that hath, and him that beholds; most remarkable expressions, surely, to fall from the pen of a heathen writer. Immediately after, in terms as remarkable, he subjoins,-Τουτους εν τρεις νες και δη μιεργές υποτίθεται, και τες τω Πλαζωνι τρεις βασιλέας και τις παρ' Ορφει τρεις ΦΑΝΗΤΑ, και ΟΥΡΑΝΟΝ, και ΚΡΟΝΟΝ, και ο μαλισα παρ' αύλω Δημιο ο Φάνης ‘o ¿51v.—(AMELIUS.)-Therefore, supposes these three minds, and these three Demiurgic principles to be the same, both with Plato's three kings, and Orpheus's Trinity of (➡) PHANES, (N) Uranus, and (P) CHRONUS; but it is PHANES who is by him supposed to be principally the Demiurgus.And Cudworth, speaking of an unpublished treatise of Damasius, entitled meg aexwv, says, that philosopher, giving an account of the Orphic philosophy, among other things informs us, that Orpheus introduced τρίμορφον θεον, a triform deity. All these views of Orpheus are as direct toward the truth as could be expected from knowledge handed down by tradition. It will readily occur to every reader, that there was a very great distinction between the truly philosophic and the popular views of this grand doctrine, known by tradition in Greece in early times.

PROPOSITION XXXIV.

PROVING THE DOCTRINE FROM THE SENTIMENTS AND OPINIONS OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS WHO HAD VISITED CHALDEA, PERSIA, INDIA, AND EGYPT, AND WHO TAUGHT THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY AFTER THEIR RETURN TO GREECE.

AFTER the numerous proofs in the preceding pages from philosophers, legislators, and priests, the most eminent in the Pagan world; proofs which demonstrate that these teachers of religious tenets were strongly impressed with notions of the important doctrine of the Trinity, similar, though greatly darkened, to those taught by divine inspiration; we shall, perhaps, be excused from swelling these pages with an infinite number of other proofs that might be selected from the works of Pythagoras, Plato, Parmenides, and others. And we may be permitted to assert, that it was from the fountains of India, Chaldea, Persia, and Egypt, that those Grecian sages, as well by the channel of Orpheus, as by their own personal travels in those countries, derived that copious stream of theological knowledge which was afterwards, both by themselves and their disciples, so widely diffused through Greece and Italy. It may, with truth, be affirmed, that there was scarcely one of all the celebrated philosophers who established the several schools of Greece,

distinguished by their names, who had not resided, for a considerable period, either in one or other of the countries just mentioned. The evidence of this will, perhaps, be satisfactory.

We shall commence with the travels of Pytha goras, who flourished in the sixth century before the birth of Christ. According to the account of his disciple Jamblichus, the first voyage of Pythagoras in pursuit of knowledge, after the completion of his academical exercise at Samos, was to Zidon, his native place, where he was early initiated into all the mysterious rites and sciences of Phoenicia, the country whence the elder Taut emigrated into Egypt, and where the profound Samothracian orgia, and the Cabiric rites, were first instituted. From Phoenicia our philosopher travelled into Egypt, and there, with unabated avidity after science, as well as with unexampled perseverance, continued under the severest possible discipline, purposely imposed upon him by the jealous priests of that country, during two and twenty years successively, to imbibe the stream of knowledge at Heliopolis, at Memphis, and Diospolis, or Thebes.

Astonished at his exemplary patience and abstinence, the haughty Egyptian priesthood relaxed from their established rule of never divulg ing the arcana of their theology to a stranger; for, according to another writer of his life, Diogenes Laertius, he was admitted into the inmost

adyta of their temples, and there was taught those stupendous truths of their mystic philoso phy which were never before revealed to any foreigner. He is said even to have submitted to circumcision, that he might more rigidly conform to their dogmas, and leave no point of their most recondite sciences unexplored. It was du ring this long residence and seclusion amidst the priests of Thebais, that he arose to that high proficiency in geometrical and astronomical knowledge, to which no Greek before him had ever reached, and few since have attained.

But all this aggregate of Egyptian wisdom could not satisfy the mind of Pythagoras, whose ardour for science seems to have increased with the discouragements thrown in the way of his obtaining it. He had heard of the Chaldean and Persian Magi, and the renowned Brachmanes of India, and he was impatient to explore the hallowed caves of the former, and the consecrated groves of the latter. While he was meditating this delightful excursion, Cambyses commenced his celebrated expedition against Egypt, which terminated in the plunder of its treasures, the slaughter of its priests, and the burning of its temples. During the remainder of his abode in Egypt, he had the mortification to be a spectator of all those nameless indignities which his patrons and instructors underwent, from that subverter of kingdoms, and enemy of science. Pythagoras

himself was taken prisoner, and sent with other captives to Babylon. The Chaldean Magi, however, at that metropolis, received with transport the wandering son of science. All the sublime arcana inculcated in the ancient Chaldaic oracles, attributed to the elder Zoroaster, were now laid open to his view. He renewed, with intense ardour, those astronomical researches in which the Babylonians so eminently excelled; and learned from them new ideas relative to the motions, power, property, and influences of the heavenly bodies, as well as their situations in the heavens, and the vast periods they took to complete their revolutions.

Babylon must have been, at that particular period, the proudest and most honourable capital upon earth; since it is evident, from Dr. Hyde, that both the prophet Ezekiel, and the second Zoroaster, the friend of Hystaspes, whom Porphyry calls Zaratus, (a name exceedingly similar to the Oriental appellation of Zeratusht,) resided there at the same time. The former, attached to the man who had submitted in Egypt to one fundamental rite prescribed by the Jewish church, instructed him in the awful principles of the Hebrew religion; the latter made him acquainted with the doctrines of the two predominant principles in nature, of good and evil, and unfolded to his astonished view all the stupendous mysteries of Mithra. Twelve years, according to Por phry, were spent by Pythagoras in this renowned