Και το φως ἐν τη σκοτία φαίνει, καὶ ἡ σκοτία αυτο οὐ κατελαβεν.-ΙΩΑΝ. Α. 1. CHAPTER I.-THE ORIGINAL DOCTRINE-ITS CERTAINTY-NECESSITY MYTHO LOGICAL CORRUPTIONS. CHAPTER II.-EGYPTIAN ILLUSTRATIONS AND PROOFS. CHAPTER III.-THE WORSHIP OF ANIMALS. EGYPTIAN DOCTRINES OF INCAR NATION, RESURRECTION, IMMORTALITY. CHAPTER IV.-THE PYTHAGOREAN AND PLATONIC SPECULATIONS. [THE contemporaneous appearance of Cory's Mythological Inquiry, and Mushet on The Trinity of the Ancients, having brought before us the two sides of one of the least understood and most neglected, yet most important and interesting, questions, whether as regards its religious, its mythological, or its historical bearings, that has ever been agitated, we have profited by the opportunity thus afforded us of fully and fairly investigating it; and we lay the result before our readers in the following dissertation.] CHAP. I. The Original Doctrine—its Certainty — Necessity-Mythological Corruptions. THE fundamental doctrine of our beautiful, noble, all- triumphant, and only consistent and philosophical religion was, for wise purposes, permitted to baffle the accumulating wisdom of the sages who flourished and speculated during the two thousand years which separated the call of Abraham out of the nation of his idolatrous forefathers, from the Christian era,- This sublime doctrine was then per- By 12mo. 1837. * Mythological Inquiry into the Recondite Theology of the Heathens. Isaac Preston Cory, Esq., Fellow of Caius College, Cambridge. London, Pickering. The grammatical laws of tense are superseded with regard to the ever present Light of the world, as in John, viii. 58,-" Before Abraham was I AM;" whereas they are in force as to the past darkness, and the patriarch Abraham. So the grammatical laws of number are superseded by the Divine Plurality in Unity, as in Genesis, i. 1, the plural nominative Elohim governs the singular verb bara, “created." 2 The Trinity of the Gentiles. sucklings; but who, nevertheless, extirpated the systems of their predecessors, and thereby afforded a glorious demonstration of the inefficiency of the unaided efforts of human wisdom, and of the paramount necessity that existed for the accomplishment of the expectation of all ages and nations, however obscurely understood, from the beginning of history, an expectation connected with doctrines, which, howsoever corrupted and misapprehended, prepared mankind for the reception of the truth when the "set time" had arrived. The Trinity of the Gentiles has hither- The writer who has for the first time In this short, but important and every scholar and inquiring reader; The present little volume ought to Every corruption implies an uncor rupted prototype, so that the argument is not the less complete, because it has descended to us through a mass of filth and impurity. It is the more complete for this very reason:-had there never been a corruption of the religion first revealed to mankind, a reformation would have been uncalled for. But the nature of man rendered the corruption unavoidable; so that the case could not be otherwise than as really "How comes it," remarks our author," that a doctrine so singular, and so utterly at variance with all the conceptions of uninstructed reason, as that of a Trinity in Unity, should have been from the beginning the fundamental religious tenet of every (Gentile?) nation upon earth?" This query we should only modify by the insertion of the word which we have placed in parentheses, for reasons that will appear as our essay proceeds. The answer to it is so obvious, and flows so clearly from our preceding observations, that we need hardly quote the author's reply. "The conclusion is irresistible, that the Trinitarian doctrine was a primary revelation, and was one of the original and fundamental tenets of the patriarchal church.” The fact asserted by Mr. Cory, he has demonstrated from every national source of which a primitive record is extant, supported by every known case in which the systems of heathenism have descended to modern times; so that the assumption that it was universal in the heathen world, amounts to proof on the closest principles of reasoning. This is, we cannot too often repeat, independent of, and different in toto from, the doubtful Trinitarian doctrine which many have attempted to derive from the writings of Plato, in whose age the original had become so obscured by speculation, that the proofs of it would have been lost, had we not more ancient and unsophisticated sources of information. (See Inquiry, p. 115, et seq.) Here let us allude to Mr. Mushet's volume on The Trinity of the Ancients, the appearance of which was nearly contemporary with Mr. Cory's treatise, and which affords additional and singularly coinciding proof of the necessity and utility of the latter,- Mr. Mushet's purpose, so far as it is connected with our present subject of discussion, being to refute the idea of a connexion between the Gentile (we would say the patriarchal) and Christian trinities, as a basis for his following refutation of the claims which have been advanced on behalf of Plato, to a degree of knowledge on this question, which is only to be found in revelation. We shall have occasion further to allude to Mr. Mushet's work as our observations proceed. But, How comes it—will be queried by many of our readers, when the question has been thus, perhaps, for the first time clearly brought before themthat the Gentiles were so much better informed in this respect than the Jews -the chosen conservators of God's revealed word; and