# Anacalypsis/Volume 1/Book 1/Chapter 3

CHAPTER III.
THE SUN THE FIRST OBJECT OF ADORATION OF ALL NATIONS.—THE GODS NOT DECEASED HEROES.—THE CHINESE HAVE ONLY ONE GOD.—HINDOO GODDESSES.—TOLERATION AND CHANGE IN RELIGIONS.
1. On the first view of the mythological systems of the Gentiles, the multitude of their gods appears to be infinite, and the confusion inextricable. But if a person will only consider the following chapters carefully, and without prejudice, he will probably discover a system which, in some degree, will unravel their intricacies, will reconcile their apparent contradictions, will explain the general meaning of their mysteries, and will shew the reason why, among the various religions in later times, toleration so universally prevailed. But yet it is not intended to attempt, as some persons have done, a complete development of the minutiæ of the mysteries, or to exhibit a perfect system attended with an explanation of the ceremonies and practices which the Heathens adopted in the secret recesses of their temples, which they guarded from the prying eye of the vulgar with the greatest care and the most sacred oaths; and which have long since been buried amidst the ruins of the finest buildings of antiquity—lamentable sacrifices to the zeal, bigotry, and fury of the Iconoclasts, or of the professors of Christianity.
Few persons have exhibited more learning or ingenuity on the subject of the ancient worship than Mr. Bryant and M. Dupuis: and whatever opinion people may entertain of different parts of their works, or of some of their hypotheses, yet they can scarcely refuse assent to their general assertions, that all the religions of antiquity, at least in their origin, are found to centre in the worship of the Sun, either as God the Creator himself, or as the seat of, or as the emblem of Creator.
Socrates, Pythagoras, Plato, Zoroaster or Zeradust, &c., and all those initiated in the most secret mysteries, acknowledged one supreme God, the Lord and First Cause of all. And perhaps, though it can never be certainly known, those who only received the lesser mysteries, might confine their worship to the sun and the host of heaven; but it was only the vulgar and ignorant who bent the knee to the stone, wood, or metal idols of the gods, perhaps only a little more numerous than the images of the Christian saints.
2. It has until lately been the general opinion, that the gods of the ancients were nothing but the heroes or the benefactors of mankind, living in very illiterate and remote ages, to whom a grateful posterity paid divine honours. This appears at first sight to be probable; and as it has ​served the purpose of the Christian priests, to enable them to run down the religion of the ancients, and, in exposing its absurdities, to contrast it disadvantageously with their own, it has been, and continues to be, sedulously inculcated, in every public and private seminary. The generality of schoolmasters know no better; they teach what they have learned and what they believe. But, as this rank of men increase in talent and learning, this is gradually wearing away.
Although the pretended worship of Heroes appears at first sight plausible, very little depth of thought or learning is requisite to discover that it has not much foundation in truth. It was not in the infant state of society, that men were worshiped; it was not, on the contrary, until they arrived at a very high and advanced state of civilization. It was not Moses, Zoroaster, Confucius, Socrates, Solon, Lycurgus, Plato, Pythagoras, or Numa, that were objects of worship; the benefactors of mankind in all ages have been oftener persecuted than worshiped. No, divine honours (if such they can be called) were reserved for Alexander of Macedon, the drunkard, for Augustus Cæsar, the hypocrite, or Heliogabalus, the lunatic. A species of civil adoration, despised by all persons of common understanding, and essentially different from the worship of the Supreme Being, was paid to them. It was the vice of the moment, and soon passed away. How absurd to suppose that the elegant and enlightened Athenian philosopher could worship Hercules, because he killed a lion or cleaned a stable! Or Bacchus, because he made wine or got drunk! Besides, these deified heroes can hardly be called Gods in any sense. They were more like the Christian Saints. Thus we have Divus Augustus, and Divus Paulus, and Divus Petrus. Their nature has been altogether misunderstood; it will afterward be explained.
