue is a treatise of morals in which he relates how the first Christiansrighteously lived and fervently served the Lord. In all these works it is not a question of the dogma of endless hell, either taught to the Christians or believed by them.
According to Le Clerc, Beausobre, d'Argens, Barbeyrac, Scultet, Daillé, Mosheim, Brucker, Semler, etc., this Father did not believe the spirituality of God and of man's soul.... It is a fact that, in his Stromatas, he says that God is composed of a body and of a soul, and that so is our soul. He believed in the Pagan fable that the angels had sexual intercourse with human females, and had begotten giants; he refers probably to the Giants who had fought against the Titans. All the Catholic theologians themselves admit the above, and say, that, though a Christian, he was too much of a Platonician philosopher. This is the reason why the Pope, Benedict XIV., opposed his worship, as a saint, in the Romish Church. These statements show how far this Father was from holding the dogma of endless hell.
Tertullian was one of the Fathers who wrote at the end of the second century; however, as he died in 216, we class him among the Fathers of the beginning of the third century. His works are on Prayer, on Baptism; also he wrote Exhortation to Patience; two Books to his Wife; Testimony of the Soul; treatises on Spectacles and Idolatry; treatise on Prescription; two books against the Gentiles; one against the Jews; one against Hermogenes; one against the Valentinians; oneagainst the Gnostics; one on the Crown; one to Scapula; books against Praxeas; books on Pudicity, on Persecutions, on Fast, against the Physics, on Monogamy. These works we had not the advantage to read; but we have studied the following in our theological school: his treatise on Penance; his five books against Marcion; his treatise on the Flesh of Jesus Christ; his book on the Resurrection of the Flesh; and his Apology of the Christian Religion.
In these works which, let this be cursorily said, were written in Latin, for Tertullian was the first Father who wrote in this language, we read several times the wordinfernus, synonimous toTartarus, and the wordsignem eternum, used in speaking of pains, which will be inflicted upon the wicked after the general judgment; but nothing positive in regard to the duration of the punishment, for he might have used the adjectiveæternumhyperbolically; nor anything in regard to the belief of the first Christians in regard to it, nor even of his contemporaneous Christians. If the dogma of endless hell had been generally believed by the Christians, he would have certainly mentioned it in his Apology of the Christian Religion; for one of the main charges of the Pagans against them was that they were Atheists; and thereby denied the Elysium and the Tartarus. However, in no one of the fifty arguments which compose the Apology does he say a word about endless hell, even about any punishment beyond the grave. He only, in theforty-eighth argument, says, that there will be a resurrection of the flesh.
Sextus Julius Africanus, a Christian historian, who wrote in the beginning of the third century, is altogether silent about the dogma of endless hell, at least in the fragments of his works which have been preserved by Eusebe.
Origen was born at Alexandria, in 185. He has been one of the most talented and learned among the Fathers. He wrote the following works: Exhortation to Martyrdom; Commentaries on the Holy Scriptures. He undertook an edition of the Bible in six columns, and headed it Hexaples. The first column contained the Hebrew text in hebraic letters; the second, the same text in Greek letters; the third contained the version of Aquila; the fourth column, the version of Symmaque; the fifth, that of the Septuagint; and the sixth, that of Theodotion. He considered the version of the Septuagint as the most authentical. The Octaples contained, also, two Greek versions, which had been recently found, and whose authors were unknown. He wrote more than one thousand sermons; he wrote his celebrated work about Principles, and a treatise against Celse.
All the above works have not been transmitted to us entire, though the most of them are, as can be seen in the Bibliotheca Sanctorum Patrum, published in Paris, in 1826. This Catholic edition, we positively know, is not as impartial as it ought to be. So much has been written, for centuries,against Origen and for his justification, that a mere summary of those writings would fill volumes. Besides, would we make this summary we might perhaps be suspected of partiality, because Origen's doctrines are favorable to the bearing of this work; therefore we shall extract from the works of Feller, a Romish priest and a Jesuit, what we have to write about his accusation and justification, and about the summary of his doctrines.
