of Judaism. Expansion of the human mind; its sacred records had preserved in its original simplicity the notion of the Divine Power; the pregnant definitions of the one great self-existing Being, the magnificent poetical amplifications of his might and providence were of all ages they were eternal poetry, because they were eternal truth. If the moral aspect of the Divine nature was more obscurely intimated, and, in this respect, had assumed the character of a local or national Deity, whose love was confined to the chosen people, and displayed itself chiefly in the beneficence of a temporal sovereign : yet nothing was needed but to give a higher and more extensive sense to those types and shadows of universal wisdom; and improvement which the tendency of the age manifestly required; and which the Jews themselves, especially the Alexandrian school, had already attempted, by allegorising the whole annals of their people, and extracting a profound moral meaning from all the circumstances of their extraordinary history (1). Effects of progress of know ledge up on polytheism. But the progress of knowledge was fatal to the popular religion of Greece and Rome. The awe-struck imagination of the older race, which had listened with trembling belief to the wildest fables, the deep feeling of the sublime and the beautiful, which uniting with national pride, had assembled adoring multitudes before the Parthenon or the Jove of Phidias, now gave place to cold and sober reason. Poetry had been religion-religion was becoming mere poetry. Humanizing the Deity, and bringing it too near the earth, naturally produced, in a less imaginative and more reflecting age, that familiarity which destroys respect. When man became more acquainted with his own nature, the less was he satisfied with deities Beneficial, cast in his own mould. In some respects the advancement of civilisation had no doubt softened and purified the old religions from their savage and licentious tendencies. Human sacrifices had ceased (2), or had retired to the remotest parts of Germany, or to the shores of the Baltic (3). Though some of the secret rites were (1) Philo wrote for the unbelievers among his own people, and to conciliate the Greeks. (De Conf. Linguar. vol. i. p. 405.) The same principle which among the heathens gave rise to the system of Euhemerus, who resolved all mythology into bistory, and that of the other philosophers who attempted to reduce it to allegory, induced Philo, and no doubt his predecessor Aristobulus, thus to endeavour to accommodate the Mosaic history to an incredulous age, and to blend Judaism and Platonism into one harmonious system. (2) Human sacrifices sometimes, but rarely, occur in the earlier periods of Grecian history. According to Plutarch, Vit. Arist 9. and Vit. Themistoclis, three sons of Sandauke, sister of the king of Persia, were offered, in obedience to an oracle, to Bacchus Omestes. The bloodstained altar of Diana of Tauris was placed by the tragedians in a barbarous region. Prisoners were sometimes slain on the tombs of warriors in much later times, as in the Homeric age, even on that of Philopomen. Plut Vit. Philop. c. 21. Compare Tschirner, Fall des Heidenthums, p. 34. Octavius is said (Suet. Vit. Octav.) to have sacrificed 300 Perugian captives on an altar sacred to the deified Julius (Divo Julio). This may be considered the sanguinary spirit of the age of proscriptions taking for once a more solemn and religious form. As to the libation of the blood of the gladiators, (see Tertullian, Apolog. c. 9. Scorpiac. 7. Cyprian, De Spectaculis. Compare Porphyr. de Abstin. Lactant. 1-21.) I should agree with M. Constant in ascribing this ceremony to the barbarity of the Roman amusements rather than to their religion. All public spectacles were, perhaps, to a certain degree religious ceremonies; but the gladiators were the victims of the sanguinary pleasures of the Roman people, not slain in honour of their gods. Constant, iv. 335. Tschirner, p. 45. (3) Tac. Ann. i. 61. Tac. Germ. 10. 