3. After a life of the most painful and laborious research, Mr. Bryant’s opinion is, that all the various religions terminated in the worship of the Sun. He commences his work by shewing, from a great variety of etymological proofs, that all the names of the Deities were derived or compounded from some word which originally meant the Sun. Notwithstanding the ridicule which has been thrown upon etymological inquiries, in consequence of the want of fixed rules, or of the absurd length to which some persons have carried them, yet I am quite certain it must, in a great measure, be from etymology at last that we must recover the lost learning of antiquity.
Macrobius says, that in Thrace they worship the Sun or Solis Liber, calling him Sebadius; and from the Orphic poetry we learn that all the Gods were one:
Diodorus Siculus says, that it was the belief of the ancients that Osiris, Serapis, Dionusos, Pluto, Jupiter, and Pan, were all one.
Ausonius represents all the deities to be included under the term Dionusos.
Sometimes Pan was called the God of all, sometimes Jupiter.
Nonnus also states, that all the different Gods, whatever might be their names, Hercules, Ammon, Apollo, or Mithra, centred in the Sun.
Mr. Selden says, whether they be called Osiris, or Omphis, or Nilus, or Siris, or by any other name, they all centre in the Sun, the most ancient deity of the nations.
Basnage says, that Osiris, that famous God of the Egyptians, was the Sun, or rather the Sun was the emblem of the beneficent God Osiris.
​Serapis was another name for the Sun, Remisius gives an inscription to Jupiter the Sun, the invincible Serapis.
Mithras was likewise the Sun, or rather was but a different name, which the Persians bestowed on the Egyptian Osiris.
Harpocrates also represented the Sun. It is true, he was also the God of Silence; he put his finger upon his mouth, because the Sun was worshiped with a reverential silence, and thence came the Sigè of the Basilidians, who had their origin from Egypt.
By the Syrians the Sun and Heat were called המה hme, Chamha; and by the Persians Hama. Thus the temple to which Alexander so madly marched in the desert, was called the temple of the Sun or of Ammon. Mr. Bryant shews that Ham was esteemed the Zeus of Greece, and the Jupiter of Latium.
Ham, sub Jovis nomine, in Africa cultus.
Mr. Bryant says, “The worship of Ham, or the Sun, as it was the most ancient, so it was the most universal of any in the world. It was at first the prevailing religion of Greece; and was propagated over all the sea-coast of Europe, from whence it extended itself into the inland provinces, It was established in Gaul and Britain; and was the original religion of this island, which the Druids in after times adopted.”
This Ham was nothing but a Greek corruption of a very celebrated Indian word, formed of the three letters a u m, of which I shall have much to say hereafter.
Virgil gives the conduct of the year to Liber or Bacchus, though it was generally thought to be in the care of Apollo. It also appears from the Scholia in Horace, that Apollo and Dionusos were the same. In fact, they were all three the same, the Sun.
4. It is allowed that the grand mysteries of the Grecian religion were brought by way of Thrace from Assyria, Persia, Egypt, or other Eastern parts, by a person of the name of Orpheus, or at least that it came from those parts, whoever brought it into Greece. And in the doctrines attributed to this philosopher, we may reasonably expect to find the ground-works of the religion, in fact, the religion unadulterated by the folly of the populace, and the craft of the priests. And here we shall find a pure and excellent religion.
Proclus says of the religion, Ζευς κεφαλε, Ζευς μεσσα· Διος δ᾽εκ παντα τετυκαι—Jove is the head and middle of all things; all things were made out of Jove.
According to Timotheus, in Cedrenus, Orpheus asserted the existence of an eternal, incomprehensible Being, Δημιουργον απαντον, και αυτου του αιθερος, και παντων των επ᾽ αυτον τον αιθερα, the Creator of all things, even of the æther itself, and of all things below that æther. According to him, this Δημιουργος is called ΦΩΕ, ΒΟΥΛΗ, ΖΩΗ, Light, Counsel, Life. And Suidas says, that these three names express one and the same power, ταυτα τα τρια ονοματα μιαν δυναμιν απεφηνατο: and Timotheus concludes his account by affirming that Orpheus, in ​his book, declared, δια των αυτων ονοματων μιας Θεοτητος τα παντα εγενετο, και αυτος εςι τα παντα: That all things were made by one Godhead, in three names, and this God is all things.
