Zóphiël/Preface
PREFACE.
In finishing Zóphiël, the writer has endeavoured to adhere entirely to that belief (once prevalent among the fathers of the Greek and Roman churches), which supposes that the oracles of antiquity were delivered by dæmons or fallen angels, who wandered about the earth, formed attachments to such mortals as pleased them best, and caused themselves, in many places, to be adored as divinities.
In endeavouring to give authority for the incidents of the story, all quotations from the sacred writings have been scrupulously avoided; and the beings introduced are to be considered only as Phoebus, Zephyr, &c. under other names.
Most of the systems of ancient philosophy, either Western or Oriental, suppose beings similar to the angels of the fathers, and differ from the Mosaic account only in being more full and explicit. Justin Martyr and others supposed that even Homer borrowed from Hebraic records and traditions, and found in his writings the creation of the world, the tower of Babel, and the angels cast out of heaven. Hesiod's beautiful allegory of "Love calling order from chaos,"[1] may, it is said, be traced to the same source.
The fact of the actual existence of such beings as angels are represented, it is for others to question: according to all that is related of them, they are creatures superior in power, but endued with wishes and propensities nearly resembling those of mortals; and, in their attributes, corresponding almost entirely with those deities which they are thought, by the fathers, to have personated, and which have ever been a subject for poetry and fable.