Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

mythology which serves as the point of commencement of their annals, has a reference to the age in which the sign of the virgin marked the summer solstice. The Greeks ascribed the origin of the Scythians to a virgin, half woman, half serpent, who had a commerce with Hercules or Jupiter, both emblems of the generating Sun. The Druids adored a virgin, who brought forth a child. By this the initiated understood, the celestial virgin who, every year, at midnight, glittering in the highest heaven, gave the world an infant God, the Sun, issuing from the winter solstice.

A modern writer, a native of Scotland, named Mackey, has recently published a work of great research, entitled "The Mythological Astronomy of the Ancients demonstrated, by restoring to their fables and symbols their original meanings;" in which he has, with a masterly pen, cleared away the rubbish that has so long obscured this naturally interesting subject, and exhibited as far as he could do it with safety in a despotic country, the imaginary founder of Christianity in his "pagan vestments." Although the generality of mankind, he remarks, do not perceive the drift of the author of the Old Testament books, they are positive that the meaning which they have imbibed, though contrary to all the known laws of God, is the only true one. The Jews, in particular, he observes, hated every thing that related to astronomy. Their history, that is, the marvellous part of it, is composed of new materials; but of such as they had gleaned from the various nations among whom they had been in bondage; and, that their annals might have some appearance of originality, they took the liberty to make such alterations as would give them a superficial appearance of novelty, by turning singulars into plurals, and plurals into singulars; and what was feminine they made to be masculine in working it into their histories. In some places, things inanimate have been turned into men, by adding the sign of the masculine gender. But, as assertions are not proofs, our author gives a variety of examples from the Bible; one of which I shall quote as a specimen of his style and manner of exposition.

"David has been said, by many authors, to be a mythological character. His name and his songs are exactly on a par with Apollo and his canticles. His marshalling his mighty men into twelve companies of three men each, and his having twelve captains, one for each month in the year, &c., looks very much like an astronomical arrangement. There are three different muster rolls of his mighties, which differ from one another. They may, however be all seen, free of expence, in the bulletins of the kings of Israel and Judah, 1st Chronicles, chap 27, ver. 11; and 2d Samuel, chap. 23. His conduct before the handmaids of his servants, for which his wife Michael reproves him, looks very much like the Christna of the Hindoos, who danced with the twelve gopies, or twelve females, representing the twelve signs of the zodiac. But what has still more the appearance of astronomy is, that David, who had so many traits in his character of the singing conqueror Apollo, is the offspring of lesse. This is but the consideration of Virgo, almost undisguised: the Isheh of the Egyptians, which the Greeks call Isis-the virgin mother of young Orus -the Sun. Here, again, we see the poverty of the inventive faculty of the Hebrew historians. Ever despising the annals of the Pagans, and yet always taking them for their guide, without being able to disguise their symbols so as to hide them even from ordinary observers; for who does not know that neither the Jews nor Phenicians had a letter J in their alphabet. They could not, therefore, say Jesse but Isse, or sometimes Yesse. Isse the father of David, and Ishe the mother of Apollo, or the Sun, evidently mean the same thing."

LETTER 25.-FROM THE REV. ROBERT TAYLOR.

THE QUAKERS.

DEAR MR. CARLILE, -The Times of the 19th inst., according to its annual custom, publishes at full length, "the Epistle of the Yearly Meeting held in London, by the Society of Quakers, addressed to the Quarterly and Monthly Meetings of Friends, in Great Britain, Ireland, and elsewhere." Much as these people affect to despise form and ceremony, they find the utmost stiffness of formality and the most rigid adherence to ceremonial usages absolutely necessary to the great object they aim at-the holding their craft together. For several years, I have observed these their annual Epistles, and observed with a sentiment of sorrow, for what indeed may be called the fall of man, the melancholy specimen that they afford of the effects of that fall; degraded honour, violated truth, outraged reason, the utmost imbecility to which intellect can sink, the most unamiable feelings of which humanity can become capable. I am induced to consider their address of this year as a worthy subject of criticism, not merely upon the principle that all imposture ought to be exposed, but because this in particular borrows no small part of its success, not merely from the self-interested and selfish subserviency of those who find the Quakers as a body too powerful to be opposed, but from a too easy willingness on the part of rational men, to swim with the current, and to acquire to themselves the credit of liberality, by subscribing the erroneous and prejudiced notions of Mr. Thomas Paine, who was himself of Quaker pedigree, and held that the Quakers were a more virtuous and moral people than any other denomination of professing Christians. This, their surreptitiously obtained credit, has served them as an excellent commercial commodity, and like the monkish vow of poverty, has been the means of drawing the tide of riches to their coffers. The policy of keeping up this profitable impression of the public mind, like keeping hold of the run in trade, is the main spring of their whole ecclesiastical economy. In the phrase of Pope Leo the Tenth, it brings grist to the mill;" and where is the cowardly sneaking thief so dull of wit, as not to be able to calculate the advantage of wearing a coat of the winning colour, and joining himself to the gang who have contrived to cover their native cowardice of soul with the cloak of hypocrisy, to secure the profits without incurring the perils of enterprise, and to be consummate rogues, per virtue of their reputation for consummate honesty.