40. Compare on the gradual abolition of human sacrifices, Constant, iv. 330. The exception, which rests on said to be defiled with unspeakable pollutions (1), yet this, if true, arose from the depravation of manners, rather than from religion. The orgies of the Bona Dea were a profanation of the sacred rite, held up to detestation by the indignant satirist, not as among some of the early Oriental nations, the rite itself. as cial. But with the tyranny, which could thus extort from reluc- Prejuditant human nature the sacrifice of all humanity and all decency, the older religions had lost their more salutary, and, if the expression may be ventured, their constitutional authority. They had been driven away, or silently receded from their post, in which indeed they had never been firmly seated, conservators of public morals. The circumstances of the times tended no less to loosen the bonds of the ancient faith. Peace enervated the deities, as well as the soldiers of Rome: their Occupation was gone (2); the augurs read no longer the signs of conquest in the entrails of the victims; and though down to the days of Augustine (3), Roman pride clung to the worship of the older and glorious days of the republic, and denounced the ingratitude of forsaking gods, under whose tutelary sway Rome had become the empress of the world, yet the ceremonies had now no stirring interest; they were pageants in which the unbelieving aristocracy played their parts with formal coldness, the contagion of which could not but spread to the lower classes. The only nove or exciting rite of the Roman religion, was that which probably tended more than any other, when the immediate excitement was over, to enfeeble the religious feeling, the deification (4) of the the authority of Pliny, xxviii 2., and Plutarch, Vita Marii. in init. Quæst. Rom., appears to me very doubtful. The prohibitory law of Lentulus, AU. DCLVII. and Livy's striking expression, more non Romano, concerning the sacrifice said to be continued to a late period, as well as the edict of Tiberius, promulgated in the remoter provinces, indicate the general sentiment of the time. Non satis æstimari potest quantum Romanis debeatur, qui sustulere monstra in quibus hominem occidere religiosissimum erat, mandi vero saluberrimum. Plin. H. N. xxx. 1. See in Ovid, Fasti, iii. 341. the reluctance of Numa to offer human sacrifice. Hadrian issued an edict prohibiting human sacrifices; this was directed, according to Creuzer, (Syıb. i. 363.), against the later Mithriac rites, which had reintroduced the horrible practice of consulting futurity in the entrails of human victims. The savage Commodus (Lamprid. in Comm.) offered a human victim to Mithra. The East, if the accounts are to be credited, continually reacted on the religion of Rome. Human sacrifices are said to have taken place under Aurelian (Aug. Hist. Vit. Aurel.), and even under Maxentius. (1) The dissolute rites against which the Fathers inveigh were of foreign and Oriental origin-Isiac, Bacchanalian, Mithriac. Lobeck, i. 197. See Constant, vol. iv. c. 11. Compare the Confession of Hispala in Livy. I cannot refrain from transcribing an observation of M. Constant on these rites, which strikes me as extremely profound and just: "La mauvaise influence des fables licencieuses commence avec le mépris et le (2) Our generals began to wage civil wars (3) This was the main argument of his great work, de Civitate Dei. It is no where more strongly expressed than in the oration of Symmachus to Theodosius. Hic cultus in leges meas orbem redegit; hæc sacra Annibalem a mœnibus, a Capitolio Sennonas repulerunt. This subject will frequently recur in the course of our History. (4) The deification of Augustus found some opponents. Nihil Deorum honoribus relictum, cum se templis et effigie numinum, per flamines et sacerdotes coli vellet. Tac. Ann. i. 10 The more sagacious Tiberius shrunk from such honours. In one instance, he allowed himself to be joined in divine honours with his mother and the senate, but in general he refused them. Tac. Ann. iv, 15. 37. v 2. The very curious satire of Seneca, the ArroxoxÚvros, though chiefly aimed at Claudius, throws ridicule on the whole ceremony. Augustus, in his speech to the gods, says, Denique dum tales decs facitis, nemo vos deos esse credet, Philosophy. living, or the apotheosis of the dead emperor, whom a few years or perhaps a few days abandoned to the open execration or contempt of the whole people. At the same time that energy of mind, which had consumed itself in foreign conquest or civil faction, in carrying the arms of Rome to the Euphrates or the Rhine, or in the mortal conflict for patrician or plebeian supremacy, now that the field of military or civil distinction was closed, turned inward and preyed upon itself; or compressed by the iron hand of despotism, made itself a vent in philosophical or religious speculations. The noble mind sought a retreat from the degradation of servitude in the groves of the Academy, or attempted to find consolation for the loss of personal dignity, by asserting with the Stoic the dignity of human nature (1). But Philosophy aspired in vain to fill that void in the human mind, which had been created by the expulsion or secession of religion. The objects