MADONNA-LIKE A VIRGIN

As among the heathen Romans, faith and reverences decreased as  their gods were multiplied, so here, as objects of worship were increased, familiarity bred only sensuality, and sensuous worship drove out virtue and veneration, until, in the language of Mrs. Jameson's "Legends of the Madonna," xxxi: One of the frecoes in the Vatican represents Giulia Farnese a noted impure woman and mistress of the pope! In the character of the Madonna, and Pope Alexander VI. The drunken, uncahste, beastly! kneeling at her feet in the character of a votary! Under the influence of the Medici. the churches of Florence were filled with pictures of the Virgin in which the only thing aimed at was a meretricious beauty. Savonarola thundered from his pulpit in the garden of S. Marco against these impieties!

3RD ACT

And how can the Greek fathers in the primitive church mistake when they understand our Lord and his apostles to teach universal restoration? It may be well to note here, that after the third century the descent of the church into errors of doctrine and practice grew more rapid! The worship of Jesus, of Mary was called 'the Mother of God,' 'the Queen of Heaven.' As God began to be represented more stern, implacable, cruel, the people worshiped Jesus to induce him to placate his Father's wrath; and then as the Son was held up as the severe judge of sinners and the executioner of the Father's vengeance, men prayed Mary to mollify the anger of her God-child; and when she became unfeeling or lacked influence, they turned to intercede with their cold, implacable superiors. Thus theology became more hard and merciless-hell was intensified, and enlarged, and eternized-heaven shrunk, and recded, and lost its compassion-woman (despite the deification of Mary) was regarded as weak and despicable-the Agapae were abolished and the Eucharist deified, and its cup withheld from the people-and woman deemed too impure to touch it!

IV

In he morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present- I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself warm?- But this is more pleasant.- Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion? Dost thou not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees working together to put in order their several parts of the universe? And art thou unwilling to do the work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do that which is according to thy nature?- But it is necessary to take rest also.- It is necessary: however nature has fixed bounds to this too: she has fixed bounds both to eating and drinking, and yet thou goest beyond these bounds, beyond what is sufficient; yet in thy acts it is not so, but thou stoppest short of what thou canst do. So thou lovest not thyself, for if thou didst, thou wouldst love thy nature and her will. But those who love their several arts exhaust themselves in working at them unwashed and without food; but thou valuest thy own own nature less than the turner values the turning art, or the dancer the dancing art, or the lover of money values his money, or the vainglorious man his little glory. And such men, when they have a violent affection to a thing, choose neither to eat nor to sleep rather than to perfect the things which they care for. But are the acts which concern society more vile in thy eyes and less worthy of thy labour?

i'VE NEVER BEEN A WINNER!

The church * * * was content to make terms with what survived of Paganism, content to lose even more than it gained in an unholy alliance with superstition and idolatry; enticing, no doubt, many of the vulgar, and some even of the more intelligent, to a nominal acceptance of the Christian faith, but conniving at the surrender by the great mass of its own baptized members of the highest and purest of their spiritual acquisitions.

DIVIDED

The Rev. T. B. Thayer, D. D. thinks that the faith of the early Christian church of the orthodox party was one half Christian, one-quarter Jewish, and one-quarter Pagan; while that of the gnostic party was about one-quarter Christian and three-quarters philosophical Paganism.

CAUSAL PROBLEM!

The Edinburgh Review concedes that upon a full inspection it will be seen that the corruption of Christianity was itself the effect of that vitiated state of the human mind, of which the vices of the government were the great and primary cause!

BLACK VS. WHITE

What more natural than that the small reservoir of Christian truth should be contaminated by the opinions that converts from all these sources brought with them into their new religion at first, and later that Roman Catholic priests and Pagan legislators should seize them as engines of power by which to control the world!