Proclus gives us the following as one of the verses of Orpheus:
Jupiter is the king, Jupiter himself is the original source of all things; there is one power, one god, and one great ruler over all. But we have seen that Jupiter and all the other Gods were but names for the Sun; therefore it follows that the Sun, either as emblem or as God himself, was the object of universal adoration.
The Heathens, even in the later days of their idolatry, were not so gross in their notions, but that they believed there was only one supreme God. They did, indeed, worship a multitude of deities, but they supposed all but one, to be subordinate deities. They always had a notion of one deity superior to all the powers of heaven, and all the other deities were conceived to have different offices or ministrations under him—being appointed to preside over elements, over cities, over countries, and to dispense victory to armies, health, life, and other blessings to their favourites, if permitted by the Supreme Power. Hesiod supposes one God to be the Father of the other deities;
and Homer, in many passages of the Iliad, represents one Supreme Deity as presiding over all the others; and the most celebrated of their philosophers always endeavoured to assert this theology.
5. Dr. Shuckford has shewn that the Egyptians originally worshiped the Supreme God, under the name of Cneph, affirming him to be without beginning or end. Philo Biblius says, that they represented him by the figure of a serpent with the head of a hawk, in the middle of a circle—certainly a very mythological emblem; but then he represents them to have given to this Being all the attributes of the Supreme God the Creator, incorruptible and eternal. Porphyry calls him τον Δημιουργον, the Maker or Creator of the universe.
The opinion entertained by Porphyry may be judged of from the following extract:
“We will sacrifice,” says he, “but in a manner that is proper, bringing choice victims with the choicest of our faculties; burning and offering to God, who, as a wise man observed, is above all—nothing sensual: for nothing is joined to matter, which is not impure; and, therefore, incongruous to a nature free from the contagion belonging to matter; for which reason, neither speech, which is produced by the voice, nor even internal or mental language, if it be infected with any disorder of the mind, is proper to be offered to God; but we worship God with an unspotted silence, and the most pure thoughts of his nature.”
​Shuckford says, “But if we look into Italy we not only find in general that the writers of their antiquities remark, that their ancient deities were of a different sort from those of Greece, but according to Plutarch, Numa, the second King of Rome, made express orders against the use of images in the worship of the Deity; nay, he says further, that the first 170 years after the building of the city, the Romans used no images, but thought the Deity invisible, and reputed it unlawful to make representations of him from things of an inferior nature; so that, according to this account, Rome being built about A. M. 3256, the inhabitants were not greatly corrupted in their religion, even so late as A. M. 3426, which falls when Nebuchadnezzar was King of Babylon, and about 169 years after the time where I am to end this work. It is remarkable that Plutarch does not represent Numa as correcting or refining the ancient idolatry of Italy; but expresses, that this people never had these grosser deities, either before or for the first 170 years of their city; so that it is more than probable, that Greece was not thus corrupted when the Pelasgi removed from thence into Italy: and further, that the Trojans were not such idolaters at the destruction of their city, because, according to this account, Æneas neither brought with him images into Italy, nor such Gods as were worshiped by the adoration of images; and, therefore, Pausanias, who imagined that Æneas carried the Palladium into Italy, was as much mistaken as the men of Argus, who affirmed themselves to have it in their city. The times of Numa are about 200 years after Homer, and very probably the idolatry so much celebrated in his writings might by this time begin to appear in Italy, and thereby occasion Numa to make laws and constitutions against it.”
After the above observations, Shuckford goes on to assert, in a style rather democratical for a Doctor of Divinity, that the first corruptions of religion were begun by kings and rulers of nations! And he produces several examples to support his assertion, which are not much in point. If he had said, that these corruptions had been produced by the knavery of his own order, the priests, working upon the timidity and weakness of timid and weak kings, and making them its tools, he would have been perfectly correct. For this is the mode by which half the miseries of mankind have been produced by this pernicious order of men. And when he says that the inhabitants of Italy were not greatly corrupted, he goes too far; he ought to have confined his observations to the Romans. But perhaps to them only he alluded.
