The philosophy of the more modern Egyptians is hardly to be collected from any express testimonies, involved as it is under the obscurity of emblems and hieroglyphics; which those who have undertaken to explain, as Horapollo, Pierius, Kircher, and others, appear to have understood but very imperfectly. The safest way, therefore, is to collect the general intention of it, from what the most early philosophers of Greece borrowed from them: the substance of which we have seen already.

CHAP. III.

Some Observations on the Remains of the Chaldaic Philosophy.

OF

F the Chaldaic philosophy there is little remaining, but a few fragments and mutilated passages; in which, however, there are some valuable hints, from whence a tolerable idea of it may be collected.

In the oracles of Zoroaster *, mention is

made

* Inserted in Stanley's Lives of the Philosophers, from Franciscus Patricius.

made of an harmony or melody of the æther, of the sun, of the moon, and of all things that are surrounded by AIR*. Whence it is clear enough, that the ancient Persians and Chaldeans had no opinion of a vacuum; having thus filled all space with air, and what they called an all-nourishing æther, to which they joined an intelligent and lifegiving fire t.

Some moderns, who have refined upon the theology of the pagans, and interpreted their creed so favourably as to make it differ but little from the christian doctrine, have supposed they worshipped fire only as an emblem or image of the deity, as the romanists make use of pictures to enliven their devotion: but the contrary is strongly to be suspected, from the attributes they ascribe to it. For this fire is no dead image of a superior intelligence in the Deity, but is asserted to be endued with an intelligence of its own; it is Πυρ νοερον, πυρ ζωηφόρον, πυρ φαινον, ψυχη εσα πατρα αθανατος τε μενει, και ζωης SEOWOTNS 51-Intelligent fire, life-giving fire, splendid fire, the soul of the father-remain

ing

* Αιθρης μελος, ηελίου τε, σελήνης τε, και οσα ηερι συνε χονται.

+ Παντοτρόφου αιθρής- Ζωηφόρον Πυρ.

up.

ing immortal, and the Lord of life—which expressions are too high to admit of any thing superior. You may indeed render νερον by the word intellectual, which will give a different sense; but from the whole tenor of these oracles such a construction would be unwarrantable.

I hope I shall not stand in need of an apology for wandering thus into the depths of the theology of the heathens, while I professed only to collect their sentiments on natural philosophy. For it is conspicuous enough, that philosophy is here so metamorphosed into divinity, that it is scarce possible for me to separate them. With these unenlightened idolaters, wise enough as naturalists, but miserably blind and ignorant of things spiritual, God and the world were but one and the same thing; and this persuasion gave birth to the whole science of astrology, for which the Chaldeans were so much famed; so that if we desire to obtain their judgment on nature, we are under a necessity of taking their theological doctrines along with it. I must therefore beg leave to go on a little farther upon the same plan, as there is something in these remains of Zoroaster,

roaster, worthy of being brought out to the light.

His philosophy included in it a kind of physical trinity, which is evidently made up of the powers of nature, and will serve to teach us, what he supposed these powers of nature to be, even the same as we have already found and established from experiments. It was a principle of this philosopher, that— Παντι εν κόσμω λαμπει Τριας, ην Μονας αρχεί -a triad shineth forth throughout the world, over which an unity presides. This monad or unity must signify the sun; the Assyrians, (that is, the Chaldeans,) according to Macrobius, having worshipped him under the name of Adad, which name, as he tells us, signifies one or unity*. As to the triad, I should despair of unravelling so great a mystery, had not another fragment of the same Zoroaster preserved its interpretation

ιερος Πρωτος δρόμος, εν αρα μέσσω

Περιος, τρίτος αλλος ος εν Πυρι την χθονα θαλπει. As these were undoubtedly designed for herameter verses, a word is plainly wanting at the beginning of the first line, which, according to the sense, the measure of the

* Saturn. lib. 1. c. 23.

verse,

verse, and the poetic dialect here made use of, must have been Heλ*: the sense of the whole therefore is this-The sacred course of the sun, or light, is the first power; in the middle there is an aerial power; and a third is that which cherishes the world with fire.

Experience will teach us, that natural effects are immediately governed by these instruments of the divine power; and the ancients appear to have been well apprized of it. But what a miserable use did they make of this valuable treasure when they had got it! Here they stopt: this physical triad, by a strange perverseness and abuse of reason, furnished them with a pretence for denying that supreme power which gave birth to all things, and is of a nature independent and distinct from the world of matter.

On the contrary, the fathers of the christian church, having shaken off the prejudices of paganism, and being better informed by divine revelation, were always very severe upon the Gentiles for dishonouring God by that vain philosophy which supposed him to be coequal and coeval with matter, a soul of the world, a tertium quid made up of matter

*

and

Agouos que is the phrase used by Hippocrates, see

p. 203.