SECTION III.
If baptismal regeneration, the initiating ordinance of Rome, and
justification by works, be both Chaldean, the principle embodied in the "unbloody
sacrifice" of the mass is not less so. We have evidence that
goes to show the Babylonian origin of the idea of the "unbloody
sacrifice" very distinctly. From Tacitus * we learn that no
blood was allowed to be offered on the alters of Paphian Venus. Victims
were used for the purposes of the Haruspex, that presages of the issues
of events might be drawn from the inspection of the entrails of these
victims; but the altars of the Paphian goddess were required to be kept
pure from blood. Tacitus shows that the Haruspex of the temple of the
Paphian Venus was brought from Cilicia, for his knowledge of her rites,
that they might be duly performed according to the supposed will of the
goddess, the Cilicians having peculiar knowledge of her rites. Now,
Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia, was built by Sennacherib, the Assyrian
king, in express imitation of Babylon. * Its religion would naturally
correspond; and when we find "unbloody sacrifice" in
Cyprus, whose priest came from Cilicia, that, in the circumstances, is
itself a strong presumption that the "unbloody sacrifice" came
to it through Cilicia from Babylon. This presumption is greatly
strengthened when we find from Herodotus that the peculiar and
abominable institution of Babylon in prostitution virgins in honour of
Mylitta, was observed also in Cyprus in honour of Venus. * But the
positive testimony of Pausanias brings this presumption to a certainly. "Near
this," says that historian, speaking of the temple of Vulcan
at Athens, "is the temple of Celestial Venus, who was first
worshipped by the Assyrians, and after these by the Paphians in Cyprus,
and the Phenicians who inhabited the city of Ascalon in Palestine. But
the Cythereans venerated this goddess in consequence of learning her
sacred rites from the Phenicians." * The Assyrian Venus,
then--that is, the great goddess of Babylon--and the Cyprian Venus were
one and the same, and consequently the "bloodless" altars
of the Paphian goddess show the character of the worship peculiar to the
Babylonian goddess, from whim she was derived. In this respect the
goddess-queen of Chaldea differed from her son, who was worshipped in
her arms. He was, as we have seen, represented as delighting in blood.
But she, as the mother of grace and mercy, as the celestial "Dove,"
as "the hope of the whole world," * was averse to
blood, and was represented in a benign and gentle character.
Accordingly, in Babylon she bore the name of Mylitta * --that is, "The
Mediatrix." * Every one who reads the Bible, and sees how
expressly it declares that, as there is only "one God,"
so there is only "one Mediator between God and man"
(1 Tim.ii. 5), must marvel how it could ever have entered the mind of
any one to bestow on Mary, as is done by the Church of Rome, the
character of the "Mediatrix." But the character
ascribed to the Babylonian goddess as Mylitta sufficiently accounts for
this. In accordance with this character of Mediatrix, she was called
Aphrodite--that is, "the wrath-subduer" * --who by
her charms could soothe the breast of angry Jove, and soften the most
rugged spirits of gods or mortal-men. In Athens she was called Amarusia
* --that is, "The Mother of gracious acceptance." * In
Rome she was called "Bona Dea," "the good
goddess," the mysteries of this goddess being celebrated by
women with peculiar secrecy. In India the goddess Lakshmi, "the
Mother of the Universe," the consort of Vishnu, is represented
also as possessing the most gracious and genial disposition; and that
disposition is indicated in the same way as in the case of the
Babylonian goddess. "In the festivals of Lakshmi,"
says Coleman, "no sanguinary sacrifices are offered." *
In China, the great gods, on whom the final destinies of mankind depend,
are held up to the popular mind as objects of dread; but the goddess
Kuanyin, "the goddess of mercy," * whom the Chinese
of Canton recognise as bearing an analogy to the Virgin of Rome, is
described as looking with an eye of compassion on the guilty, and
interposing to save miserable souls even from torments to which in the
world of spirits they have been doomed. * Therefore she is regarded with
peculiar favour by the Chinese. This character of the goddess-mother has
evidently radiated in all directions from Chaldea. Now, thus we see how
it comes that Rome represents Christ, the "Lamb of God," meek
