The History of Initiation - The Masonic Trowel

24 HISTORY OF INITIATION.
institutions which they upheld, finally sank to rise no
more.
These united causes were the precursors of their
destruction ;
for the reality having appeared, the types,
whether Jewish, or heathen, were no longer necessary.
In the year 364, says Zosimus, 82 Valentinian published a
law forbidding nocturnal sacrifices, for the purpose of
preventing the indecencies which were perpetrated in
the Mysteries. But the pro-consul of Greece, Pretextatus,
thinking that the law would impel the people to desperation,
if they were prevented from performing the sacred
Mysteries, upon which, as they believed, the welfare of
83
mankind solely depended, permitted them to be celebrated,
provided everything was done decently and in
order. Subsequently, however, Theodosius sent Cynegius
into Egypt, with orders to close the temples and
places of initiation, who executed his commission to the
letter. He shut up the temples, and prohibited the cele-
bration of the Mysteries all over the East, and even in
Alexandria itself; and finally abolished these institutions,
and every branch of the ancient and religious rites;
although it has been said, 84 and probably with some
truth, that these rites were secretly performed in Greece
and Rome, for several centuries after the Advent of
Christ, 85 under the pretext of convivial meetings. Psellus
the accuracy of this account, from the numerous instances, in his own
Scriptures, of infernal spirits being ejected at the command of Christ
and his Apostles.
83
Zos., 1. 4, p. 735.
83 The pagans entertained such a very high opinion of the Mysteries,
that one of their best writers attributes the dissolution of the Roman
polity to their suppression. He says (Zos., 1. 2. p. 671), "whilst,
therefore, the Mysteries were performed, according to the appointment
of the oracle, and as they really ought to be done, the Roman Empire
was safe, and they had, in a manner, the whole world in subjection to-
them. But the festivals having been neglected from the time that
Dioclesian
abdicated, they have decayed and sunk into oblivion."
84
Gibbon, vol.
v., p. 110.
85 The legend of initiation was subsequently interwoven into Christianity
by a sect of heretics who flourished soon after the time of the
Apostles, called the Basilideans. The founders of this sect, in imitation
of
Pythagoras, enjoined on the candidates for admission into his
school a five years' silence and ; adopting some of the astronomical
absurdities which he had learned in Egypt, engrafted them into his
system, which caused his followers to be anathematized by the
Church. Assuming Osiris to be the sun, Isis the moon, and Typhon