Page images
PDF
EPUB

-

posed his fingers represented by an engraving, copied from Athanasius Kircher.—The mode in which they designated the incommunicable name of JEHOVAH, viz. by THREE JODs and a CIRCLE, emblematical of a TRINITY in Unity-that symbol exhibited. In the antient mystical character supposed, like the DEVINAGARI character of India, to have been revealed BY ANGELS, the JoD, the first initial letter of that name, accompanied with a TRIANGLE-very remarkable, because, according to Kircher, the EGYPTIAN symbol of the Deity, or NUMEN TRIPLEX, was a TRIANGLE. The three persons in the DIVINE ESSENCE Compared by those Rabbies to the three collateral branches of the Hebrew letter SCHIN. - The letter therefore conspicuously engraved on the antient PHYLACTERY, which the Jews, according to the divine command, wore on the head. Engravings, displaying these various symbols, in the course of the inquiry, presented to the reader. — An account of the famous book of ZOHAR, and of the SEPHIR JETZIRAH, or book of Abraham. A review of the Pagan TRINITIES. -The ORACLES of ZOROASTER Considered-contain internal evidence that they are not wholly spurious-that assertion proved in a short comparison of the theoretic system of theology laid down in those oracles, and the practical worship of the Chaldæans, Persians, and Indians. The THREE PRINCIPLES mentioned in the Zoroastrian or Chaldaic Oracles, the most early corruption of the doctrine of the Hebrew Trinity.

[blocks in formation]

The Persian Triad of Deity, OROMASDES, MITHRAS, ARIMANIUS; or, rather, the three-fold power of the God MITHRA, thence called TRIPLASIOS, to be referred to the same origin. The remains of this doctrine remarkably apparent in India, not only in the triad BRAHMA, VEESHNU, and SEEVA, but in various symbolic characters of that mystic Triad recapitulated and exhibited. An account of a medal found in Siberia, on which is engraved the figure of the TRIUNE GOD, accompanied with a description in Tangutian characters, explained by Colonel Grant, and with an engraving of it from Parson's Remains of Japhet.The Peruvians described by Acosta as worshipping an idol denominated TANGA-TANGA, which they assert to mean ONE IN THREE and THREE IN ONE. A short inquiry entered into, by what channel a doctrine, so improbable to have been the fabrication of mere human reason as that of a Trinity in Unity, could be propagated among a nation so remote from the Hebrews as the Peru vians.. The great THREE-HEADED IDOL of Japan described from Kæmpfer-an engraving of that idol from the same author.-The Trinity of Egypt considered represented by a GLOBE, a WING, and a SERPENT. Its meaning investigated, and an engraving of it exhibited, which was copied from the front of the ruins of LUXOR, by Mr Norden, in his Antiquities of Egypt.-An account of the TRINITY of divine persons, in the Hymns attributed to Orpheus.-The doctrines relative to a Trinity

Trinity taught by PYTHAGORAS, PARMENIDES, and PLATO. A conclusive retrospect on the subject, and a general recapitulation of the principal arguments adduced in proof of the original position, that this doctrine was originally revealed from heaven to the ancestors of the human race, known. to the Hebrew patriarchs, and propagated by themselves and their posterity, during their various migrations and dispersions throughout the world.A summary account of the opinions at present entertained by the Jews, relative to the expected advent of the MESSIAH.-Calculations formerly made concerning that event from the course of the stars.-Those calculations now forbidden by a most tremendous imprecation, in the GEMARA, that the bowels of the calculator may burst asunder. → The execration, how evaded by ABARBANEL, the great commentator on the Pentateuch.- His own extravagant assertions, with respect to the constellations, and his particular computation of the times of the Messiah proved to be false by the event. The monstrous conceptions of the modern Jew's, relative to the great feast at which the second Messiah, after the overthrow of the enemies of the Jews, is to entertain the whole assembled race of Judah, from Abraham downwards, in the renovated city of Jerusalem, (according to the Rabbies cited by Basnage,) with the flesh of the female LEVIATHAN, salted by God from the beginning of time, and preserved as an exquisite relish for that banquet of his SON. They are

alsa

also to be regaled with the female BEHEMOTH, which eats the grass of 1000 mountains in one day, according to Psalm 1. 10; and with the flesh of the stupendous bird Zız, or BARIUCHNE, whose extended wings obscured the sun. -Wine made of the grapes of Paradise, and treasured in the vault of Adam, also reserved for that feast. The author apologises, and gives his reasons for mentioning these rabbinical vagaries, viz. to shew their perversion of Scripture texts, and their sensual and carnal notions of what is purely spiritual; among which may be numbered, that most baleful spring of all their calamities, the persuasion that the MESSIAH IS YET TO COME, A MIGHTY TEM

[merged small][ocr errors]

The author now returns to the investigation of the points remaining to be considered in the THEOLOGY of the Brahmins. According to Diodorus Siculus, the antient Brachmans acknowledged all their civil and ecclesiastical institutions to be derived from DIONYSIUS. An inquiry commenced concerning the true INDIAN BACCHUS.-The Indians, in their relations to the Greeks, to flatter their conquerors, artfully applied the adventures of their great HERO and GOD RAMA to the Grecian Dionysius. The true Dionysius of antiquity asserted to be no other than NOAH-and, probably, the first person who led a colony to India from Armenia, after the flood, was an immediate descendant of the more virtuous line of that patriarch, who established the original, mild, and patriarchal, form of government

[ocr errors]

government which originally prevailed in India, and, of which many traces to this day remain. The early and acknowledged maturity of the sciences in India, and other perplexing phænomena relative to that country, attempted to be accounted for, by supposing, with Mr Bryant, that colony to have migrated, not from Shinaar, but from Ararat, previous to the erection of Babel and the confusion of tongues.-The CUTHITES ejected by the vengeance of God from SHINAAR, and defeated by the confederated sovereigns of the line of Shem, invade India in various directions-from the North by the pass of Hurdwar-and from the regions on the western frontiers, called from them INDOSCYTHIA. The former established themselves on the Ganges, and formed that vast eastern empire so celebrated in Sanscreet histories, of which the city of OWDH was the capital, and the Hindoo god and prophet RAMA, the son of CUSH, the first potent sovereign-the latter founded the equallyrenowned empire of the West, and, possibly, the capital of that empire was either HASTINA POOR, or BRAHMINABAD.-The author assigns his reasons for adopting this hypothesis, which are founded on the martial and enterprising character of the SONS OF HAM-their attachment to the sacred gloom of CAVERNS and the acknowledged skill in architecture of that race, who erected the stupendous pyramids of Egypt. He urges that this hypothesis accounts for the origin of the Two GREAT SECTS of India, and their varying theology

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

for

« PreviousContinue »