Clavis Mythologiarum

BOOK V. OF THE MYSTERIES. HEAD II. OF THE SECRET, AGAINST THE BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER.

○It were premature to attempt, within the compass of a single head, more than the statement of the question which the learned prelate's account of the Mysteries leaves open, and of the manner in which the testimonies of the ancients, taken in the order in which they have been collected, bear upon it. The first assertion of that account, that the Mysteries were invented by the legislators, and the second, that their secret was the unity of the Godhead, have been examined by me in the tractate which I have already laid before the public; and it will be sufficient to say here that I found the first not to be made good by any testimony, and the second to be true of a part of what was kept and untrue of the purpose for which it was kept, while upon the third, that the end of the Mysteries was to teach the doctrine of a future state, I found myself able to agree with the learned prelate without reserve.1 What the tractate had not room to do, and what I propose in the present head and in those which follow, is to ascertain by what manner of keeping a thing may be held by those who hold it, and may nevertheless be concealed from the rest, and with what consequence to the meaning of the thing so kept; and for this purpose it will be necessary to set down the principal testimonies again, not for the argument which they supplied before, but for the further matter which they will be found to contain.2 NB-44-039 NB-48-003

○The learned prelate, then, holds that the lawgivers, having established a general providence, proceeded to inculcate a future state of rewards and punishments, and that this "was by the Invention of the Mysteries, the most sacred Part of Pagan Religion" (Warburton, Div. Leg. b. ii. sect. 4). He holds also that "The Egyptian Mystagogues in their secret Rites, taught the Unity of the Godhead, as is made very evident by the great Cudworth" (Warburton, Div. Leg. b. ii. sect. 4); and he holds, as has been shewn under the last head, that the Mysteries of the Greeks and of the Asiatics were borrowed from the Egyptian. I set these opinions down together, and I confess that I do not at present perceive in what manner they are to be reconciled: for a lawgiver who invents a rite, and a priesthood which delivers a rite as it received it, are not the same agent, and which of the two is intended in Egypt, where the rite is said to have begun, the passage does not declare.3 If the Mysteries were invented, the secret was the contrivance of the inventor, and what was taught in them was taught because it served his design; if they were received, the secret was a part of what was received, and the design, if there was one, was that of the persons from whom it was received, and not of the persons who kept it. NB-44-039

○Between these two accounts the testimony of Plutarch, which I have adduced in the tractate for another purpose, is of a decisive weight, and it will bear to be considered once more. He relates that the soldier who was chosen to be a priest was thereupon admitted to the participation of a philosophy already possessed by the order, the genius of which was to conceal the greater part of what it contained in tales and in relations containing obscure hints and resemblances of truth; and he relates also that the temple at Sais, which the Egyptians reckon to be of Minerva, whom they look upon as the same with Isis, bore an inscription declaring that all that was, or is, or will be was in the goddess, and that her veil no mortal had ever taken up (Plut. de Is. et Osir.).4 It is to be observed that the philosophy is here prior to the person admitted, and was received and not made by him; that the concealing is described as a character of the philosophy, and not as the design of the magistrate; and that the inscription, which is the veil spoken of, is a veil laid upon the thing and not a thing contrived to be veiled. The learned prelate allows, in another place, that the Egyptians did, "at length, employ" the hieroglyphics for the purpose of concealment (Warburton, Div. Leg. b. iv. sect. 4); but Plutarch speaks of concealment by tales and not by figures, and the two modes are not to be confounded.5 NB-59-008

○In the same sense, and with a further bearing, is the relation of Origen, who distinguishes two orders among the Egyptians: the learned, who are greatly given to reasoning upon what is accounted divine among them, and the vulgar, who hear certain relations without understanding the reasons of them, and are elated notwithstanding with a fancied knowledge (Orig. cont. Cels. lib. i.). A traveller who has been the disciple of the latter alone, and has not associated with any of the priests, nor learned the mysteries of the Egyptians from any other source, is by Origen compared to one who should imagine that he knew the whole circle of Egyptian knowledge; and it follows that the doctrine of Egypt was to be found with the priests, and was to be had by association with them, and that the person who reasons from what is shewn to the people has not the doctrine.6 The learned prelate cites Origen, with Celsus, for the end of the Mysteries (Warburton, Div. Leg. b. ii. sect. 4); the place here copied does not speak of the end, but of the place in which the doctrine was kept; and the distinction which it draws, between those who reason upon the relations and those who hear them without the reasons, is one which the learned prelate's account of the secret does not provide for, and which, as I shall endeavour to shew, it requires. NB-46-009