66

Not to seem harder on one set of Religionists in particular, than on any other, or than on all the rest, it cannot be denied, that the key of interpretation to the machinations of all religionists, is, to read their professions, whatever they may be, as the No. 5.-VOL. 2.

L

diametrical opposite to their practice. Imposture is the pivot, profession the needle that rides on it, but the shrewd pilot has learned by experience, to steer for any other point than that which the card indicates. Thus, hath any order of religionists made a peculiar profession of indifference to the things of this world? It shall be they whose drift is to get all the world's banks and granaries into their possession. Have any made profession of the supreme virtues of continence and mortification? You shall find them the lechers and the gourmands of society. Have any inculcated humility as the highest of all Christian graces? It shall be they whose pride surpasses that of Sardanapalus, whose arrogance might make a Canute seem to be modest. Have any claimed to themselves the honours of a more mild peaceful and loving religion, than any that ever was on earth before? Why! they shall assuredly be the very vultures, tigers, and crocodiles of the world. It is not then, more a moral than a mathematical conclusion, that Quakers professsing what they profess, should be what they are our FRIENDS in name, our enemies to the very death in reality-most scrupulously conscientious in ostentation-most measurelessly fraudulent in practice-complaining of persecution where they suffer none-themselves the most cruel and inexorable of all persecutors-vain, of having to say that none of their fraternity ever drew a sword, or slew a foe-unable to show that there ever was one of their fraternity, who had mercy on his enemy, or spared to do the worst against him, that cowardly cruelty could devise, or inexorable malice perpetrate. Ere we give men credit for moral virtue, in the name of God let us know what moral virtue is. What is it, if it be nothing but that figment of a creed, on whose delusion its haughty professor takes credit in his own conceit? Is it gain to God or man, that a canting wily thief wears out his breeches knees with prayer saying? Or is he less the thief whom the law hangs not, or the usage of commerce arraigns not, who over-reaches to the utmost extent of his own interest, in overreaching, and oppresses to the furthest verge of his daring to oppress; because, for the better accomplishing of his villainies, he wears an ugly-shaped coat, pretends to be moved by the spirit, and devotes one day in the week to his fit of sulkiness.

I am very well aware that those who know me will never give me credit for having any favourable dispositions towards Quakers, as they cannot but also know how little reason I have to like them. I shall claim none; but freely own that if I could crush the whole sect at once, and force them to turn honest, and redintegrate themselves into the family of mankind, to become friends and deserve the friendship, not of a narrow-spirited and hypocritical confederacy, but of the whole human race; I should have the revenge I thirst for. Till then, the name of Quaker is to my manhood's antipathy, every thing that hell and the