6. The Chinese, with all their apparent idolatry, had only one God.
Speaking of the religion of the Chinese, Sir W. Jones says, “Of the religious opinions entertained by Confucius and his followers, we may glean a general notion from the fragments of their works, translated by Couplet: they professed a firm belief in the Supreme God, and gave a demonstration of his being and of his providence, from the exquisite beauty and perfection of the celestial bodies, and the wonderful order of nature in the whole fabric of the visible world. From this belief they deduced a system of ethics, which the philosopher sums up in a few words at the close of the Lunyn. He” (says Confucius) “who shall be fully persuaded that the Lord of Heaven governs the universe, who shall in all things choose moderation, who shall perfectly know his own species, and so act among them, that his life and manners may conform to his knowledge of God and man, may be truly said to discharge all the duties of a sage, and to be exalted above the common herd of the human race!”
Marco Paulo informs us, that in his time the Chinese paid their adoration to a tablet fixed against the wall in their houses, upon which was inscribed the name of the high, celestial, and ​supreme God; to whose honour they burnt incense, but of whom they had no image. The words, Mr. Marsden says, which were on the tablet were three, tien, heaven; hoang-tien, supreme heaven; and Shang-ti, sovereign Lord. De Guignes tells us, that the word tien stands indifferently for the visible heaven and the Supreme Deity. Marco Paulo tells us, that from the God whose name was on the tablet the Chinese only petition for two things, sound intellect and health of body, but that they had another God, of whom they had a statue or idol called Natigai, who was the God of all terrestrial things; in fact, God, the Creator of this world, (inferior or subordinate to the Supreme Being,) from whom they petition for fine weather, or whatever else they want—a sort of Mediator. Here is evidently a striking similarity to the doctrines of some of the early Christian heretics.
It seems pretty clear from this account, that originally, and probably at this time also, like all the ancients of the West in the midst of their degrading idolatry, they yet acknowledged one Supreme God, with many subordinate agents, precisely the same as the Heathens of Greece and Rome, and modern Christians, under the names of inferior gods, angels, demons, saints, &c. In fact they were Deists.
7. In addition to the authorities which have been produced to prove that the whole of the different Gods of antiquity resolve themselves at last, when properly examined, into different names of the God Sol, it would be easy, if it were necessary, to produce as many more from every quarter of the world; but what, it may be asked, will you do with the Goddesses? The reader shall now see; and first from the learned and Rey. Mr. Maurice.
“Whoever will read the Geeta with attention will perceive in that small tract the outlines of nearly all the various systems of theology in Asia. That curious and ancient doctrine of the Creator being both male and female, mentioned in a preceding page to be designated in Indian temples by a very indecent exhibition of the masculine and feminine organs of generation in union, occurs in the following passages: ‘I am the father and mother of this world; I plant myself upon my own nature, and create again and again this assemblage of beings; I am generation and dissolution, the place where all things are deposited, and the inexhaustible seed of all nature; I am the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things.’” In another part he more directly says, “The great Brahme is the womb of all those various forms which are conceived in every natural womb, and I am the father that soweth the seed.’” Herodotus informs us that the Persian Mithras was the same with the Assyrian Venus Mylitta or Urania, and the Arabian Alitta. Mr. Cudworth shews that this must have been the Aphrodita Urania, by which was meant the creating Deity. It is well known that the Venus Aphrodite was a Phœnician Deity, worshiped particularly at Citium, and was of both the male and female gender,—the Venus Genitrix.
Proclus describes Jupiter, in one of the Orphic Hymns, to be both male and female, αρσενοφηλυν, Hermaphroditic, And Bishop Synesius adopts it in a Christian hymn. The Priapus of the Etruscans was both male and female. (See Table LVIII. of Gorius.) He has the membrum virile, with the female breasts.
