tion to enter into a controversy as to what the Trinity is, but only to give an historical account of it.
2. Dr. Pritchard, in his Analysis of Egyptian Mythology, (p. 271,) describes the Egyptians to have a Trinity consisting of the generative, the destructive, and the preserving power. Isis answers to Seeva. Iswara, or “Lord,” is the epithet of Siva, or Seeva. Osiris, or Ysiris, as Hellanicus wrote the Egyptian name, was the God at whose birth a voice was heard to declare, “that the Lord of all nature sprang forth to light.” Dr. Pritchard again says, (p. 262,) “The oldest doctrine of the Eastern schools is the system of emanations and the metempsychosis.” These two were also essentially the doctrine of the Magi, and of the Jews, more particularly of the sect of the Pharisees, or, as they ought to be called, of the Persees.[1] פרס Prs,[2] Mr. Maurice[3] observes, that the doctrines of Original Sin and that man is a fallen creature, are to be found both in the religion of Brahma and Christ, and that it is from this, that the pious austerities and works of supererogation by the Fakirs and Yogees of the former are derived. The doctrine of the Metempsychosis was held by most of the very early fathers, and by all the Gnostic sects, at one time, beyond all doubt, the largest part of the Christian world. Beausobre thought that the transmigration of souls was to be met with in the New Testament. He says,[4] “We find some traces of this notion even in the New Testament, as in St. Luke xvi. 23, where there is an account of the abode of departed souls, conformable to the Grecian philosophy; and in St. John ix. 2, where we find allusion to the pre-existence and transmigration of souls.” The works of supererogation and purgatory of the Romish Church both come from this source. A celebrated modern apologist for Christianity believed the metempsychosis.
The God Oromasdes was undoubtedly the Supreme God of the Persians, but yet the religion was generally known by the name of the religion of Mithra, the Mediator or Saviour.
In the same way in India the worship of the first person in their Trinity is lost or absorbed in that of the second, few or no temples being found dedicated to Brahma; so among the Christians, the worship of the Father is lost in that of the Son, the Mediator and Saviour. We have abundance of churches dedicated to the second and third persons in the Trinity, and to saints, and to the Mother of God, but none to the Father.[5] We find Jesus constantly called a Son, or as (according to the Unitarians) the Trinitarians choose to mistranslate the Greek, the Son of God. In the same way, Plato informs us, that Zoroaster was said to be “the son of Oromasdes or Ormisdas, which was the name the Persians gave to the Supreme God”—therefore he was the Son of God.[6]
Jesus Christ is called the Son of God: no doubt very justly, if the Evangelist John be right, for he says, (ch. i. ver. 12,) that every one who receives the gospel, every one, in fact, who believes in God the Creator, has power to become a Son of God. Ormusd, in Boundehesch, says, “My name is the principle (le principe) and the centre of all things: my name is, He who is, who is all, and who preserves all.”[7]
As the Jews had their sacred writings to which they looked with profound respect, so had the Persians: and so they continue to have them to this day. Mr. Moyle[8] has endeavoured to discredit the genuineness of these writings, by stating “that they contain facts and doctrines manifestly taken from the gospels.” It is probable that these writings are no more the writings of
- ↑ The Pharisees were merely Parsees, (the Jews pronounced P like PH or F,) persons who intermingled Magian notions (acquired during the captivity) with the law of Moses: hence a peculiar propriety in child of fire, υἱον γεεννης, Matt. xxiii. 15; Sup. to Palæromaica, pp. 63, 100.
- ↑ Parkhurst in Voce, p. 594; Beaus. Int. pp. 16, 132.
- ↑ Ind. Ant. Vol. V. p. 195.
- ↑ Int. p. 16.
- ↑ See Maur. Ind. Ant. Vol. V. p. 87.
- ↑ Cud. B. i. Ch. iv. p. 287.
- ↑ Notes to Creuzer’s Religions de l’Antiquité, by Guigniault, p. 670.
- ↑ Works, Vol. II. p. 57.