○Upon the end of the Mysteries I have, as I have said, nothing to oppose to the learned prelate, who says that "The Nature and End of these were all the same, to teach the Doctrine of a future State" (Warburton, Div. Leg. b. ii. sect. 4); and the testimony of Cicero, who holds the Mysteries of the Athenians to be the best of what that city has brought into the life of men, and names among the benefits of them that men were softened out of a savage life and that they received, besides the rule of living with gladness, cum spe meliore moriendi (with a better hope in dying), is consistent with him (Cic. de Legib. lib. ii.).7 But it is to be observed that the place is silent upon the origin of the rite, and upon the contrivance of a legislator, and that it is therefore to be reckoned neither for nor against the learned prelate upon either; and that a doctrine which is held to be of benefit to those who have it is not on that account shewn to have been devised for the use of the state, since it would be of the same benefit if it were received. NB-48-003

○The testimony of those who were themselves initiated is of another kind, and I enter it for the reserve which it exhibits, and for that only. Apuleius, in the person of his narrator, declines to say what was said and done in the rite, "if it were lawfull for me to tell"; and declares only that "I approached neere unto Hell, even to the gates of Proserpina," that he returned, and that he saw the gods celestial and infernal, and worshipped them (Apul. Metam. lib. xi.).8 The learned prelate holds that the secret of the greater Mysteries was the unity of the Godhead (Warburton, Div. Leg. b. ii. sect. 4); but this witness does not bear upon it, for it gives the fact of the rite and keeps the matter; and the testimonies at present collected from the initiated do not determine what the secret was. It is a relation to be received as fable before it is received as testimony, and I do not build upon it; but its reserve is the reserve of a person who has received a thing, and who is bound not to declare it, and a person so bound is not required, in order to keep the thing, to be able to give the reason of it. NB-49-008

○The view which I propose, as at present sketched, is the following. The Mysteries, which are the fourth and the last of the modes by which the primitive tradition was obscured, differ from the three which precede them in this, that the three corrupt the deposit by transferring its objects, the titles to the sun, the history to the patriarchs, the remembrance of the Deluge to the gods of the waters; whereas the fourth corrupts it by the manner of keeping, and consists in the retention, under a concealment, of a trust whose meaning the priesthood which retained it had in great part ceased to know. That the priesthood held what it held as received the testimony of Plutarch sufficiently shews; that it held it with obscure hints and resemblances in place of the reasons, and delivered it to the vulgar without the reasons altogether, the testimony of Origen appears to shew; and that a person might be bound to keep what he could not explain, the reserve of the initiate is at least consistent with.9 If this be so, the secret of the learned prelate is not the contrivance of a policy but the form which a deposit assumes when it is held by those who have the custody of it and have lost the interpretation; and the unity of the Godhead, which I do not deny to have been a part of what was kept, was kept as a part, and not as the whole, and was kept, not because it had been framed to be concealed, but because it had been received to be preserved. The proof of this, which requires a survey of the manner in which the priests of Egypt held their learning and of the manner in which they wrote it, is deferred to the next head and to the head which follows it.10 NB-59-008 NB-46-009 NB-49-008

○It may be objected, in the first place, that a priesthood which had ceased to know the meaning of what it kept could not have taught the unity of the Godhead, nor any doctrine whatever, and that the learned prelate's account, which makes the Mystagogues teachers, is therefore the more probable; to which I answer, that I have said "in great part," and not wholly; that Origen's learned persons are described as reasoning upon what is divine among them; and that I do not affirm that no priest knew, but that the order as a body held more than it could explain.11 It may be objected, in the second place, that the tales of which Plutarch speaks are the work of poets, and are therefore to be set aside under the fifth thesis; to which I answer that whether the tales are to be reckoned with the literary fable or with the tradition I have not yet determined, and that I do not rest the argument upon them further than the priority of the philosophy to the concealing, which is stated of the philosophy and not of the tales. It may be objected, in the third place, that in allowing the end, and the origin, and denying the contrivance, I give to the learned prelate more than I take from him; to which I answer that I have given him what the testimonies give, and that the one thing which he requires of them beyond this, the contrivance of the legislator, is the one thing which they do not supply. And it may be objected, lastly, that the view which I propose leaves the origin of the deposit itself where it was; which is true, and which is a part of the design of the work, and not an omission in this portion of it.12 NB-59-008 NB-46-009 NB-44-039

Footnotes

  1. The tractate, in its second section, examines the origin; in its third, the secret; in its fourth, the end. I give the results here only so far as the argument of the present head requires. The first assertion is that the Mysteries were invented by the legislators for the uses of the state; the second that their secret was the unity of the Godhead; the third that their end was to teach a future state. ↩