Damascius, treating of the fecundity of the Divine Nature, cites Orpheus as teaching, that the Deity was at once both male and female, αρσενοθηλυν αυτην ὑπεςησατο, προς ενδειξιν των παντων γεννητικης ουσιας, to shew the generative power by which all things were formed. Proclus, upon the Timæus of Plato, cites the following:
Ζευς αρσην γενετο, Ζευς αμβροτος επλετο νυμφη·
Jupiter is a man; Jupiter is also an immortal maid. And in the same commentary, and the same page, we read that all things were contained εν γαςερι Ζηνος, in the womb of Jupiter.
​8. Manichæus, according to Theodoret, said, in his allegorical language, “That a male-virgin gave light and life to Eve,” that is, created her. And the Pseudo-Mercurius Trismegistus in Pæmander said, that God being male and female, (αρῥενοθηλυς ων,) because he is light and life, engendered by the word another intelligence, which was the Creator. The male-virgin, Theodoret says, was called Joel, or Ιωηλ, which Beausobre thinks was “El, God, and Joha, life-making, vivifying, life-giving, or the generating God.” (So far my friend Beverley.) But which was probably merely the יהו Ieu, אל al, or God Iao, of which we shall treat hereafter. Again, Mr. Beverley says, “In Genesis it is written, ‘God said, Let us create man after our own image and likeness.’ This, then, ought in strictness of language to be a male and female God, or else it would not be after the likeness proposed.”
“The male-virgin of the Orientals is, I know, considered the same by Plato as his Ἑςια, or Vesta, whom he calls the soul of the body of the universe. This Hestia, by the way, is in my view a Sanscrit lady, whose name I take to have been EST, or she that is, or exists, having the same meaning as the great name of the Jewish Deity. Est is shewn in the Celtic Druids to be a Sanscrit word, and I do not doubt of this her derivation. The A terminal is added by the Greek idiom to denote a female, as they hated an indeclinable proper name, such as HEST or EST would have been.” Extract from a letter from Makenzie Beverley, Esq.
Apuleius makes the mother of the Gods of the masculine gender, and represents her describing herself as called Minerva at Athens, Venus at Cyprus, Diana at Crete, Proserpine in Sicily, Ceres at Eleusis: in other places, Juno, Bellona, Hecate, Isis, &c.; and if any doubt could remain, the philosopher Porphyry, than whom probably no one was better skilled in these matters, removes it by acknowledging that Vesta, Rhea, Ceres, Themis, Priapus, Proserpine, Bacchus, Attis, Adonis, Silenus, and the Satyrs, were all the same.
Valerius Soranus calls Jupiter the mother of the Gods:
Synesius speaks of him in the same manner:
The like character is also given to the ancient deity Μητις, or Divine Wisdom, by which the world was framed:
And in two of the Orphic Fragments all that has been said above seems to be comprehended. This Deity, like the others, is said to be of two genders, and to be also the Sun.
Μητις, Mr. Bryant says, is a masculine name for a feminine deity, and means Divine Wisdom. I suspect it was a corruption of the Maia or Mia of India.
In Cyprus, Venus is represented with a beard, and called Aphrodite.
Calvus, the poet, calls her masculine, as does also Macrobius.
​Jupiter is called feminine, and the genetrixque Deûm, by Augustine.
The Orphic verses make the Moon both male and female.
9. The following extract from Sir W. Jones’s Dissertation on the Gods of Greece and India, will, perhaps, be of some weight with the very large class of mankind, who prefer authority to reason; and may serve to justify or excuse the opinions here expressed, by shewing them that they are neither new nor unsupported: “We must not be surprised at finding, on a close examination, that the characters of all the Pagan Deities, male and female, melt into each other, and at last into one or two; for it seems a well founded opinion, that the whole crowd of Gods and Goddesses in ancient Rome and modern Váránes, mean only the powers of nature, and principally those of the Sun, expressed in a variety of ways, and by a multitude of fanciful names.”
In a future part of this work I shall have much more to say of the Goddesses or the female generative power, which became divided from the male, and in consequence was the cause of great wars and miseries to the Eastern parts of the world, and of the rise of a number of sects in the Western, which have not been at all understood.
