Activate Javascript or update your browser for the full Digital Library experience.
Previous Page
–
Next Page
OCR
164- onmm on THE worm LORD.-CHAP. v. sxacr. Ix.
and even civil wars took place respecting them, before they were determined. The monks
of the,Roman and Greek Churches were in those times the principal actors in these
matters; they were few of them in orders, they were the remnants of the sect of the Essenes
Converted to Christianity, and much degraded and corrupted from their excellent prede-
cessors in the time of Philo. It is not necessary to enter into this question here, but it
may be shewn that there is no little probability, besides‘ the tradition of the church, that
the inscription noticed before upon the pedestal of the colossal statue of Elias, under the
cupola of St. Peter at Rome, is true-Elias Fzmdator Ordinis Carmelitarum.
From Elias came the Essenes, and from the Essenes the Carmelite monks, who were
in fact Christian Essenes. These people, in the early and middle ages of the church,
retained very little of the character given them by Philo and Josephus ; they had sunk with
the prevailing degradation of the human species. If they had not done so, human nature
would not have become degraded ; their exception alone would have prevented it. These
Essenes in Egypt, Persia, and other places,’ had ‘probably given into the prevailing ado-
ration of the heavenly bodies, previously to the time of Philo; and when they became
converts to Christianity, they formed an odd mixture of the two religions. Their first
religion, in its origin and history, was forgotten, and their new one not learned. They
were probably zealous devotees, but as ignorant as the lowest of the hermits and mendi-
cant orders of the present Italians. The grade in society of many of these people, no
educated member of the Roman communion requires teaching.
ORIGIN OF THE WORD LORD.--CHAP. V. SECT. IX.
These people, found the head of their religion called Lord. This was enough for them ;
every thing which related to this Lord they seized on, and by means of their ill-under-
stood and abused tradition, spliced it into their religion. These Ccenobites, as Philo
calls them, found that in what they called their monasteries, many of them built before
the Christian aera,“‘ a day had from time immemorial been dedicated to the God Sol, as
his birth-day, and that he bore the epithet Lord.1' This Lord they thought could be no
other than their Lord and God: the mistake was easily made and very naturally adopted,
And the rites of this Lord became, after long and bloody feuds between different bodies
of these persons, spliced into and amalgamated with Christianity. Thus came the
25th of December, the Heathen festival of the God Sol, to be selected as the birth-day of
- Christ, and the Druidical festival of the winter Solstice to become a Christian rite. No
learned divine will maintain, that there is any more reason to believe the 25th of Decem-
ber to have been the birth-day, than the 25th of January. Nor is it in any way necessary
to the truth of Christianity that it should be known. If it be thought right to keep a day,
the church has a right to fix what day it pleases,
"‘ Vide Philo. 1' PORPHYRY, de Abstin.