THE MULTITUDE & CONTROL

Romulus, Tatius and Numa enslaved the gods to politics, and made religion for the state! THIS AND THOSE RESPONSIBLE DISPLEASE ME THE MOST! Classic scholars know that the heathen hell was early copied by the Catholic church, and that almost its entire details afterwards entered into the creeds of Catholic and Protestant churches up to a century ago. And not only this, but heathen writers declare that the doctrine was invented to awe and control the multitude. Polybius writes: Since the multitude is ever fickle * * * there is no other way to keep them in order but by fear of the invisible world! on which account our ancestors seem to me to have acted judiciously when they contrived to bring into the popular belief these notions of the gods and the infernal regions. Seneca says: Those things which make the infernal regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river of flaming fire, the judgment seat, etc, are all a fable. Livy declares that Numa invented the doctrine, a most efficacious means of governing an ignorant and barbarous populace! Starbo writes: The multitude are restrained from vice by the punishments the gods are said to inflict upon offenders, * * * for it is impossible to govern the crowd of women and all the common rabble by philosophical reasoning: these things the legislators used as scarecrows to terrify the childish multitude!

THE AUTHORITY OF THE BOOK OF ENOCH . . .

Cave, in the Lives of the Fathers, of the sons of God and the daughters of men.

THE PREVAILING TONE OF MIND IS ECLECTIC!

At first Christianity was a bit of leaven buried in foreign elements, modifying and being modified. The early Christians had individual opinions and idiosyncrasies, which at first their new faith did not eradicate; they still retained some of their former errors. This accounts for their different views of the future world! At the time of our Lord's advent Judaism had been greatly corrupted. During the captivity Chaldaean, Persian and Egyptian doctrines, and other oriental ideas had tinged the Mosaic religion, and in Alexandria, especially, there was a great mixture of borrowed opinions and systems of faith, it being supposed that no one form alone was complete and sufficient, but that each system possessed a portion of the perfect truth. The prevailing tone of mind was eclectic, and Christianity did not escape the influence!

QUOTE OF THE DAY

The written Gospel of the first period of the apostolic age was the Old Testament, interpreted by the vivid recollection of the Savior's ministry. * * * The knowledge of the teachings of Christ * * * to the close of the Second Century, were generally derived from tradition, and not from writings. The Old Testament is still the great store-house from which Christian teachers derived the sources of consolation and conviction!

I WILL TRANSFORM u!

YOU CAN FIND ME IN THE ETHER!

Zues rained, their crops grew! Zeus thundered, he was angry! A battle was lost, they had no sacrificed enough! A battle was won, they dedicated a trophy to Zeus Tropaios! From beginning to end Zeus has been unseen, operating the causal system of the universe in mysterious ways, and underlying ever event! He is a strange and remote force focused on our world and causing it to be as it is! The universe displays the justice of Zeus. And IT IS TOUGH JUSTICE! Neither Homer nor the tragedians nor the Philosophers thought they had his measure. Even a philosopher, Cleanthes the Stoic, might compose a hymn to him as he struggled to grasp something of Zeus's place in, or rather slightly outside, our world in the ether somehow!

QUOTE OF THE DAY

The wicked shall be judged in Gehenna until the righteous say concerning them. We have seen enough! Gehenna a day in which the impious will be burned! After the last judgment Gehenna exists no longer! There will hereafter be no Gehenna!

PUNISHMENT & DELIVERANCE

Chastisement, punishment, The trimming of the luxuriant branches of a tree or vine to improve it and make it fruitful. The act of clipping or pruning-restriction, restraint, reproof, check, chastisement. The kind of punishment which tends to the improvement of the criminal is what the Greek philosophers called kolasis or chastisement, correction. Pruning, checking, punishment, chastisement, correction. Do we want to know what was uppermost in the minds of those who formed the word for punishment? The Latin poena or punio, to punish, the root pu in Sanscrit, which means to cleanse, to purify, tells us what the Latin derivation was originally formed, not to express mere striking or torture, but cleansing, correcting, delivering from the stain of sin! For the natural or accidental evils of others no one gets angry, or admonishes, or teaches, or punishes (kolazei) them, but we pity those afflicted with such misfortune * * * for if O Sacrates, if you will consider what is the design of punishing (kolazein) the wicked, this of itself will show you that men think virtue something that may be acquired; for no one punishes (kolazei) the wicked, looking to the past only simply for the wrong he has done-this is, no one does this thing who does not act like a wild beast; desiring only revenge, without thought. Hence, he who seeks to punish for the sake of the past wrong deed, * * * but for the sake of the future, that neither the man himself who is punished may do wrong again, nor any other who has seen him chastised. And he who entertains this thought must believe that virtue may be taught, and he punishes (kolazei) for the purpose of deterring from wickedness!

KING LOUIS XIV

CLICK