Britain ... - Blue-Lite

444 ORIGIN, ANTIQUITY, AND
that in the Eleusinian Mysteries "they perpetually inculcated
that it was the chief business of the Mysteries to restore the
soul to its original purity, and made every thing tend to show
the necessity of virtue-" yet he maintains that these very
Mysteries were the sink of all iniquity. But the clue which
leads to the cause of the opprobrium cast upon them, is easily
to be found. Their secrets were never revealed till the later
ages, when after their suppression, like that of the Order of the
Knights Templars, they were falsely accused, from interested
and mistaken motives,of deeds which had never been committed
beneath the dark veil of their midnight secrecy.
Were these the days of ancient Greece, Brother Oliver would
not so easily escape for his vituperative desecration of the
Mysteries as ^Eschylus did, when he was threatened in the
theatre by the people to be torn in pieces, for daring even to
offer a slight disrespect to those institutions ; nor could he
plead the excuse which saved the poet, namely, ignorance,
and uninitiation.
Nor must be here forgotten the great Reformer and Archi-
magus of the Persian Mysteries, Zoroaster, whose sacred
cavern is said to have been richly adorned with mysterious
emblems and astronomical figures of dazzling splendour. It
is not to be denied that this sublime philosopher was, like
Pythagoras, a perfect Mason. The three columns Wisdom,
Strength, and Beauty, brought to perfection by the Greek
sage, were to be found in the Elysian sanctuary of the Persian,
which was supported by those of Eternity, Fecundity, and
Power j
all equally emblematical of the attributes of Omnipotence.*
That this Zoroaster, whose renown has been extended
wherever knowledge has made her appearance, was a Jew, and
a disciple of Daniel at Babylon, as Hyde, Prideaux, and others
have asserted, is an idle and ridiculous fiction, borrowed from
the Arabian writers, which cannot for a moment obtain credence
with any one well studied " in antiquity. Even Plato,
the first Grecian writer who mentions Zoroaster, speaks of him
* " It was conceived of the Father, that all things should be divided into
three ; and all things were so divided. The Trinity is composed of Virtue,
Wisdom, and Truth, which knows all things."
Zoroa. Orac.