and lowly in heart, who never brake the bruised reed, nor quenched the
smoking flax--who spake words of sweetest encouragement to every
mourning penitent--who wept over Jerusalem--who prayed for His
murderers--as a stern and inexorable judge, before whom the sinner "might
grovel in the dust, and still never be sure that his prayers would be
heard," * while Mary is set off in the most winning and
engaging light, as the hope of the guilty, as the grand refuge of
sinners; how it is that the former is said to have "reserved
justice and judgment to Himself," but to have committed the
exercise of all mercy to His Mother! * The most standard devotional
works of Rome are pervaded by this very principle, exalting the
compassion and gentleness of the mother at the expense of the loving
character of the Son. Thus, St. Alphonsus Liguori tells his readers that
the sinner that ventures to come directly to Christ may come with dread
and apprehension of His wrath; but let him only employ the mediation of
the Virgin with her Son, and she has only to "show"
that Son "the breasts that gave Him suck," * and His
wrath will immediately be appeased. But where in the Word of God could
such an idea have been found? Not surely in the answer of the Lord Jesus
to the woman who exclaimed, "Blessed is the womb that bare
thee, and the paps that thou hast sucked!" Jesus answered and
said unto her, "Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the
Word of God and keep it" (Luke xi. 27, 28). There cannot be a
doubt that this answer was given by the prescient Saviour, to check in
the very bud every idea akin to that expressed by Liguori. Yet this
idea, which is not to be found in Scripture, which the Scripture
expressly repudiates, was widely diffused in the realms of Paganism.
Thus we find an exactly parallel representation in the Hindoo mythology
in regard to the god Siva and his wife Kali, when that god appeared as a
little child. "Siva," says the Lainga Puran, "appeared
as an infant in a cemetery, surrounded by ghosts, and on beholding him,
Kali (his wife) took him up, and, caressing him, gave him her breast. He
sucked the nectareous fluid; but becoming ANGRY, in order to divert and
PACIFY him, Kali clasping him to her bosom, danced with her attendant
goblins and demons amongst the dead, until he was pleased and delighted;
while Vishnu, Brahma, Indra, and all the gods, bowing themselves,
praised with laudatory strains the god of gods, Kal and Parvati." *
Kali, in India, is the goddess of destruction; but even into the myth
that concerns this goddess of destruction, the power of the goddess
mother, in appeasing an offended god, by means only suited to PACIFY a
peevish child, has found an introduction. If the Hindoo story exhibits
its "god of gods" in such a degrading light, how much
more honouring is the Papal story to the Son of the Blessed, when it
represents Him as needing to be pacified by His mother exposing to Him "the
breasts that He has sucked." All this is done only to exalt
the Mother, as more gracious and more compassionate than her glorious
Son. Now, this was the very case in Babylon: and to this character of
the goddess queen her favourite offerings exactly corresponded.
Therefore, we find the women of Judah represented as simply "burning
incense, pouring out drink-offerings, and offering cakes to the queen of
heaven" (Jeremiah xliv. 19). The cakes were "the
unbloody sacrifice" she required. That "unbloody
sacrifice" her votaries not only offered, but when admitted to
the higher mysteries, they partook of, swearing anew fidelity to her. In
the fourth century, when the queen of heaven, under the name of Mary,
was beginning to be worshipped in the Christian Church, this "unbloody
sacrifice" also was brought in. Epiphanius states that the
practice of offering and eating it began among the women of Arabia; *
and at that time it was well known to have been adopted from the Pagans.
The very shape of the unbloody sacrifice of Rome may indicate whence it
came. It is a small thin, round wafer; and on its roundness the Church
of Rome lays so much stress, to use the pithy language of John Knox in
regard to the wafer-god, "If, in making the roundness the ring
be broken, then must another of his fellow-cakes receive that honour to
be made a god, and the crazed or cracked miserable cake, that once was
in hope to be made a god, must be given to a baby to play withal." *
What could have induced the Papacy to insist so much on the
"roundness" of its "unbloody sacrifice"?
