confidence in the great truths of revelation; and thus the Indian Antiquities cannot fail of being considered of national benefit, at an æra when it is more than ever apparent, that a liberal system of government and a sound code of theology naturally and mutually support each other.

With respect to the particular subject which engrosses so ample a portion of this volume, in vindication of myself, for having entered into it at such length, I have this substantial, and I hope satisfactory, argument to urge. It was in vain to insist that this doctrine of a Trinity was not brought from the school of Plato by Justin Martyr, in the second century, into the Christian church, if room were left to conjecture that it might possibly have derived its first origin from the school of the Brahmins; for, this and many other positions, injurious to Christianity, have been urged by those whose creed leads them to represent India, and not Chaldæa, as the cradle of the human race, and its venerable sages as the parents

parents of all religion, in direct opposition to that authentic book, which fixes the first residence of the patriarchs in Chaldæa, and traces religion itself to a higher and nobler source. It became absolutely necessary to examine the Hebrew Scriptures as well as the Jewish cabala; and to prove, not only that this distinction in the divine nature formed a part of the Rabbinical creed, but was promulgated to the Jewish nation at large, AS FAR AS A PEOPLE, FOR EVER RELAPSING INTO POLYTHEISM, COULD BEAR THE REVELATION OF SO IMPORTANT AND MYSTERIOUS A TRUTH. That is the particular point for which I would be understood principally to contend; and I trust that, to unbiassed minds, that point is proved.

In discoursing upon the PAGAN TRIADS Of DEITY, it was scarcely possible to avoid again treading over much of the ground of their physical theology, in part discussed before; so much did physics infect every portion of the religion of the ancient world! Some points of doctrine in that curious devotion, however, are

here

here placed in a new light, and none, I hope, are recapitulated to disgust.

It may, perhaps, startle the timid Christian to find a few of the symbols of his own religion immemoriably used amidst the idolatries of Asia; and M. Volney, therefore, has not failed, in his "Ruins," to take advantage of this circumstance, to derive all the symbols of both Pagan and Christian devotion from one common origin, the MITHRIAC MYSTERIES. Previously to the appearance of his volume, I had myself asserted that a species of BAPTISM was performed in those mysteries, and had quoted even Tertullian in proof that, per lavacrum Mithra SIGNAT in frontibus milites suos.* He is right, indeed, in saying that the Mithriac baptism had entirely an astronomical allusion, and respects the passage of the soul, in the sidereal Metempsychosis, through the gate of Capricorn, or celestial flood-gate, that is, the winter-solstice; the meaning of which has been partly unfolded

• Vide Tertullian de Baptismo, lib. i. cap. 5, opera.

in

But

in an extract from Porphyry, de Antro Nympharum, who expressly says, "that the soul in its peregrination through the purifying spheres, reviving in that sign, which is the gate of immortals, according to the words cited from Homer, is there divested of its material garment, and returns through it to the fountain of life, from which it emaned."* what religion has not used water as a symbol of purity? and what solid argument can be brought against the adoption of water as a symbol, or indeed of fire either, when not honoured with the superstitious veneration which the ancients paid to it, who erred only in exalting a secondary to the dignity of a first effective cause? The Jews we know, by the divine permission, used both in their sacred ceremonial rites. By this circumstance, therefore; by that of a demiurgic spirit, hovering over primordial waters; of a sacred triad; of a Imediator; of a divine incarnation; and many similar doctrines and rites, existing in both

systems

* Vide preceding Indian Theology, chap. i. p. 324, and Porphyry de Ant. Nymph. p. 258.

systems of devotion; though the timid Christian may at first be somewhat surprised, yet a

little reflection will soon convince him of the truth of what I have all along asserted to be the genuine fact, and what properly forms the basis of the present Dissertation, that, in the pure and primitive theology, derived from the venerable patriarchs, there were certain grand and mysterious truths, the object of their fixed belief, which all the depravations, brought into it by succeeding superstition, were never able entirely to efface from the human mind. These truths, together with many of the symbols of that pure theology, were propagated and diffused by them in their various peregrinations through the Higher Asia, where they have immemorially flourished; affording a most sublime and honourable testimony of such a refined and patriarchal religion having actually existed in the earliest ages of the world.

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