And thus, by this learned priest,[1] not by me, the whole correct Christian Trinity, with its various hypostases, is shewn to have existed in the religion of Mithra and the Magi, ages before Christ was born.
There is now no resource left to the priests, but to declare these oracles of Zoroaster spurious, which Bishop Synesius, in the fourth century, called holy oracles.[2] But Mr. Maurice provides against this, by informing his reader, that he has only availed himself of such passages in these oracles as have been quoted by such men as Porphyry, Damascius, and other Greek writers unfavourable to Christianity, and such as have a marked similitude to the ancient tenets of India, Persia, and Egypt;[3] and which, therefore, cannot be modern forgeries. The existence in these oracles of such passages as have been cited, is, the author believes, the only circumstance on which the priests have determined that they are spurious. They have said, These passages must have been extracted from the gospel histories, therefore the books containing them must be spurious. It never once occurred to them, that the gospel histories might copy from the oracles, or that they might have both drawn from a common source. And it also never occurred to them, that the fact of their quotation by old authors proves that they must have existed before the gospels. In pointing out this circumstance Mr. Maurice has really great merit for his candour and honesty. I believe there are very few priests who would not have found an excuse to themselves, for omitting to point out the conclusive and damning fact.
Plutarch[4] says, “Zoroaster is said to have made a threefold distribution of things: to have assigned the first and highest rank to Oromasdes, who, in the oracles, is called the Father; the lowest to Ahrimanes; and the middle to Mithras; who, in the same oracles, is called τον δευτερον Νοῦν, the second Mind.” As Mr. Maurice says,[5] Plutarch, born in the first century, cannot have copied this from a Christian forgery. Besides, he expressly says it is taken from the oracles—herein going very far to confirm the genuineness of the oracles; indeed, he actually does confirm it, in those parts where the quotations are found.
This doctrine of the oracles is substantially the same as that of Plato. It was taken from the Hymns of Orpheus, which we now possess, and which Mr. Parkhurst allows are the very same that were revered by the ancient Greeks as his, and, as such, were used in their solemn ceremonies. He proves this by a passage from Demosthenes.[6] In the Pythagorean and Platonic remains, written long anterior to the Christian era, all the dogmas of Christianity are to be found. Witness the Δημιουργος or Ζευς Βασιλευς; the δευτερος Θεος, or second God; δευτερος Νους, or second Mind; the Μιθρας μεσιτης, or mediatorial Mithra; and γεννητος Θεος, or generated God, begotten not made. Again, the ψυχη κοσμου, or soul of the world; i. e. the רוח ruh or spiritus, of Osiris and Brahma, in loto arbore sedentem super aquam, brooding on the waters of the deep; the θειος Λογος, or divine Word, verbum, which Jesus announced to his mother that he was, immediately on his birth, as recorded in the Gospel of his Infancy.[7]
Upon the Logos, Bishop Marsh, in his Michaelis, says, “Since, therefore, St. John has adopted several other terms which were used by the Gnostics, we must conclude that he derived also the term Λογος from the same source. If it be further asked, Whence did the Gnostics derive this use of the expression, ‘Word’? I answer, that they derived it most probably from the Oriental or Zoroastrian philosophy, from which was borrowed a considerable part of the Manichean doctrines. In the Zendavesta, we meet with a being called ‘the Word,’ who was not