of Philosophy were twofold, to refine the popular religion into a more rational creed; or 2. to offer itself as a substitute. With this first view it endeavoured to bring back the fables to their original meaning (2), to detect the latent truth under the allegoric shell; but in many cases the key was lost, or the fable had wandered so far from its primary sense, as to refuse all rational interpretation; and where the truth had been less encumbered with fiction, it came forth cold and inanimate the philosopher could strip off the splendid robes in which the moral or religious doctrine had been disguised, but he could not intstil into it the breath of life. The imagination refused the unnatural alliance of cold and calculating reason; and the religious feeling, when it saw the old deities reduced into ingenious allegories, sank into apathy; or vaguely yearned for some new excitement, which it knew not from what quarter to expect. The last hopes of the ancient religion lay in the Mysteries. Of them alone the writers, about the time of the appearance of Christianity, speak with uniform reverence, if not with awe. They alone could bestow happiness in life, and hope in death (3). In tuissem, non ad hæc potissimum confugissem. De Nat. Deor. i. 4. (2) Πραγμάτων ὑπ ̓ ἀνθρωπίνης αστ θενείας οὐ καθορωμένων σαφῶς εὐσχης μονέστερος ερμηνεὺς ὁ μῦθος. Max. Tyr., Dissert. X. The whole essay is intended to prove that poetry and philosophy held the same doctrine about the gods. This process, it should be observed, though it had already commenced, was not carried to its height until philosophy and polytheism coalesced again, from the sense of their common danger, and endeavoured to array a system composed of the most rational and attractive parts of both, against the encroachments of Christianity. (3) Neque solum cum lætitiâ vivendi rationem accepimus, sed etiam cum spe meliore moriendi, these remarkable rites (1) the primitive Nature-worship had survived under a less refined and less humanized form; the original and more simple symbolic forms (those of the first agricultural inhabitants of Greece (2)) had been retained by ancient reverence : as its allegory was less intricate and obscure (3), it accommodated itself better with the advancing spirit of the age. It may indeed be questioned whether the Mysteries did not owe much of their influence to their secrecy, and to the impressive forms, under which they shadowed forth their more recondite truths (4). These, if they did not satisfy, yet kept the mind in a state of progressive and continued excitement. They were, if it may be so said, a great religious drama, in which the initiated were at once spectators and actors; where the fifth act was designedly delayed to the utmost possible point, and of this still suspended catastrophe, the dramatis personæ, the only audience, were kept in studied ignorance (5). The Mysteries had, perhaps, from an early period associated a moral (6) purport with their sacred shows; and with the progress of opinion, the moral would more and more predominate over the primitive religious meaning (7). Yet the morality of the Mysteries was apparently that of the ancient Nature-worship of the East. It taught the immortality of the soul, as a part of that vast system of nature, which, emanating from the Supreme Being, passed through a long course of deterioration or refinement, and at length returned and resolved itself into the primal source of all existence. But the Mysteries, from their very nature, could only act upon the public mind in a limited manner (8): directly they ceased to be mysteries they lost their power (9). Nor can it be Cic. de Leg. ii. 14. The theory of Warburton on the Mysteries is now universally exploded; but neither, with the utmost deference to his erudition, can I enter altogether into the views of Lobeck. In my judgment his quotations do not bear him out, as to the publicity of the ceremonies; nor can I conceive that there was none, or scarcely any, secret. -Vetabo qui Cereris sacrum Sit trabibus, fragilemque mecum (1) The theories of Maier, Warburton, Ples sing, Boulanger, Dupuis, Meiners, Villoison, P. Knight, Heeren, St. Croix, Creuzer, may be found briefly stated, Lobeck, 1. 6. 8. (2) Quibus explicatis, ad rationemque revocatis, rerum magis natura cognoscitur, quam deorum. Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 42. (3) See Varro's View of the Eleusinian Mysteries, preserved by Augustin, De Civ. Dei, vii. 15. (4) ̓Αγνωσία σεμνότης ἐπί τελετῶν καὶ νὺξ. διὰ τοῦτο πιστεύεται τὰ μυστήρια, καὶ ἄβατα σπήλαια διὰ τοῦτο ὀρύττεται, καιροί καί τόποι κρύπτειν idores appпroupyiav vesov. Synes. de Prov. Compare the splendid passage in Dio. Chrys. Orat. 12. (5) Non semel quædam sacra traduntur. Eleusis servat, quod ostendat revisentibus. Rerum natura, sacra sua non simul tradit. Initiatos nos credimus in vestibulo ejus hæremus. Sen. Nat. Quæst. vii. 31. Ut opinionem suspendio cognitionis ædificent, atque ita tantam majestatem adhibere videantur, quantum præstruxerunt cupiditatem. Tert, ad. Valent. c. 1. (6) Pindar, Frag. 116. Sophocles. Fragm. Luc. LVIII. Isoc. Pan. VII. Plato, Men. (7) Even Lobeck allows this of the Eleusinian Mysteries-Sacerdotes interdum aliquid de me. tempsychosi dixisse largiar." i. 73. (8) The Jews were forbidden to be initiated in the Mysteries. In the Greek text of the LXX, a text was interpolated or mistranslated (Deut. xxiii. 17.), in which Moses, by an anachronism not uncommon in the Alexandrian school, was made distinctly to condemn these peculiar rites of paganism. (9) Philo demands why, if they are so useful, they are not public: "Nature makes all her most beautiful and splendid works, her heaven and all her stars for the sight of all; her seas, fountains, and rivers, the annual temperature of the air, and the winds, the innumerable tribes and races of animals, and fruits of the earth, for the common use of man-why then are the Mysteries confined to a few, and those not always the most wise and most virtuous?" This is the general sense of a long passage, vol. ii. p. 260. Ed. Mang. 2 Philoso phy. Varieties doubted, that while the local and public Mysteries, particularly the greatest of all, the Eleusinian, were pure and undefiled by licentiousness, and, if they retained any of the obscene symbols, disguised or kept them in the back ground; the private and moveable mysteries, which, under the conduct of vagabond priests, were continually flowing in from the East, displayed those symbols in unblushing nakedness, and gave occasion for the utmost licence and impurity (1). II. Philosophy as a substitute for religion was still more manifestly deficient. For, in the first place, it was unable, or condescended not, to reach the body of the people, whom the progress of civilisation was slowly bringing up towards the common level; and where it found or sought proselytes, it spoke without authority, and distracted with the multitude of its conflicting sects the patient but bewildered inquirer (2). Philosophy maintained the aristocratic tone, which, while it declared that to a few elect spirits alone it was possible to communicate the highest secrets of knowledge, more particularly the mystery of the great Supreme Being, proclaimed it vain and unwise to attempt to elevate the many to such exalted speculations (3). “The Father of the worlds," says Plato in this tone, it is difficult to discover, and, when discovered, it is impossible to make him known to all." So, observes a German historian of Christianity, think the Brahmins of India. Plato might aspire to the creation of an imaginary republic, which, if it could possibly be realised, might stand alone, an unapproachable model of the physical and moral perfection of man; but the amelioration of the whole world, the simultaneous elevation of all nations, orders, and classes to a higher degree of moral advancement, would have been a vision from which even his imagination would have shrunk in despair. This remained to be conceived and accomplished by one who appeared to the mass of mankind in his own age, as a peasant of Palestine. It cannot be denied that, to those whom it deigned to address, of philo- philosophy was sufficiently accommodating; and whatever the bias systems. of the individual mind, the school was open, and the teacher at sophic hand, to lead the inquirer, either to the luxurious gardens of Epicurus, or among the loftier spirits of the Porch. In the two prevalent systems of philosophy, the Epicurean and the Stoic, appears a striking assimilation to the national character of the two predomi (1) The republic severely prohibited these practices, which were unknown in its earlier and better days. Dionys. Hal. ii. viii. (2) "Õpâs̟ To Tañdos Tv σuvenμarav; πῆ τις τράπηται; ποῖον αὐτῶν κατελέξομεν; τίνι πεισθῶ τῶν παραγγελμárov; Max. Tyr. xxxv. sub tin. (3) Neander has likewise quoted several of the same authorities adduced in the following pas sage. See the translation of Neander, which had not been announced when the above was written. It is curious that Strabo remarks, on another point, the similarity of the Indian opinions to Platonism, and treats then all as μύθοι: Παραπλέκουσι δὲ καὶ μύθους, ὥσπερ καὶ Πλάτων, περί τε ἀφθαρσίας ψυχῆς, καὶ τῶν καθ' ᾅδου κρίσεων καὶ ἄλλα τοιαῦτα. L. xv. p. 713. |