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the monks the girdle he invented as a protection against evil spirits, and clothed them in frocks he had found convenient for his ritual. The Pope thrust out his toe to be kissed as Caligula, Heliogabalus, and Julius Cæsar had thrust out theirs. Nothing came amiss to the faith that was to discharge henceforth the offices of spiritual impression."*

The survival of Pagan ideas may be seen by a study of the modern list of patron saints of professions, trades, etc. The minor gods or genii became guardian spirits or angels, under whose control the elements were supposed to be, and they were propitiated by Christians as they formerly were by Pagans.

But disputes on important doctrinal points had already commenced. In the fourth century the dispute was over the relationship of Jesus and his celestial father (Yahuh). At the Council of Alexandria (320 C.E.), Arius, bishop of that See, was condemned for teaching that Jesus was son of, but inferior to, "God the Father "; and, again, the Council of Nice (325) declared the paradoxical theory that the son was equal to the father in essence, and that his relation to his father was that of eternal generation!

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The Council of Constantinople (381) decided that the same honour was due to the "Holy Ghost" as to the Father and Son; and was convoked to put down the enemies of the Nicene Creed, of whom Arius was the leader, but who had already been restrained by the decrees of the Emperor Theodosius (379), which ordained that "all who object to it [the Trinity], besides the condemnation of divine justice, must expect to suffer the severe penalties which authority, guided by heavenly wisdom, may think proper to inflict." This was the same Emperor who had all writings against the Christian religion destroyed; "for," said he, we would not suffer any of them so much as to come to men's ears, which tend to provoke God and to offend the minds of the pious." Two centuries before he would have said and done the same for the Pagans. The orthodox Christians of the East, called " Melchites," contended that the one true Trinity consisted of the Father, the Virgin Mother, and the Son. The Western, or Roman, Christians,

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*The Cradle of Christ.

EARLY DISPUTES AND CHURCH COUNCILS.

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however, carried the day, and decided it to be Father, Ghost, and Son. It was this quarrelling and disputing among the Christian sects over the Trinity that caused Mohammed to preach the "oneness of God" (about 610), in which he found a friend and ally in the Jews.

Four councils were held at Carthage (which gave to Christianism its Latin form of faith and some of its greatest theologians), and one at Antioch (412 to 421), to condemn Pelagius for his theory that death was not introduced into the world by the sin of Adam. He was condemned for heresy by Pope Innocent, which condemnation was annulled by his successor, Pope Zosimus. Yet, according to modern Catholic teaching, both these occupants of the Papal chair were infallible! Before the time of Pelagius the book of Genesis was not made the basis of Christianism.

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Alexandrian Church knew nothing of the doctrine of original sin "—which did not attain its present commanding position till the time of Anselm (end of the eleventh century), nor did Tertullian of Carthage (193-217), for in his statement of the principles of Christianism to the magistrates under the Emperor Severus, about 200 C.E., he makes no mention of it, nor of the doctrines of the "Fall"--which was first introduced by the Gnostics-"Predestination," Grace," and "Atonement."

Then came the Council of Ephesus (431), where the Virgin's party triumphed on the maternity question. Nestorius, Bishop of Antioch, afterwards of Constantinople, taught that Mary was mother of the manhood of Jesus only, and not of his godhead; but the Alexandrian party won, for the paradoxical name of "Mother of God" pleased the popular piety, and Nestorius was condemned for heresy. When the decision of the Council was announced to the Ephesians, "with tears of joy they embraced the knees of their bishop. It was the old instinct cropping up; their ancestors would have done the same for Diana,' Egyptians would also have done for Isis.

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The ill-feeling which formerly existed between the Pagans and the philosophers had no sooner subsided than it was aroused again between the Christians on the one hand and the two former on the other, as well as between Christians themselves on their various doctrinal differences. This illfeeling was increased considerably by the monks, not only

of Alexandria, but those of Constantinople, of which place Nestorius was now Bishop, Cyril representing the Paganizing party, and Nestorius-who was opposed to the divine maternity-the philosophizing party; and the secret jealousy of the popularity, and the open hatred of the scientific attainments, of Hypatia culminated, in Cyril's time (412–444), in the cruel and inhuman murder of that distinguished lecturer. In the previous bishop's time (Theophilus) the ancient temple of Serapis, formerly dedicated to Osiris, was by Constantine handed over to the Trinitarians for the re-building of a Christian church. At the destruction of this temple a cross and other phallic emblems were found carved on one of the stones. These, with more zeal than modesty, Theophilus exhibited in the market place to public derision. This was made a pretext by the monks for rioting and expending their long pent-up animosity against those who disagreed with them. Excitement was aroused among the populace, with the result that the splendid library, the Serapeum, which had been collected by the Ptolemies, and had escaped the fire of Julius Cæsar, was by that fanatical bishop dispersed ; and Hypatia, before whose "academy each day," says Draper, "stood a long train of chariots," was brutally murdered. "Her lecture-room was crowded with the wealth and fashion of Alexandria. They came to listen to her discourses on those questions which man in all ages has asked, but which never yet have been answered: What am I? Where am I? What can I know?' Hypatia and Cyrilphilosophy and bigotry-they cannot exist together......As Hypatia repaired to her academy, she was assaulted by Cyril's mob-a mob of many monks-stripped naked in the street, dragged into a church, and there killed by the club of Peter the reader.' The corpse was cut to pieces, the flesh was scraped from the bones with shells, and the remnants cast into a fire. For this frightful crime Cyril was never called to account. It seemed to be admitted that the end sanctified the means,' "* for he was canonized as a saint after his death. It is singular that the phallic cross, which, with the other phallic emblems, gave such offence to the Alexandrian Christians, should become the emblem of salvation to future Christianity. With the death of Hypatia

