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PROPOSITION XXXVII.

PROVING THE DOCTRINE FROM TRADITION, AMONG THE ANCIENT AMERICANS.

WITH respect to the aborigines of this vast continent, there are various conjectures. The immense distance of almost every part of that quarter of the globe from any of the other three,' and the certainty of inhabitants being found in it when first discovered, give rise to various theories upon this interesting subject.

Some suppose that South America was at first peopled either by the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, or the Carthaginians: those ancient commercial powers of the Asiatic and African continents, whose maritime adventurers, overtaken by tempests, or impelled by other causes, shot across the Atlantic ocean, upon the shores of the new world, to their own astonishment and wonder.---This is plausible, but uncertain.

Others suppose that in the very early and unsettled state of human society, when hordes and tribes wandered without any fixed place of abode, a race may have migrated from the neighbourhood of Caucasus, or from other parts of Scythia, and pursuing their course toward the northern continent, had passed the small chain of islands now known to exist between the two continents, at Belring's Streights, and contributed their pro

portion towards the population of the new world. Some circumstances in their customs and manners seem to establish this fact. The Americans, according to the custom of the early Asiatics, called their emperors or kings by the title of the Children of the Sun and Moon. In particular, their worship of the sun, their belief of the doctrine of the Trinity, and that of the Metempsychosis, (which doctrines, we know, originated in Asia,) and these titles of the rulers, and these doctrines, have been found in America from the very earliest period.

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The historian Hornius would incline to persuade us, that the word Manca or Mancu, recorded in the traditional books of the ancient Peruvians, has reference to Manchew, the general name of the race of Tartars, and that Masatecæ, one of the four nations of New Spain, and Massachusetæ, a colony of New England, and the ancient Massagetæ, are originally the same. But this is left to the decision of the learned. mere sound of words is not altogether sufficient to establish their legitimate etymology; and bare etymology is not sufficient to establish the certainty of religious doctrines. The similarity, however, of the horrible sacrifices of human victims, practised both by the ancient Scythians and Mexicans, taken in connection with the conjectural emigrations, the coincidence of the worship of the sun, the etymology of words, and the human

sacrifices, go a great way to establish facts. The shocking account of these sacrifices given by Acosta, in his authentic History of South America, cannot be read without horror; and to this day a striking similarity is found in many particulars which relate to religion, among the idolatrous inhabitants of Asia and America. That portion, however, of the theological system of the ancient idolatrous Americans, to which we wish to direct the more particular attention of the reader, is contained in the following passage, where Father Acosta, in pious indignation, acquaints us, that "the Devil, after his manner, hath brought a Trinity into their idolatry; for the three images of the sun, called Apomti, Churunti, and Intiquaoqui, are terms that signify Father and Lord Sun, the Son Sun, and the Brother Sun. In like manner, they named the three images of Chuquilla, which is the god that rules the region of the air."-But, according to this writer, they go a step farther than the acknowledgment of a mere triad of deity, and worship a direct trinity in unity: for "in Cuquisaco there is a certain oratory where they worship a great idol, whom they call Tanga-tanga, which signifies one in three, and three in one."*

Of these three triads, the first very much resembles the Triplasios Mithras, or threefold power

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*Acosta's History of the Indies.

of God in the sun, adored by the Persians; and the second is parallel to the Jupiter Pater, Jupiter Soter, and Jupiter Ultor, of the Greeks and Romans; or if the reader chooses rather to understand it physically, in respect to the etherial element, this American Eendra may be the Jupiter Tonans, Jupiter Serenus, and Jupiter Pluvius, all which names are respectively conferred upon him by ancient writers: but the third is an evident perversion of the dogma of a purer theology, handed traditionally down through a channel long since forgotten, from those holy patriarchs to whom the eternal Father was pleased to reveal the awful secrets of that nature, which, without such a revelation, it is utterly impossible for finite beings to fathom; the stupendous mystery of a trinity of hypostases in the unity of the Divine Essence.*

* Throughout the last part, which treats of the doctrine by tradition in the heathen world, Maurice has been the chief guide, and his language often used without quotation. The author thinks it but fair to make this public acknowledgement as a tribute due to the merit of that work.

PROPOSITION XXXVIII.

PROVING THE DOCTRINE FROM THE SENTIMENTS OF THE CABBALA, AND OTHER DOCUMENTS OF DIRECT EVIDENCE, BESIDES THE SCRIPTURES, OF ITS BEING KNOWN IN THE CHURCH FROM THE EARLIEST PERIODS UNTIL THE PRESENT DAY.

HAVING traced the doctrine, by tradition, through the different quarters of the globe, we now proceed to trace it in a direct line from the earliest periods until the present day, by arguments different from any that have been hitherto adduced, that the reader may be satisfied that the doctrine has been held by the church in all ages.

The view of the doctrine which we have already taken in the foregoing part of this Essay, when treating of it according to revelation, traces it from Adam to Noah, and from Noah to Moses, and through the Scriptures from the beginning of Genesis to the end of the book of Revelation. But the view we now take of it is by another medium, so that the one argument will strengthen the other. This last view is according to the sentiments of the authors of the Jewish Cabbala upon the doctrine; a work held very sacred among the Jews in every age, and to which they at present pay the most profound deference.

This work, called the Cabbala, is the oldest human composition among the Jews, and is evi

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