Clearly not any reference to the Divine institution of the Supper of our
Lord; for in all the accounts that are given of it, no reference
whatever is made to the form of the bread which our Lord took, when He
blessed and break it, and gave it to His disciples, saying, "Take,
eat; this is My body: this do in remembrance of Me." As little
can it be taken from any regard to injunctions about the form of the
Jewish Paschal bread; for no injunctions on that subject are given in
the books of Moses. The importance, however, which Rome attaches to the
roundness of the wafer, must have a reason; and that reason will be
found, if we look at the altars of Egypt. "The thin, round
cake," says Wilkinson, "occurs on all altars." *
Almost every jot or tittle in the Egyptian worship had a symbolical
meaning. The round disk, so frequent in the sacred emblems of Egypt,
symbolised the sun. Now, when Osiris, the sun-divinity, became
incarnate, and was born, it was not merely that he should give his life
as a sacrifice for men, * but that he might also be the life and
nourishment of the souls of men. It is universally admitted that Isis
was the original of the Greek and Roman Ceres. But Ceres, be it
observed, was worshipped not simply as the discoverer of corn; she was
worshipped as "the MOTHER of Corn." * The child she
brought forth was He-Siri, "the Seed," or, as he was
most frequently called in Assyria, "Bar," which
signifies at once "the Son" and "the
Corn." * The uninitiated might reverence Ceres for the gift of
material corn to nourish their bodies, but the initiated adored her for
a higher gift--for food to nourish their souls--for giving them that
bread of God that cometh down from heaven--for the life of the world, of
which, "if a man eat, he shall never die." Does any
one imagine that it is a mere New Testament doctrine, that Christ is the
"bread of life"? There never was, there never could
be, spiritual life in any soul, since the world began, at least since
the expulsion from Eden, that was not nourished and supported by a
continual feeding by faith on the Son of God, "in whom it hath
pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell" (Col. i.
19), "that out of His fulness we might receive, and grace for
grace" (John i. 16). Paul tells us that the manna of which the
Israelites ate in the wilderness was to them a type and lively symbol of
"the bread of life;" (1 Cor. x. 3), "They
did all eat the same spiritual meat"--i.e., meat which was
intended not only to support their natural lives, but to point them to
Him who was the life of their souls. Now, Clement of Alexandria, to whom
we are largely indebted for all the discoveries that, in modern times,
have been made in Egypt, expressly assures us that, "in their
hidden character, the enigmas of the Egyptians were VERY SIMILAR TO
THOSE OF THE JEWS." * That the initiated Pagans actually
believed that the "Corn" which Ceres bestowed on the
world was not the "Corn" of this earth, but the
Divine "Son," through whom alone spiritual and
eternal life could be enjoyed, we have clear and decisive proof. The
Druids were devoted worshippers of Ceres, and as such they were
celebrated in their mystic poems as "bearers of the ears of
corn." * Now, the following is the account which the Druids
give of their great divinity, under the form of "Corn."
That divinity was represented as having, in the first instance,
incurred, for some reason or other, the displeasure of Ceres, and as
fleeing in terror from her. In his terror, "he took the form of
a bird, and mounted into the air. That element afforded him no refuge;
for The Lady, in the form of a sparrow-hawk, was gaining upon him--she
was just in the act of pouncing upon him. Shuddering with dread, he
perceived a heap of clean wheat upon a floor, dropped into the midst of
it, and assumed the form of a single grain. Ceridwen [i.e., the British
Ceres] took the form of a black high-crested hen, descended into the
wheat, scratched him out, distinguished, and swallowed him. And, as the
history relates, she was pregnant of him nine months, and when delivered
of him, she found him so lovely a babe, that she had not resolution to
put him to death." * Here it is evident that the grain of
corn, is expressly identified with "the lovely babe;" from
which it is still further evident that Ceres, who, to the profane vulgar
was known only as the Mother of "Bar," "the
Corn," was known to the initiated as the Mother of "Bar,"
"the Son." And now, the reader will be prepared to
understand the full significance of the representation in the Celestial
sphere of "the Virgin with the ear of wheat in her hand." That
ear of wheat in the Virgin's hand is just another symbol for the child
in the arms of the Virgin Mother.
