birth; thus, the coming of death, which is not to be passed over, is as the entrance into life.” Ibid. p. 270.

66

Finally, let it be observed, that Mr Wilkins explains the term Salvation as a union with the universal Spirit of God and final exemption from mortal birth." Heetopades, p. 299.

After having produced these passages relative to the transmigration of the soul through the various animal mansions, let us consider the Metempsychosis in a still more exalted point of view; let us trace the progress of the soul up the grand sidereal LADDER of seven GATES, and through the revolving spheres, which, it has been observed, are called in India the BOOBUNS of purification. That the Hindoos actually entertained notions on this subject entirely consentaneous with those propagated by the institutor of the Mithratic mysteries is evident from the concise, but obscure, passage just cited in page 233. If, however, in my humble attempt farther to illustrate this antient dogma of the Indian school, I should not be able to produce so many extracts as directly elucidatory of this as of the former subject from the GEETA, I am in hopes the very curious and interesting intelligence, which I am now about to lay before the reader,

and

and which merits his most attentive consideration, will, in a great measure, make amends for that defect. We must, therefore, once more revert to the hallowed cavern of the Persian deity, and to the page of Porphyry, who is the best expositor of the Mithratic theology. Porphyry himself was one of the profoundest critics and scholars that the schools of Greece ever bred, and deeply initiated in all the mystic rites of the antient recondite philosophy and abstruse metaphysics. He acquaints us, that, “accordding to Eubulus, Zoroaster, first of all, among the neighbouring mountains of Persia, consecrated a natural cell, adorned with flowers* and watered with fountains, in honour of MITHRA, the father of the universe. For, he thought a .cavern an emblem of the world, fabricated by MITHRA; and in this cave were many geographical symbols, arranged in the most perfect symmetry and placed at certain distances, which shadowed out the elements and climates of the world." Porphyry, in the preceding part of this beautiful treatise, had informed his readers

* Avongor, floridum: I know not how otherwise to translate the word, and yet it appears singular enough that a dark and barren cave should be adorned with flowers.

† Vide Porphyrius de Antro Nympharum, p. 256, edit. Cantab. octavo, 1655.

that

that the antients considered the world as justly typified by a cavern, alluding both to the earthy and stony particles of which it is composed as well as its obscurity and concave form; and that the Persians, intending mystically to represent the descent of the soul into an inferior nature and its subsequent ascent into the intellectual world, initiated the priest, or candidate in the Mithratic rites, in caverns, or places so fabricated as to resemble them. After the example of Zoroaster, he adds, it was the custom of other nations in succeeding ages to perform initiatory rites in dens and caverns, natural and artificial; for, as they consecrated temples, groves, and altars, to the celestial gods, but, to the terrestial gods and heroes, altars alone; and, to the subterraneous deities, vaults and cells; so to the WORLD they dedicated άντρα και σπηλαία, caves and dens. Hence, he intimates, the Pythagoreans and the Platonists took occasion to call this world the dark cavern of the imprisoned soul. Plato, in the seventh book of his republic, in which he treats of the condition of man in the natural world, expressly says: "Behold men, as if dwelling in a subterranean cavern:" and he compares this terrene habitation to the gloomy residence of a prison, through which the solar light, imitated by the fires that glow in the recesses of the cavern, shines with a bright

and

and vivifying ray. The Homeric cave of the nymphs, which is the particular subject of his essay, was sacred to the NAIADS, because they presided over fountains; those fountains, which, ever bubbling up in the caverns, were only the mystic emblem of the intellectual waters which sweeten and purify the soul contaminated with guilt. The fountains were also doubtless typical of the watery element, as was the fire of the great IGNEOUS PRINCIPLE, that subtle, active, ethereal, and resistless, spirit, which, diffused throughout the universe, embraces and animates its whole extent. The humid, exhalations, which arise from the confluent waters, are an emblem of the fourth element, the air; while their bland and genial vapours serve as nourishment to the ethereal beings who hover round, the guardian genii of the solemn retreat. To describe the marble urns and consecrated vases for the reception of the purifying honey, an article still of great request in the libations and other theological rites of India, and the vestments of purple woven by the nymphs, all mystical emblems used in the rites of initiation, and explained by Porphyry, would be of less immediate utility than to consider the astronomical symbols, of which, as I have cursorily stated from another of their most celebrated philcsophers, Q

VOL. II.

they

they were by no means destitute in the representation of the stages of the Metempsychosis. From that author we learned, that they erected in these caverns a high ladder, which had sɛVEN GATES, according to the number of the planets through which the soul gradually ascended to the supreme mansion of felicity. I must here observe, that the word GATE, which is a part of Asiatic palaces by far the most conspicuous and magnificent, and upon adorning of which immense sums are often expended, is an expression, that, throughout the East, is figuratively used for the mansion itself. Indeed, it seems to be thus denominated with singular propriety, since, as those of m readers who have resided in Asiatic regions well know, it is under those GATES that conversations are holden, that hospitality to the passing traveller is dispensed, and the most important transactions in commerce are frequently carried on. Captain Hamilton, giving an account of Fort St George, observes, "that the GATE of that town, called the sea-gate, being very spacious, was formerly the common exchange, where merchants of all nations resorted about eleven o'clock to treat of business or merchandise."* Astronomy, deriving its

* See Hamilton's Voyage, vol. i. p. 368.

birth