RECAPITULATION.

It may be convenient, before I conclude, to recapitulate in their order the results at which the foregoing examination has arrived, the more so as the order in which they have been reached is not that in which the assertions of the learned prelate are commonly stated. Of the fourth assertion, that the first and original Mysteries were those of Egypt, from whence they were derived to the Greeks, I have found nothing in the testimonies to contradict it, and much to confirm it; and I have allowed it accordingly, with the single reservation that the phrase in which the learned prelate describes the derivation, as made under the presidency of such gods as the institutor thought most for his purpose, is not supported by the witness, who describes a translation of the rite with an exchange of names, and not a choice of deities according to a design.¹ NB-44-039 NB-43-012 NB-45-004 NB-58-008

Of the first assertion, that the Mysteries were invented by the legislators, I have found that it is not made good by any testimony of the ancients which I have been able to collect; that the relations of Herodotus and of Diodorus describe the rites as brought and taught, the passage of Clement, when it is examined, as learned before it was communicated, and the account of the Egyptian priest as held in common by the whole order under the name of a god; and that, since it does not rest upon the testimony of the ancients, it must rest upon the nature of the case, to which I have opposed the principle of the learned prelate himself.² NB-43-012 NB-45-004 NB-56-001 NB-58-008

Of the second assertion, that the secret of the Mysteries was the unity of the Godhead, I have allowed so much as describes a part of what was kept, and have denied so much as represents that part as the contrivance of the state; and I have endeavoured to show, from the accounts of Plutarch, of Origen and of Clement, and from the principle which the learned prelate has established respecting the hieroglyphics, that the thing concealed was in possession before the concealment, and that the concealment belongs to the manner of holding it, and not to the purpose for which it was framed. NB-57-003 NB-44-014 NB-57-007 NB-58-003

Of the third assertion, that the end of the Mysteries was to teach the doctrine of a future state, I have found the testimony of Cicero sufficient, and have allowed it without reserve; adding only that the same testimony is silent upon the origin of the rites, and that the relation of Diodorus, which supports the end, supports also the account of the transmission which I have opposed to the first assertion.³ NB-48-003 NB-46-009 NB-45-004

It will be perceived that these results, taken together, require that the Mysteries be regarded, not as the device of a policy, but as the keeping of a deposit; and that the question which the learned prelate's account was designed to close, namely, whence the doctrine which the Mysteries preserved was originally derived, is by the present examination not closed but opened. To that question I have repeatedly declined to give an answer in these pages; not because I am without an opinion upon it, but because an opinion upon it, if it is to be more than an opinion, requires a survey of the testimonies of every nation among which the deposit can be traced, and a determination of the several modes by which it was corrupted in each; and that survey, which I have long had in hand, and of which the present tractate is but a part detached for a particular occasion, will, I trust, be laid before the public in its proper form, when the materials, which are now in a state of considerable forwardness, shall have been reduced to that order which a work of such extent requires.⁴ NB-58-008 NB-47-006 NB-44-039