Now, this Son, who was symbolised as "Corn," was
the SUN-divinity incarnate, according to the sacred oracle of the great
goddess of Egypt: "No mortal hath lifted my veil. The fruit
which I have brought forth is the SUN." * What more natural
then, if this incarnate divinity is symbolised as the "bread of
God," than that he should be represented as a "round
wafer," to identify him with the Sun? Is this a mere fancy?
Let the reader peruse the following extract from Hurd, in which he
describes the embellishments of the Romish altar, on which the sacrament
or consecrated wafer is deposited, and then he will be able to judge:--"A
plate of silver, in the form of a SUN, is fixed opposite to the
SACRAMENT on the altar; which, with the light of the tapers, makes a
most brilliant appearance." * What has that "brilliant"
"Sun" to do there, on the altar, over against the "sacrament,"
or round wafer? In Egypt, the disk of the Sun was represented in
the temples, and the sovereign and his wife and children were
represented as adoring it. Near the small town of Babain, in Upper
Egypt, there still exists in a grotto, a representation of a sacrifice
to the sun, where two priests are seen worshipping the sun's image, as
in the accompanying woodcut * In the great temple of Babylon, the golden
image of the Sun was exhibited for the worship of the Babylonians. * In
the temple of Cuzco, in Peru, the disk of the sun was fixed up in
flaming gold upon the wall, * that all who entered might bow down before
it. The Paeonians of Thrace were sun-worshippers; and in their worship
they adored an image of the sun in the form of a disk at the top of a
long pole. * In the worship of Baal, as practised by the idolatrous
Israelites in the days of their apostacy, the worship of the sun's image
was equally observed; and it is striking to find that the image of the
sun, which apostate Israel worshipped, was erected above the altar. When
the good king Josiah set about the work of reformation, we read that his
servants in carrying out the work, proceeded thus (2 Chron. xxxiv. 4):
"And they brake down the altars of Baalim in his presence, and the
images (margin, SUN-IMAGES) that were on high above them, he cut
down." Benjamin of Tudela, the great Jewish traveller, gives a
striking account of sun-worship even in comparatively modern times, as
subsisting among the Cushites of the East, from which we find that the
image of the sun was, even in his day, worshipped on the altar. "There
is a temple," says he, "of the posterity of Chus,
addicted to the contemplation of the stars. They worship the sun as a
god, and the whole country, for half-a-mile round their town, is filled
with great altars dedicated to him. By the dawn of morn they get up and
run out of town, to wait the rising sun, to whom, on every altar, there
is a consecrated image, not in the likeness of a man, but of the solar
orb, framed by magic art. These orbs, as soon as the sun rises, take
fire, and resound with a great noise, while everybody there, men and
women, hold censers in their hands, and all burn incense to the
sun." * From all this, it is manifest that the image of the
sun above, or on the altar, was one of the recognised symbols of those
who worshipped Baal or the Sun. And here, in a so-called Christian
Church, a brilliant plate of silver, "in the form of a
SUN," is so placed on the altar, that every one who adores at
that altar must bow down in lowly reverence before that image of the "Sun."
