2

a liberation of the soul from its corporeal tomb, ought to be esteemed a birth into a new and better state of existence.' Agreeably to this opinion, which he professes to have received from certain wise men, he speaks of the bondage of the soul; and laments, as its worst misfortune, that it not only disregarded its captivity, but lent its own assistance to rivet the chain. He even asserts the doctrine of hereditary sin, which he probably learned from the same quarter. The cause of our wickedness, says he, is derived from our parents and from the constitution of our nature, rather than from ourselves; so that we never relinquish those actions, by which we imitate the primitive fault of our earliest ancestors.'

To the same purpose, at a later period, speaks the philosopher Porphyry. If we cannot do the things which we ought; let us at least, as of old, lament with our fathers, that we are compounded of such warring and opposite principles, that we are unable to preserve the divine spark within us altogether unmixed and untainted.*

Similar language is held likewise by Hierocles. Most men, he observes, are bad: for, by the violence of their passions, they are bowed down to the earth. But this evil they have brought upon themselves, by their voluntary apostasy from God, and by their withdrawing themselves from that commu

Platon. Gorg. p. 493.

2 Plat. Phæd. § 33.

3 Plat. Tim. p. 103.

4 Porph. de Abstin. lib. iii. § 27. p. 138.

nion with him which they once in a pure light enjoyed. The reality of such a mental alienation from the Supreme Being is proved by our strong tendency towards the earth: and our sole deliverance from this state of spiritual degradation is our return unto him.'

He also quotes with approbation a saying of Heraclitus, which closely resembles the dogma that Plato acknowledges himself to have received from certain wise men. Speaking of those immaculate spirits who have never lapsed into evil, that philosopher remarks, that we live their death, and that we die into their life; for man has now descended and fallen from the region of felicity, having become a fugitive, and a wanderer from the presence of the Deity.

These opinions are sometimes thrown into the form of an apologue: but the very structure of the apologue may serve to shew, whence the opinions themselves were borrowed. Plato, in his Symposiacs, presents us with the curious tale of Porus and Penia; which Origen naturally enough supposes to be the history of the fall, received from the Alexandrine Jews, and afterwards disguised in the language of enigma. Porus, the gad of plenty, had feasted with the rest of the deities, and had become inebriated with nectar. Upon this, he retired into the celestial garden of Jupiter, and there sank into a profound sleep. Here he

was circumvented by a female, denominated Penia or Poverty: and he was afterwards punished, by his being ejected from the garden.' It is almost impossible to doubt, that the prototypes of Porus and Penia and the nectar and the garden of Jupiter are Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit and the garden of Eden.

We meet with a not dissimilar apologue in the commentary of Hierocles: and he has evidently worked it up on the basis of Plato's allegory respecting the deplumation of the soul. According to this writer, there is a meadow of truth and a meadow of destruction. The soul originally was the tenant of the former: but, by the violence of her deplumation, she was precipitated from it; and, being deprived of her original happy estate, she entered into the prison of an earthly body. This figurative deplumation he afterwards styles, in plain terms, a flight or apostasy from God; states it to be the same as the Platonic descent or lapse of the soul, through some great calamity which she has experienced; and finally intimates, that she can only again soar aloft to the pure region of felicity by casting off all mortal passions and by producing anew the golden pinions of virtue.*

III. The form, assumed by the tempter when he seduced our first parents, has been handed down in the traditions of most ancient nations: and, though animals of the serpent-tribe were very

p. 189.

Orig. cont. Cels. lib. iv. 2 Hieroc. in Aur. Carm. p. 254, 257, 258.

generally worshipped by the Pagans as symbols of the Agathodemon, they were likewise viewed as types or figures of the evil principle.

1. One of the most remarkable accounts of the primeval tempter under the shape of a serpent occurs in the Zend-Avesta of the ancient Persians.

After the world had been created in the course of five successive periods, man himself is said to have been formed during a sixth. The first of the human species was compounded of a man and a bull; and this mixed being was the commencement of all generations. For some time after his production, there was a season of great innocence and happiness and the man-bull himself resided in an elevated region, which the Deity had assigned to him. At last, an evil one, denominated Ahriman, corrupted the world. After having dared to visit heaven, he descended to the earth, and assumed the form of a serpent. The man-bull was poisoned by his venom, and died in consequence of it. Meanwhile Ahriman threw the whole universe into confusion for that enemy of good mingled himself with every thing, appeared every where, and sought to do mischief both above and below. His machinations produced a general corruption: and so deeply was the earth and every element tainted by his malignity, that the purifying ablution of a general deluge became necessary to wash out the inveterate stains of evil. Over this operation presided a second man-bull with three associates : and, when the work was accomplished, the sacred

mountain Albordi and afterwards a renovated world emerged from the cleansing waters.'

2. To the dracontian Ahriman of the Persians, the malignant serpent Caliya of Hindoo theology appears to be very closely allied. He is represented at least, as the decided enemy of the mediatorial god; whom he persecutes with the utmost virulence, though he is finally vanquished by his celestial adversary.*

3. The serpent Typhon of the Egyptians, who is sometimes identified with the ocean because the deluge was esteemed the work of the evil principle; and the serpent Python of the Greeks, who is evidently the same as the monster Typhon: appear to have similarly originated, in the first instance, from some remembrance of the form which Satan assumed in Paradise. Perhaps also the notion, that Python was oracular; a notion, which caused the so frequent use of serpents in the rites of diviriation: may may have sprung from a recollection of the vocal responses, which the tempter gave to Eve under the borrowed figure of that reptile.❜

4. We may still ascribe to the same source that rebellious serpent, whose treason seems to have been so well remembered among the inhabitants of Syria.

Pherecydes, a native of that country, bestows upon him the Greek name of Ophioneus or the

1 Zend-Avest. in Orig. of Pag. Idol. b. iii. c. 3. § 1.

2

Asiat. Res. vol. i. p. 261. Moore's Hind. Panth. p. 23,. 198, 201.