Thus, we see, there is in fact an end of all the multitude of the Heathen Gods and Goddesses, so disguised in the Pantheons and books of various kinds, which the priests have published from time to time to instil into the minds of their pupils—that the ancient Heathen philosophers and legislators were the slaves of the most degrading superstition; that they believed such nonsense as the metamorphoses described by Ovid, or the loves of Jupiter, Venus, &c., &c. That the rabble were the victims of a degrading superstition, I have no doubt. This was produced by the knavery of the ancient priests, and it is in order to reproduce this effect that the modern priests have misrepresented the doctrines of their predecessors. By vilifying and running down the religion of the ancients, they have thought they could persuade their votaries that their new religion was necessary for the good of mankind: a religion which, in consequence of their corruptions, has been found to be in practice much worse and more injurious to the interests of society than the old one. For, from these corruptions the Christian religion—the religion of purity and truth when uncorrupted—has not brought peace but a sword.
After the astrologers had parcelled out the heavens into the forms of animals, &c., and the annual path of the Sun had become divided into twelve parts, each part designated by some animal, or other figure, or known emblem, it is not surprising that they should have become the objects of adoration. This M. Dupuis has shewn, was the origin of the Arabian and Egyptian adoration of animals, birds, &c. Hence, in the natural progress of events, the adoration of images arose among the Heathens and Christians.
10. The same tolerating spirit generally prevailed among the votaries of the Heathen Gods of the Western world, which we find among the Christian saints. For though in some few instances the devotees in Egypt quarrelled about their Gods, as in some few instances the natives of Christian towns have quarrelled about their Divi or tutelar saints, yet these petty wars never created much mischief. They were evidently no ways dangerous to the emoluments of the priests, and therefore they were not attended with very important consequences.
A great part of the uncertainty and apparent contradictions which we meet with in the history of the religions of antiquity, evidently arises from the inattention of the writers to the changes which long periods of time produce.
It is directly contrary to the law of nature for any thing to remain stationary. The law of ​perpetual motion is universal; we know of no such thing as absolute rest. Causes over which man has no controul overturn and change his wisest institutions. Monuments of folly and of wisdom, all, all crumble into dust. The Pyramids of Egypt, and the codes of the Medes or of Napoleon, all will pass away and be forgotten.
M. Dupuis, in his first chapter, has shewn that probably all nations first worshiped, as we are told the Persians did, without altars or temples, in groves and high places. After a certain number of years, in Persia, came temples and idols, with all their abuses; and these, in their turn, were changed or abolished, and the worship of the Sun restored, or perhaps the worship of the Sun only as emblem of the Creator. This was probably the change said to have been effected by Zoroaster.
The Israelites at the exodus had evidently run into the worship of Apis the Bull, or the Golden Calf of Egypt, which it was the object of Moses to abolish, and in the place thereof to substitute the worship of one God—Iao, Jehovah—which, in fact, was only the Sun or the Solar Fire, yet not the Sun, as Creator, but as emblem of or the shekinah of the Divinity. The Canaanites, according to the Mosaic account, were not idolaters in the time of Abraham; but it is implied that they became so in the long space between the time he lived and that of Moses. The Assyrians seem to have become idolaters early, and not, as the Persians, to have had any reformer like Zoroaster or Moses, but to have continued till the Iconoclasts, Cyrus and Darius, reformed them with fire and sword; as their successor Cambyses soon afterward did the Egyptians. The observations made on the universality of the solar worship, contain but very little of what might be said respecting it; but yet enough is said to establish the fact. If the reader wish for more, his curiosity will be amply repaid by a perusal of Mr. Bryant’s Analysis of the Heathen Mythology. He may also read the fourth chapter of Cudworth’s Intellectual System, which is a most masterly performance.
* ↑ An interesting account of the mysteries of the Heathens will be found in Part II. of Vol. II. of Dupuis’s History of all Religions.
* ↑ Sat. L. i. 18.
* ↑ Orphic Fragm. iv. p. 364, Gesner, Ed.
* ↑ L. i. p. 23.
* ↑ Auson. Epigram. 30; Bryant, Vol. I. p. 310, 4to.
* ↑ 4 Orp. Hym. x. p. 200, Gesner.