Feller says, Article Origen: "In the fourth century, the Arians invoked his authority to prove that Jesus Christ was not God. St. Athanase, St. Basile, and St. Gregory of Nazianze, defended him. Hilaire, Tite de Bostres, Didyme, Ambrosius, Eusebe of Verceil, and Gregory of Nysse have laudably spoken of his works; whereas, Theodor of Mopsueste, Apollinary, and Cesary, have disparagingly written of them. Origen was condemned in the fifth general council, held at Constantinople, in 553. The pope Vigil condemned him anew. St. Epiphane, Anastase the Sinaïte, St. John Climaque, Leonce of Byzantium, Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, and Antipater, bishop of Bostres, violently denounced his writings; the pope Pelage II. said that heretical works were not worse than Origen's writings. There are, in the acts of the sixth council, an edict of the emperor Constantine Pogonat, and a letter of the pope Leon II., in which he is counted with Didyme and Evagrius among the Theomaques, or enemies of God.
"The pope St. Martin I., anathematized him in the first council of Latran, in 649. St. Augustine, St. John of Damas, and St. Jerome, wrote against the Origenists, namely, the sect of Christians who believed the doctrines of Origen. In the same century, when a dispute arose about the orthodoxy of Origen, John of Jerusalem, and Rufin made his apology, and St. John Chrysostomus did the same. St. Pamphyle also took his part. Theotime of Tomi refused to condemn him, and Didyme tried to give an orthodox meaning to his doctrine on Trinity; others in condemning the errors contained in his books pretended that they had been added by the heretics. Theophile of Alexandria accused the monks of Nitria of Origenism, and condemned them in a council held at Alexandria; the pope Anastasius ratified the sentence. In the seventh century, the emperor Justinian declared himself hostile to the memory of Origen; wrote a letter to Memnas against his doctrine; issued an edict against him, in 640; and obtained his condemnation in a council held the same year at Constantinople, whose acts were added to those of the fifth general council."
We read in the acts of the fifth general council of Constantinople, held in 553, that Origen was condemned by the council for having taught the following doctrines: 1st, That in the dogma of Trinity the Father is greater than the Son, and the Son greater than the Holy Spirit. 2d, That human souls have been created before the bodies,to which they have been chained as a punishment for sins, which they had committed in an anterior state of existence. 3d, That the soul of Jesus Christ had been united to the Word before his incarnation. 4th, That the planets and stars are animated, and contain a soul intelligent and endowed with reason. 5th, That, after the resurrection, all bodies will have a spheroidal shape. 6th,That the punishment of the wicked in a future life will not be endless; and that Jesus Christ, who has been crucified to save the world, will be crucified once more to save the devils.
According to this testimony of the Romish Church—which carries fanaticism farther than any other sect, in regard to the dogma of endless hell, for it holds as an article of faith even that the reprobates are tortured in hell, in their bodies and in their souls, though their bodies are in the grave, and though a material fire cannot burn an immortal soul—according to the above testimony of the Romish Church, we say, it is an established, an undeniable fact, that Origen taught the doctrine of Metempsychosis, or transmigration of the souls; and also the doctrine that the punishment of the wicked in a future life would not be endless.
From this testimony we draw the following argument, which we invite the reader to attentively examine, and to carefully weigh, for this argument,alone, would unanswerably prove that the Christians of the first, of the second, of thethird, and even of the fourth, and of the fifth centuries, did not generally believe the dogma of endless hell.
Argument: In the beginning of the third century, Origen (he was born in 185) taught the doctrine of Metempsychosis, or transmigration of the souls, and the doctrine that the punishment of the wicked in a future life would not be endless; these two doctrines were condemned only in the sixth century by the fifth general council held at Constantinople, in 553, and composed of 151 bishops. But if the Christians of the first, of the second, of the third, and even of the fourth, and of the fifth centuries, had generally believed the dogma of endless hell, the above two doctrines would have certainly been condemned before the sixth century. This minor proposition we prove:
By the orders of the bishop of Rome, Sylvester, and of the emperor Constantine I., an œcumenical council, composed of 381 bishops, was held at Nice, in 325, to frame a symbol of faith, and to condemn Arius.