  2. The further matter is not an addition to the argument of the tractate, but a use of its materials for a purpose which the tractate did not propose; and I mention it so that the reader who is acquainted with the tractate may not suppose that the same testimonies are being brought to the same conclusion. It was in the nature of the tractate to ask of each witness what it said upon the assertion before it; it is in the nature of a Book which treats the Mysteries as a mode of corruption to ask of the same witness what it implies of the persons by whom the thing was held; and the two questions, though they are answered from the same words, are not the same question, and the answer to the one is not to be taken for the answer to the other. ↩

  3. Warburton, Div. Leg. b. ii. sect. 4. The learned prelate explains a Mystery as the secret worship paid to each god in addition to his open worship, into which only those chosen by preparatory ceremonies, called initiation, were admitted; and it is of the Mysteries so understood that the assertions of the text are made. I have not found in the place any statement which determines, for Egypt, whether the inventor was the legislator or the priest. ↩

  4. Plut. de Is. et Osir. The passage runs across the transition from the account of the soldier who became a priest to the account of the temple at Sais; I have kept the two together because the writer himself connects them, saying that the sphinxes which were set up before the temples were intended to shew that the theology of the Egyptians contained an enigmatical sort of learning. I report the inscription in substance, and have not thought it right to give it within marks, not having seen the version which Plutarch's translators had before them at the date of this work. ↩

  5. Warburton, Div. Leg. b. iv. sect. 4. The learned prelate says that it is very certain that the people did at length employ the hieroglyphics to such a purpose, and proposes to examine how that happened. His concession, as I have remarked under the preceding head, is not a ground upon which I can rest; and the reader is to observe that Plutarch's tales are no part of the hieroglyphical writing, which is considered in the fourth head of the present Book. ↩

  6. Orig. cont. Cels. lib. i. The traveller of whom Origen speaks is the person against whom he is arguing, who has judged of the Christians by their vulgar and not by their learned; I have set aside this application of the comparison, and have retained only its statement of the two orders in Egypt, which is the matter for which I cite it. ↩

  7. Cic. de Legib. lib. ii. The words of the original, which I have given as they stand, are the second of the two benefits which the writer names; the first is the softening of men out of a rude and savage life. The play upon initia (beginnings, and also initiations), which the writer makes in the same place, I have given in the tractate, and do not repeat. ↩

  8. Apul. Metam. lib. xi. The words are those of the English version of 1566, in the spelling of the reprint. The narrator addresses the reader, and I have been obliged to give his words as he speaks them; but I cite him, as in the tractate, because the refusal is the point, and not in approval of the manner. ↩

  9. I have here set side by side three testimonies which the tractate kept apart, since the tractate was concerned in each with a single question; and I desire to say expressly that the connexion which I now draw between them is mine, and is not to be attributed to any of the writers, none of whom says that the priests had lost the meaning of what they held. The reader will judge whether the testimonies, taken together, are consistent with it; I do not say that they require it. Nor is it to be concealed that the order in which the three are here set, Plutarch, Origen, the initiate, is an order of my own, chosen for the convenience of the exposition; they are of three different ages, and of three different degrees of nearness to the rites of which they speak, and no argument is to be drawn from the succession in which they are named. ↩

  10. The manner in which the learning of the Egyptians was held is the subject of the next head, in which the name of Hermes is considered; the manner in which it was written, of the head after it. The deposit itself, and the question of its origin in Egypt, are treated in the first Book. ↩

  11. Orig. cont. Cels. lib. i. Origen's learned persons are said to philosophize upon what is regarded among the Egyptians as divine, and in this I find no indication that they had the doctrine entire; I find only that they reasoned, and that the vulgar did not. Whether the reasoning was a recovery of the meaning, or an addition to it, the place does not say. ↩

  12. For the deposit and its origin, see the first Book, and in particular the first head of it, where the opinion of Mr. Bryant that the first corruption was an apostasy is considered. It is a consequence of the view which I propose that the Mysteries are to be regarded, not as the device of a policy, but as the keeping of a deposit; and that the question whence the doctrine was originally derived, which the learned prelate's account was designed to close, is by the present examination opened. It is for this reason that the heads which follow, upon Hermes and upon the writing of the Egyptians, are not a digression from the argument against the learned prelate, but the continuation of it by other means; the question whence the doctrine came is one which can be put only when the manner of its being held has been ascertained, and the manner of its being held is what these heads are designed to ascertain. ↩

← BOOK V. OF THE MYSTERIES. HEAD I. OF THE EGYPTIAN ORIGIN OF THE GREEK RITES.BOOK V. OF THE MYSTERIES. HEAD III. OF HERMES, AND OF THE WRITINGS WHICH BEAR HIS NAME. →