devil were to my infant apprehension. I could sooner thrust my bare arm into the burrow of unseen snakes, or take my rest in the dingle of the unfed tigress, than have any sort of commerce with quakers, that might by any possibility, bring me into the red-hot hell of having need of a drop of water from their mercy : the worm under their foot never escaped uncrushed. How little the sect has improved within the last hundred and fifty years may be judged by any man's experience of what they are at this day, compared with unexceptionable testimony, to what their character was so long ago. I copy this literally from Blount's Philostratus, published in the year 1680, folio ed., p. 43. "The Quakers (says he) with their Yea and Nay, refuse all lawful oaths before a magistrate; when at the same time, in a godly manner, as they call it, they speak less truth than any other men. For my own part, I have never met with greater fourbs than those quaking saints, who cheat by the spirit. One of that sect I knew, who was a notorious lyar, and always began his lyes with a Verily, Verily I say unto thee." My business however is with their wicked and mischievous Epistle-general. The first offensive feature that will catch our observance, and which indeed pervades the whole composition, is its studied and servile imitation of the style and character of the epistolary balderdash of the apostolic chief of sinners. It might pass in some future age for a third Epistle of Paul the Apostle, to the Corinthians. The same stupid and unintelligible jargon, the same rhythmus and twang of ill-turned sentences, the same thick foliage of umbrageous nonsense, unblessed with fruit, uncheered with light, leading to no good, and having no good in it, but serving, like the druidical forests, at once for the sanctuary of priests and the citadel of robbers. Of how many sentences in the whole wilderness could its authors abide the challenge of rational criticism?, Sirs, lay aside your slang, and tell us in plain English what is the meaning of this? What mean you by "the current of Gospel love," and "the edifying of the body in love," and your "unity and harmony in Christ for the Defence of the Gospel?" Unity, upon what counsels? Harmony, with what allies? Defence, against what assailants? The meanest of ye, ye say, are "intrusted with talents to be employed some in one service, some in another, and ye may all individually contribute through the help of the Holy Spirit, to the furtherance of the Lord's work on earth." In the Lord's name, who is the Lord, and what is his work on earth, which your confederacy is to help him to do? That Lord is the figment of your own presumption: that work, the plot and scheme of your own villainy: that indi vidual contribution to't is your wicked crusading spitefulness against poor infidels, your sulky covenants among yourselves, that none of you should ever spare or pity or aid the man, who, after some fashion or other, submitted not to your superstition, nor

knelt before the demon of your idolatry; a tacit understanding that your humbler vassals should withdraw their trade from the shops of unbelievers, that your proud and haughty bankers should lay schemes to inveigle them into fraudulently obtained acceptances, and once entrapping an infidel victim, should hold their grasp like the twist of the Boa Constrictor, till it crush him, bones and all.

Explain Sirs, if ye can, to some conceivable significancy, your strange catachresis-in calling Christ your head, and in the next sentence-calling that head, a stone: which, putting the two predicates together, makes him out to be, what his prototype Hercules was, a god of stone: but that ye pursue metaphor into madness, by calling him a living stone. What sort of homage is it, which you would be understood to pay to the Supreme Being, by saying that he created you for a purpose of his own glory? What homage could any being be entitled to, who acted from so base and selfish a motive; a motive which in your next sentence, you disclaim as unworthy and disgraceful even to yourselves? And is it so unworthy and so disgraceful to men, 66 in any way to seek their own glory" and fix ye just exactly on that unworthiness and that disgrace, as your sort of homage to be ascribed to your idol: as much as to say that-that very pitifulness of soul of which any sensible man would blush to be convicted, is the distinguishing attribute of your vain-glorious Almighty? Of the very rage of a virtue which ye cast off from your own persons, make ye the robes of Godhead? To act with a view only to their own glory, it seems, is unworthy of men, but good enough for God. By his immortal beard and hallelujah whiskers! your hint starts my mind's fancy-that ye have but been playing at proprielies reversed all this while.

God is not your creator, but ye are the creators of God: 'tis not He who made you-but you who have made Him, and have dressed him like a scare-crow in a garden, in your own cast-off clothes. Your ragamuffin God, would be a disgrace to the Pantheon.

Ye say that ye" have all sinned”—and ye call upon the members of your fraternity throughout Great Britain and Ireland, to "seek to be set free from the guilt and power of sin." I take you at your word in all the pregnancy of its signification-ye are a bad set of you: and the power of your bad habits and the guilt of your bad conduct, is quite enough to cause and to justify, that dejection of spirits and squalor of countenance by which we should know a Quaker even without his regimentals. I should hail your confession, as an indication of some intention to return to virtue, and to conduct yourselves better for the future; but that instead of any intended moral correction of your vice, instead of any purposes of dealing hereafter as you would be dealt unto, of taking off the hard hand-of giving up the fraudulently acquired claim

« FöregåendeFortsätt »