cepts of the great Confucius, as divided, at this day, like the Indians, into two grand religious fects, if, in fact, the name of religious may be bestowed upon those who have fo far deviated from the pure primæval devotion of their ancestors, as either, on the one hand, to be plunged into the groffeft materialism, or, on the other, into the most complicated and multifarious idolatry. It is furely no small honour for Christianity to be able to bring not a few proofs of its grand and fundamental truths from the very creed and practice of its most inveterate oppofers; to find its pure principles lying dormant in the defpumated and feculent drofs of paganism, and the hallowed spark of that original flame which blazed upon the altar erected by Noah, on his defcent from Ararat, occafionally beaming forth amidst the embers fmoaking upon the polluted fhrines of falfe and fictitious deities.

The first and most ancient of thefe fects is called the fect of immortals, and the founder of it was LAO-KIUN, who flourished before Confucius, and about the year 600, preceding the Christian æra. Although the principles of Epicurus have been attributed to this great philofopher, and though the Fff followers

This

followers of Lao-kiun at this day are, as has
been obferved, rank materialists, yet, from
the account of his writings given by Couplet
and Le Compte, there is the greatest reason
to fuppofe that his original doctrines have
been groffly corrupted and mifrepresented
by his difciples. They are called immortals,
say these writers, from a certain liquor, which
LAO-KIUN invented, and which he affirmed
would, if drank, make men immortal.
has every appearance of being an allegory, and
hereby may be meant no other than the AM-
REETA, or ambrofial nectar of the brahmins.
They are notorioufly guilty of the worship of
dæmons, and temples of great fumptuousness
and magnitude are erected to those dæmons
in various parts of the empire. It was the
leading feature in LAO-KIUN's system of phi-
lofophical theology, and a fentence which
he continually repeated as the foundation
of all true wisdom, that TAO, the eternal
reafon, produced ONE; One produced Two;
Two produced THREE; and THREE produced all
things: a moft fingular axiom for a heathen
philofopher, and, as Le Compte, from
whofe memoirs of China I have verbatim.
copied the above fentence, observes re-

lative

lative to it, a very evident proof that he must have had fome obfcure notions of a Trinity.*

The other great fect of China is that of the Bhudfoifts, or those who worship the Indian god Bhudda under the foftened name of Fo, as, from not having either B or D among the characters that form their alphabet, they were unable to pronounce the prior appellation. The Bhudfoists have been denominated downright atheists; the contrary, however, may be fairly inferred from the practice of those who worship a stone as the image of God. That our British Druids were a race of eastern philofophers of the fect of the Indian Bhudda, I mean the elder, who was the fame identical perfon as the Phoenician Taut, the Egyptian Hermes, the Woden of the Scandinavians, and the Mercury of the Greeks and Romans, I hope, fhortly, to produce very clear evidence in an exprefs treatise upon the antiquity of Stonehenge. I had hopes of being able to compress the fubject fufficiently to form a chapter of this volume of Indian Antiquities; but I found myfelf obliged, occafionally, to diverge fo far from subjects immediately

Fff 2

• Le Compte's Memoirs of China, p. 314.

immediately connected with India, and to take fuch an extenfive range, in proof of my pofitions, through every region of Asia, or rather of the earth, that fcarcely an octavo volume, and much less a chapter of such a volume, would be fufficient to contain the refult of the inquiry. Renewed

health, returning leifure, and a fomewhat better income than what arifes from a small curacy, may enable me, hereafter, to finish this infant work, which muft neceffarily be attended with expenfive engravings.

The Bhudfoifts of China have had the kill to render their real opinions less easy of difcuffion, by adopting the artifice made ufe of by the ancient Egyptian and Greek philofophers, to veil their myfterious tenets, that of a twofold doctrine; the one EXOTERIC, or external, the other ESOTERIC, or interior. If, however, they are at all acquainted with the maxims of the genuine, that is, the elder Bhudda of India; for, I believe the fecond to be a mere fiction fpringing up out of the Eastern system of the metempfychofis and divine emanations; they must have fome ideas of a triune deity, intended in their motley theology; for, the Phoenician Taut, their famous Bhudda, if Suidas upon

that

4

that word may be credited, had his firname of Trismegift, from his decided affertions on that point of faith. Hence too his caduceus, which I have had engraved for the more particular infpection of the reader, is adorned with that old Egyptian fymbol of deity, the globe, wings, and ferpent. But, what is ftill more remarkable, this caduceus is described by the ancients as producing three leaves together, a facred trefoil, inti mating the threefold distinction in the deity, for which he was fo ftrenuous an advocate. Thus Homer, in the hymn to Mercury, calls it ραβδον κρυσείην ΤΡΙΠΕΤΗΛΟΝ, the golden

THREE-LEAFED wand.*

It is now high time that we' fhould leave the Eastern confines of Afia, and, bending our progress towards its Western extremities, resume our investigation of the feveral Trinities of Greece.

After the numerous quotations, in the preceding pages, from the Grecian philofophers most eminent in the pagan world, quotations which demonftrate they were by

no

means unimpreffed with notions on this point, fimilar to thofe entertained by the more ancient fages of Afia; I shall, perhaps,

Fff3

Vide Hymn. in Mercurium, line 72.