that the doctrine of a Trinity in Unity, which the facts determine to have been so well known to the former, appears so obscurely set forth in the inspired books of the latter, that the difficulty of deriving it from them with precision, is insisted on by many of the best Christian theologists, who hence rest upon the certain assurance of the proved revelation in the Gospel; whereas, the opposers of the doctrine altogether disown its prophetic existence? The answer to all this is, we apprehend, very plain and simple, and will afford a new proof, were it wanting, of the all-sufficiency of the Gospel dispensation. It All The doctrine of a Trinity in Unity was, to repeat the words of our author, "utterly at variance with all the conceptions of uninstructed reason." So, let us add, were those other fundamental articles of our creed, the Divine incarnation, the resurrection of the dead, and the soul's immortality. "Such things" were of " too high" a nature for human intelligence. could not attain unto them."* were, however, equally known to the Gentile world (the proof is in the unquestionable fact, on the authority of writers who lived long before the age of Christianity), and all were equally corrupted, the Trinitarian doctrine into polytheism, that of the incarnation into a monstrous system of avatars, and those of resurrection and immortality into the metempsychosis. Should any critics or readers have hitherto hesitated on the first question, this has never been the case regard-, ing the others, and all are equally at variance with the conceptions of uninstructed reason. The same thing may be said of the history of creation, the sabbatical type of the Divine rest, the sacrificial rites, and the universal expectation of a Messiah, which were common to both Jews and Gentiles from the remotest times, and equally misunderstood with the former. If the Mosaic Elohim be, in a mea Psalm cxxxix. 6. 4 The Trinity of the Gentiles. sure, obscurely set forth in the law,* "Veteri Testamento Novum lutet ; 1, 5. logy, and the consuming answer to the Man's perversity in the corruption of that knowledge which should be to God's glory, has, however, been the Now, that Same in every age. philosophical systems of heathenism are no more, the speculations of adtheir vancing physical science take place; and, that knowledge of the had works of Omnipotence, which hitherto been veiled in the distance of space, or in the bowels of the earth, has been equally perverted by one class of inquirers; while another, adhering as closely to obsolete commentaries on the sacred text, as the Jews to their Targums and Talmuds, would set at naught the legitimate results of discovery in the book of nature, and the aid which these must necessarily afford towards the progressive interpretation of portions of the inspired text, which do not come within the scope of the spiritual developement of the Gospel. These classes of investigators may hence be viewed as the Gentiles and Jews of our age, with reference to the subjects of discussion to which we have alluded. Let us therefore endeavour to treat every such question as it ought to be There is no present obscurity. With the Trinity of the New Testament to guide our researches, the plurality of Divine persons implied by the Elohim becomes equally definite in the Old. A Trinity in Unity is equally the doctrine of both, and must have been equally clear to the prophets of old, as to the apostles and the Christian Church. The interpositions of the Father are in all cases through the agency of the Son, and the manifestation of the latter on earth is the leading subject of all prophecy while, among the many examples of the operation of the Holy Spirit, commencing with the record of creation, that in Numbers, xi. 16, 17, 24-29, is so similar to the descent of" the Comforter," recorded in Acts, i. 8; ii. 1-4, when the vision was re-opened (see Dan. ix. 24), and that which was understood only by the former prophets (Numb. xi. 17, 25; xvi. 3, 4, 5; confer John, xi. 50, 51), made intelligible to all believers (Numb. xi. 29; Joel, ii. 28; Acts, iii. 17), as for ever to establish the fact, that the religion of the Law and the Gospel is the same, and that the revealed Theism of every age involves the three Divine Persons of the Trinity. We need hardly insist that this sublime doctrine, which the lamp of the Gospel enables us to read in the law (Rom. xvi. 25, 26), is as independent of the Trinitarian speculations of the Cabalists (founded on repetitions of the Divine name in the Hebrew, and other verbal and literal coincidences), as of heathenism itself. That such speculations existed among the Jewish doctors of the apostolic age, is certain (as appears most fully in the contemporary book Zobar); and it is to be regretted that Mr. Cory appears to have confined himself so completely to the text of his title, as to have omitted so important a member of the argument, as this consent of a portion of the most determined enemies of Christianity, to its fundamental doctrine,-no matter whether they took the hint from the doctrinal Trinity of Christianity, or derived it, like the heathens, from ancient tradition. As regards the national belief of the Jews at this period, it is self-evident from the many instances of conversion recorded in the New Testament, that (although, like Christianity itself, primarily, but more literally, grounded on the first article of the Decalogue), if Deism, it was Deism of a less obdurate nature than that of the Lowe • hamnauso it pronared those who were Israelites |