In 381, a second general council, composed of 150 bishops, was held at Constantinople, to condemn Macedonius, who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit; and to alter the symbol of Nice, (striking inconsistency of the Romish Church which holds as an article of faith that a general council is infallible in its decisions.)
In 431, the bishop of Rome, Celestine I., assembled a general council at Ephesus, to obtain thecondemnation of Nestorius, who denied that Mary was, strictly speaking, the mother of God.
In 451, a general council was held at Chalcedony, Asia Minor, for the condemnation of Eutyches, and of Dioscorus, bishop of Alexandria, who held the doctrine that there was in Jesus Christ but one nature.
From the beginning of the second century, the time when Origen taught the above two doctrines, up to the year 553, several thousand synods and principal councils were held.
Thereupon we say: The doctrine of Metempsychosis, or transmigration of the souls; and the doctrine that the punishment of the wicked in a future life will not be endless, were as important as the most of the doctrines discussed in those councils; and Origen had a weightier influence upon the Christian communities by his talents, learning, virtue, and fame, and by the diffusion of his works, than Arius, Macedonius, Nestorius, Eutiches, Dioscorus and others put together. Therefore, if the dogma of endless hell had been generally believed by the Christians of the first, of the second, of the third, of the fourth, and of the fifth centuries, the doctrine of Metempsychosis, and the doctrine that the punishment of the wicked in a future life will not be endless, held and taught by Origen, would have been called up, discussed, and condemned in the above councils. But they were called up, discussed, and condemned,onlyin the fifth general council, held at Constantinople, in 553. Therefore, it is an irrefutable fact that the Christians of the first, of the second, of the third, of the fourth, and of the fifth centuries, did not generally believe the dogma of endless hell.
Gregory of Neocesaree, was a disciple of Origen, and was promoted to the episcopal see of Neocesaree, in 240. He wrote the following works: Thanks to Origen, Profession of Faith on the Dogma of Trinity, Canonical Epistle, and Paraphrase of the Book of Ecclesiastes. In these works the spirit of the doctrines of Origen is seen at every page; and the dogma of endless hell is neither taught, nor declared to have been the belief of the first Christians, nor of the Christians of the third century. St. Cyprian, made bishop of Carthage in 248, is silent about the dogma of endless hell.
We pass to the Fathers of the fourth century.
Pamphile Eusebe obtained the bishopric of Cesarea in 313. He wrote the Panegyric, and the Life of Constantine; a Chronicle, viz: a compilation of Pagan authors, and several other works, whose fragments have remained. His principal work is his Ecclesiastical History, which we have studied in our theological school. If the dogma of endless hell had been the belief of the first Christians, and had been generally believed in his age, he would have certainly mentioned it therein: however, he has not. Therefore, the first Christians, and those of his age, did not hold the dogma of endless hell.
Athanase succeeded to Alexander on the episcopal see of Alexandria, in 326. His works are: Defense of Trinity and of Incarnation; apologies; letters; and treatises against the Arians, the Melecians, the Apollinarists, and the Macedonians. In these works there is not a word concerning the dogma of endless hell being believed by the first Christians, or by his contemporaries. The famous symbol which is headed symbol of Athanase, which the Romish priests read every Sunday in the Psalms-Breviary, is not from his composition nor from his pen; every one of the Catholic theologians and authors confesses it.
Basile, bishop of Cesarea, was born in 329. He has left several letters, homilies, treatises of morals, and sermons on the six days of the creation. We have examined the Latin edition of his works, or rather of the fragments of his works, for they are not entire, by Don Gamier and Don Prudent; but though in many passages he speaks of salvation, of eternal bliss, and of the punishment of the wicked hereafter, he does not positively declare that the punishment will be endless; and he does not say that the first Christians believed it, nor that it was a dogma of the Church in his age. Theodor of Mopsueste, who wrote in the fifth century, is charged by the Catholic writers to have taught that future punishment will not be endless.