Some Typho, who pulled him into fourteen pieces. times they call the element of water by the name of Osiris, and from hence they raise many fables. Osiris is water, and by consequence moisture. Heat is called Apophis, and said to be the brother of Sol, or nearly related to the sun or fire. Jupiter is the cause of all animal or vegetable life; and the Mythos or fable runs thus: Apophis the brother of Sol made war against Jupiter, but Osiris assisted Jupiter; i. e. Heat would parch, dry up, and wither every thing living, but that moisture affords a supply against it." Sometimes Osiris is the river Nile, his wife Isis is the land of Egypt, which is rendered fruitful by the overflowings of that river. Orus is the legitimate child of Osiris and Isis, i. e. is the product of the land of Egypt, caused by the floods of the river Nile. Typho is put for heat, Nephthe is the high lands which the floods of Nile seldom reach, and is said to be Typho's wife, because they are commonly parched with heat. If the floods of Nile happen at any time to reach these high lands; then there commonly grow upon them some few water-plants caused by the inundation, and these they reckon an uncommen product, and call them Anubis; and they hint all this in the following fable. They say Osiris begat of his wife Isis a legitimate child called Orus; and that he committed adultery with Nephthe the wife of Typho, and had by her the bastard Anubis. Plut. lib. de Iside & Osiride, p. 368. They Plutarch ibid. p. 364. i Id. ibid. Then they say, Isis sometimes carry on this fable still further; and tell us that Typho found out the adultery, killed Osiris, pulled his body into twenty-six, sometimes in twentyeight pieces, put them into a chest, and threw them into the sea; i. e. the heat and warm weather dried up the floods of the Nile, in 26 or 28 days, and his stream was received and swallowed up in the sea, until the time that the Nile flows again. found the body of her husband Osiris, conquered Typho, i. e. the hot and dry weather; and thus they go on without end of either fancy or fable. Sometimes they affirm that Typho had been a red man, and Osiris a black one; not intending to describe the persons of either, but giving hints of some of their opinions about the elements of fire and water. Osiris is sometimes the moon, Isis the earth, Orus the fruits of the earth, Anubis the horizon, and Nephthe the parts of the globe which lie beneath it. Sometimes all these names are applied to stars, and the greater lights of heaven, and correspondent fables framed to express what their philosophy dictated about them. I might enlarge here very copiously, but 1 would only give a specimen of what may be met with, if the reader thinks fit to pursue this subject. I am sensible, that such a theology as this must in our age appear ridiculous and extravagant: but I would remark, that it was instituted by men who were universally admired in their day for the greatest learning. It was accounted no small attainment, for a person to be learned * Plutarch. lib. de Iside et Osiride. in the learning of the Egyptians; and I might add, upon what Plato and Plutarch have offered in favour and defence of the Egyptian superstitions, that if we consult history, we shall find, that there is nothing so weak, extravagant or ridiculous, but men even of the first parts, and eminent for their natural strength of understanding, have been deceived to embrace and, defend it. And from Plutarch it is abundantly evident, that they fell into these errors, not by paying too great a deference to tradition, and pretended revelation; but even by attempting to set up what they thought a reasonable scheme of religion, distinct from, or in opposition to, what tradition had handed down to them. If we look back and make a fair enquiry, we must certainly allow, that reason in these early times, without the assistance of revelation, was not likely to offer any thing but superstitious trifles; for the frame and course of nature was not sufficiently understood, to make men masters of true philosophy. It seems easy to us to demonstrate the being and attributes of Gon by reason, from the works of his creation; but we understand all the hints given by the inspired writers of the Old Testament, which are proper to lead us to a right sense of these things, much better than any of them were undertood by the ancient philosophers of the heathen world: and by improv ing upon these hints, we are arrived at truer notions of the works of GoD's hands, than they were masters of. But until men could arrive at such true philosophy, the only certain way they had to know the invisible things of GoD, even his invisible power and Godhead, in all ages from the creation of the world, και τοις ποιήμασι, i. e. by the things which he had done;' and the heathen nations were without excuse, because God had sufficiently manifested himself this way, if instead of seeking after false philosophy, they would have attended to what he had revealed to them. They might have known by faith, that the worlds were framed by the word of Gon, so that the things which are seen, were not made by those things which do appear, i. e. they were the works not of visible causes, but of an invisible agent. But when, instead of adhering to what had been revealed about these matters, they imagined that they might profess themselves wise enough to find out these truths in a better manner, by reason and philosophy; they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible Gon into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." They took the lights of Heaven to be the gods, which govern the world, and believed them animated by the spirits of famous men, and consecrated birds and beasts and reptiles to them, and amassed together heaps of mythology. Now when I consider so great a genius as Plutarch, gravely pronouncing, that there is nothing in them unreasonable, idle, or superstitious, but that a good and moral, or historical, or philosophical reason may be given, for every part of every 1 Rom. i. 20. m Hebrews xi. 3. "Rom. i. 23. fable; I see plainly, that if God had not been pleased to reveal himself to men in the first ages, many thousand years would have passed, before men could have acquired by reason, such a knowledge of the works of GOD, as to obtain any just sentiments of his being or worship. The writers of antiquities have made collections of images and pictures of the Egyptian gods, in order to get the best light they could into the ancient religion of this people; and F. Montfaucon has taken great pains this way. But, if I may conjecture, and none can do more in this dark and intricate subject, I suspect, that most of the figures, exhibited by the learned antiquaries for Egyptian deities, were not designed for such by those who made them. Most of those, that were designed for gods, are commonly but ill or falsely explained; and few, very few of them of great antiquity, the greatest part being evidently made after the Greeks and Romans broke in upon the Egyptians. It is indeed true, that the sculpture in most of the figures in Montfaucon's collection seems so rude and vulgar, as to intimate that they had been made in the first and most early times of carving, before that art was brought to any neatness or appearance of perfection. But the rudeness of the sculpture is no proof of the antiquity of Egyptian images; for Plato expressly tells us, that it was a rule amongst their statuaries, to imitate the r Plutarch. lib. de Iside et Osiride, p. 353. |