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EVOLUTION OF MARIOLATRY.

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and the destruction of the Serapeum ended Greek philosophy in Alexandria.

We thus see that the divine maternity of Mary did not become a doctrine of the Church till the fifth century, which accounts for the silence concerning Mary in the N. T. Mary was now virtually deified; her "assumption" was declared in 813, and her "immaculate conception" in 1851. But these were not new theories; they had been universally applied to the mothers of deified heroes and messiahs ages before the time of Jesus. Dr. Inman says: "The pure virginity of the celestial mother was a tenet of faith for 2,000 years before the virgin now adored was born." Neith, the mother of Osiris; Mylitta, of Babylon, later of Greece, and the mother of Tammuz; Nutria, of Etrusca and Italy; Myrrha, the mother of Bacchus; Cybele, Juno, and Diana, were all worshipped as "virgin goddesses" and "virgin mothers." Upon the altars of the Chinese temples were placed, behind a screen, an image of Shin-moo, or the "Holy Mother,' sitting with a child in her arms, in an alcove, with rays of glory around her head, and tapers constantly burning before her."*

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As Isis was carried to heaven by her son Horus, Ariadne by Bacchus, and Alcemena by Hercules, so in the Christian Church the Virgin Mary was declared to have been carried to heaven by her glorified son. And as the Egyptian Minerva, the mysterious Neith, and the black Isis were "immaculately conceived," so was the Christian Virgin Mother declared to have come from herself, and to have given birth to a god. Images of the virgin mother Isis, with the child Horus in her arms, of Devaki and Christna, of Maya and Buddha, of Juno and Mars, now became Christian Virgin Marys, with the child Jesus. A school of art for the production of Madonnas had been established in Alexandria from a very early period. The pictures of Isis with twelve stars surrounding her head and the crescent moon beneath her feet became Christian Madonnas, and remain so to the present day. Juno and Diana were similarly represented.

The most ancient pictures and statues in Italy and other parts of Europe, says Doane (p. 335), are black. The "Bambino" at Rome, and the Virgin and Child at Loretto,

* J. B. Gross, Heathen Religion.

are black, as are other similar images in Rome. The black virgin-born infants give us a clue to the origin of the idea, for Christna, or Krishna, means black, and Krishna was the virgin-born infant of the Persian Devaki. But all the virginborn infants were originally simply representations of the sun ascending from the winter solstice in the sign Virgo, the Virgin. Winking Madonnas had their origin in the winking and nodding Isis; the pious fraud of the Christian priest being simply a perpetuation of the older custom of the Pagan priest. Certain images of Isis were celebrated for their miraculous movements, such as the discharge of tears. The Coptic Christians of Egypt had a picture of the Madonna, which was seen to drop milk at a festival, when great excitement arose among the worshippers, who asserted it to be a miracle; but, these Christians being under Mohammedan rule, the picture had to be removed. It was afterwards restored, on condition that no more miracles would be performed. As every young man and maiden in Pagan times confided their love-secrets to Isis, so in Christian times they went to Mary; and as every Pagan mother found sympathy in the "Heavenly Mother" Isis, so Christian mothers found sympathy in the "Heavenly Mother" Mary.

The Church was now growing more powerful every day. In proportion as this power developed and increased, so did the study of science decrease and disappear, and intellectual progress become checked, until, in the reign of Justinian, the teaching of philosophy was discontinued at Athens (527), and all the schools there were closed. No more freedom now for human thought; every one must think as the ecclesiastical authority ordered him. Science was made to conform with the Bible; study and research, except of that collection of old writings, was stopped; and the Genesis account of creation was declared to be the only true one. The earth was alleged to be flat, the sky spreading over it like a dome, or, as Augustine declared, “like a skin," in which all the heavenly bodies moved; and the use of the latter was to give light to man. Lactantius, the Latin Father (died 325), asserted the globular theory of the earth to be heretical, and said: "Is it possible that man can be so absurd as to believe that the crops and the trees on the other side of the earth hang

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