The third chapter and twenty-fourth verse of Genesis informs us, that a tabernacle was erected to the East of Eden. This tends to prove that this book was of Persian origin, and of a date previous to the time when the Exodus was written; and that the people whose sacred book it was originally worshiped towards the East. See Parkhurst,[1] who shews that there were tabernacles before that erected by Moses. He also shews that at a time not long after the Exodus the idolaters had the same things.
There can be no doubt that when ignorant fanatics, like the early fathers, Papias, Hegisippus, &c., were travelling, as we know that they did, to find out the true doctrines of the gospel, they would make the traditions bend in some respects to their preconceived notions. Thus the Jewish sects of Nazarenes and Ebionites kept the Sabbath, and other Jewish rites; and thus, men like Justin, converts from Heathenism, who had no predilection for Judaism, abolished them. Hence we find, at a very early period of the Christian era, the advocates of these opposite opinions persecuting one another, each calling the other heretic. The converts from Heathenism, taking their traditions from the Persian fountain, abolished the Sabbath, but adopted the custom of turning to the East in prayer, and the celebration of the Dies Solis or Sunday; as well as some other days, as will afterward be shewn, sacred among the Heathens to that luminary. It is curious to observe the care shewn in every part of the Gospels and the Epistles of the orthodox to discourage the pharasaical observance of the Sabbath, so much and so inconsistently cried up by modern Puritans. Whenever the commandments are ordered to be kept, the injunction is always followed by an explanation of what commandments are meant, and the Sabbath in every instance is omitted.
8. Learned men have exercised great ingenuity in their endeavours to discover the origin and reason of sacrifices, (a rite common to both Jews and Heathens,) in which they have found great difficulty. They have sought at the bottom of the well what was swimming on the surface. The origin of sacrifice was evidently a gift to the priest, or the cunning man, or the Magus or Druid,[2] to induce him to intercede with some unknown being, to protect the timid or pardon the guilty; a trick invented by the rogues to enable them to cheat the fools; a contrivance of the idle possessing brains to live upon the labour of those without them. The sacrifice, whatever it might be in its origin, soon became a feast, in which the priest and his votary were partakers; and if, in some instances, the body of the victim was burnt, for the sake of deluding the multitude, with a show of disinterestedness on the part of the priest, even then, that he might not lose all, he reserved to himself the skin. See Lev. vii. 8.
But it was in very few instances that the flesh was really burnt, even in burnt-offerings. Deut. xii. 2: And thou shalt offer thy burnt-offerings, the flesh and the blood, upon the altar of the Lord thy God: and the blood of thy sacrifices shall be poured out upon the altar of the Lord thy God, and thou shalt eat the flesh: not burn it. At first the sacrifice was a feast between the priest and devotee, but the former very soon contrived to keep it all for himself; and it is evident from Pliny’s letter to Trajan, that when there was more than the priest could consume, he sent the overplus to market for sale.
It is difficult to account for the very general reception of the practice of sacrifice, it being found among almost all nations. The following is the account given of it by the Rev. Mr. Faber:
“Throughout the whole world we find a notion prevalent, that the Gods could only be appeased by bloody sacrifices. Now this idea is so thoroughly arbitrary, there being no obvious and necessary connexion, in the way of cause and effect, between slaughtering a man or a beast, and recovering of the divine favour by the slaughterer, that its very universality involves the necessity of concluding that all nations have borrowed it from some common source. It is in vain to
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