* ↑ Euphorion.
* ↑ Selden de Diis Syriis, p. 77.
* ↑ B. iii. Ch. xviii. Sect. xxii.
* ↑ Basnage, B. iii. Ch. xviii.
* ↑ Selden de Diis Syriis Syntag. II. C. viii. p. 247.
* ↑ Gale’s Court of the Gentiles, Vol. I. Ch. xi. p. 72.
* ↑ Hesychius.
* ↑ Herodotus, L. ii. C. xlii.
* ↑ Bochart, Geog. Sac. L. i. C. i. p. 5.
* ↑ Pind. Pyth. Ode iv. 28, Schol.
* ↑ Bryant, Vol. I. 4to. p. 284.
* ↑ Georg. L. i. v. 6.
* ↑ Lib. ii. Ode xix.
* ↑ Orphic Fragm. in. Macrob. Sat. L. i. C. xxiii.
* ↑ Maurice, Ind. Ant. Vol. IV. p. 704.
* ↑ Vide Iliad, vii. ver. 202, viii. vers. 5—28, &c. See also Virgil, Æn., ii. ver. 777. ——non hæc sine numine Divûm Eveniunt: non te huic comitem asportare Creüsam Fas, aut ille sinit superi regnator Olympi. Jupiter is here supposed to be the numen divûm, and his will to be the fas or fate, which no one might contradict: Fatum est, says Cicero, non id quod superstitiosè sed quod physicè dictum causa æterna rerum. De Divin. L. i. C. xxxv. Deum—interdum necessitatem appellant, quia nihil aliter possit atque ab eo constitutem sit. Id. Academ. Quæst. L. iv. C. xliv.
* ↑ Cic. in lib. de Nat. Deorum, in Acad. Quæst. L. i. C. vii., Ibid. C. xxxiv.; Plato de Legib. L. x. in Phil. in Cratyl. &c.; Aristot. L. de Mundo, C vi.; Plutarch de Placit. Philos. L. i.; Id. in lib. de E. I. apud Delphos, p. 393. See Shuckford, B. ix. Vol. II. p. 394.
* ↑ Plut. de Iside and Osiride, p. 359; and Euseb. Præp. Evan. L. i. C. x.; Shuckford Con. B. v. p. 312.
* ↑ Val. Col. Vol. III. p. 466.
* ↑ Dionys. Halicar., Lib. vii.
* ↑ In Numa, and Clem. Alexand. Stromat. Lib. i.
* ↑ Usher’s Annals.
* ↑ In Corinthiacis.
* ↑ Ibid.
* ↑ Shuckford Con. B. v. p. 352. 8vo. Ed.
* ↑ Diss. VII. p. 227.
* ↑ B. ii. Ch. xxvi. Ed. of W. Marsden, 4to.
* ↑ Tom. II. p. 350.
* ↑ Maurice Ind. Ant. Vol. IV. p. 705.
* ↑ Hyde de Rel. Pers. Cap. iii. p. 95.
* ↑ Ubi sup. p. 304.
* ↑ The A at the end of the word EST may be the Chaldee emphatic article; then Vesta would be the Est or the Self-existent.
* ↑ Apuleii Metamorph. L. ii. p. 241.
* ↑ Porphyry ap. Eusebium, Evan. Præp. L. iii. C. xi.
* ↑ Bryant, Anal. Vol. I. p. 315.
* ↑ Orpheus, Eusebii Chronicon.
* ↑ Orphic Hymn, xxxi. 10, p. 224.
* ↑ Bryant, Vol. I. p. 204. Ed. 4to.
* ↑ Bryant, Anal. Vol. II. p. 25.
* ↑ Hesychius Servius upon Virgil’s Æneid, L. ii. 632.
* ↑ Satur. L. iii. C. viii.
* ↑ August. de Civit. Dei, L. iv. C. xi. and L. vii. C. ix.
* ↑ Hymn viii. 4.
* ↑ Ch. i. Rel. Univ.
* ↑ See Mosheim, who shews that the religious wars of the Egyptians were not like those of the Christians.