Whence, I ask, could that have come, but from the ancient sun-worship,
or the worship of Baal? And when the wafer is so placed that the silver "SUN"
is fronting the "round" wafer, whose "roundness"
is so important an element in the Romish Mystery, what can be the
meaning of it, but just to show to those who have eyes to see, that the "Wafer"
itself is only another symbol of Baal, or the Sun. If the sun-divinity
was worshipped in Egypt as "the Seed," or in Babylon
as the "Corn," precisely so is the wafer adored in
Rome. "Bread-corn of the elect, have mercy upon us," is
one of the appointed prayers of the Roman Litany, addressed to the
wafer, in the celebration of the mass. * And one at least of the
imperative requirements as to the way in which that wafer is to be
partake of, is the very same as we enforced in the old worship of the
Babylonian divinity. Those who partake of it are required to partake
absolutely fasting. This is very stringently laid down. Bishop Hay,
laying down the law on the subject, says that it is indispensable, "that
we be fasting from midnight, so as to have taken nothing into our
stomach from twelve o'clock at night before we receive, neither food,
nor drink, nor medicine." * Considering that our Lord Jesus
Christ instituted the Holy Communion immediately after His disciples had
partaken of the paschal feast, such a strict requirement of fasting
might seem very unaccountable. But look at this provision in regard to
the "unbloody sacrifice" of the mass in the light of
the Eleusinian Mysteries, and it is accounted for at once; for there the
first question put to those who sought initiation was, "Are you
fasting?" * and unless that question was answered in the
affirmative, no initiation could take place. There is no question that
fasting is in certain circumstances a Christian duty; but while neither
the letter nor the spirit of the Divine institution requires any such
stringent regulation as the above, the regulations in regard to the
Babylonian Mysteries make it evident whence this requirement has really
come.
Although the god whom Isis or Ceres brought forth, and who was
offered to her under the symbol of the wafer or thin round cake, as "the
bread of life," was in reality the fierce, scorching Sun, or
terrible Moloch, yet in that offering all his terror was veiled, and
everything repulsive was cast into the shade. In the appointed symbol he
is offered up to the benignant Mother, who tempers judgment with mercy,
and to whom all spiritual blessings are ultimately referred; and blessed
by that mother, he is given back to be feasted upon, as the staff of
life, as the nourishment of her worshippers' souls. Thus the Mother was
held up as the favourite divinity. And thus, also, and for an entirely
similar reason, does the Madonna of Rome entirely eclipse her son as the
"Mother of grace and mercy."
In regard to the Pagan character of the "unbloody
sacrifice" of the mass, we have seen not little already. But
there is something yet to be considered, in which the working of the
mystery of iniquity will still further appear. There are letters on the
wafer that are worth reading. These letters are I.H.S. What mean these
mystical letters? To a Christian these letters are represented as
signifying, "Iesus Hominum Salvator," "Jesus the
Saviour of men." But let a Roman worshipper of Isis (for in
the age of the emperors there were innumerable worshippers of Isis in
Rome) cast his eyes upon them, and how will he read them? He will read
them, of course, according to his own well-known system of idolatry: "Isis,
Horus, Seb," that is, "The Mother, the Child, and the
Father of the gods,"--in other words, "The Egyptian
Trinity." Can the reader imagine that this double sense is
accidental? Surely not. The very same spirit that converted the festival
of the Pagan Oannes into the feast of the Christian Joannes, retaining
at the same time all its ancient Paganism, has skilfully planned the
initials I.H. S. to pay the semblance of a tribute to Christianity,
while Paganism in reality has all the substance of the homage bestowed
upon it.
When the women of Arabia began to adopt this wafer and offer the "unbloody
sacrifice," all genuine Christians saw at once the real
character of their sacrifice. They were treated as heretics, and branded
with the name of Collyridians, from the Greek name for the cake which
they employed. But Rome saw that the heresy might be turned to account;
and therefore, though condemned by the sound portion of the Church, the
practice of offering and eating this "unbloody sacrifice" was
patronised by the Papacy; and now, throughout the whole bounds of the
Romish communion, it has superseded the simple but most precious
sacrament of the Supper instituted by our Lord Himself.
Intimately connected with the sacrifice of the mass is the subject of
transubstantiation; but the consideration of it will come more
conveniently at a subsequent stage of this inquiry.
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