247 TESTIMONIES FROM THE SACRED PHILOSOPHY OF THE BEFORE speaking of Christian writers, we must return to those Jewish authors who have conceived so many profound ideas relative to the literal sense of the sacred books. The first, if not in date, at least in the importance of their writings, are Aristobulus and Philo. The contemporary of Ptolemy Evergetus, Aristobulus, received into the Judaic School of Alexandria a system of interpretation which allowed him to admit into the teachings of his nation that which was most remarkable in the other doctrines. He regarded all the facts and details narrated in the inspired books of the Jews, as so many sacred allegories concealing a spiritual sense under the literal. Philo advanced still further in the same path. Those who are astonished at Swedenborg's Commentaries on Genesis, and who would reproach that author with madness, ought, to be consistent, to regard in the same light the numerous explanations which Philo has given of the books of Moses. His idea on the creation of the world, the distinction which he makes between the active and the passive cause, are such as we have already explained. According to him, the Logos or Word is the image of God, and the means by which He acts upon the universe. It was by it, that visible things were created. He is the God of creation, and as a type and representative of all minds, even of those of mortals, He is the type and primitive Man. (Life of Moses, vii.) These are unequivocal resemblances. Human wisdom (adds the Jewish philosopher), is a reflection of the Divine. It receives nothing supernatural from the created world. Its knowledge is an immediate gift from God, a sort of intuition, which is granted only to those who free themselves from the corporeal senses. The human soul is composed of two principles; the one rational, the other irrational. The former proceeds from God, the latter from inferior spirits. Man has fallen, but he may recover from this fall, by combating evils. The celestial region, in the idea of Philo (De Somniis, p. 589), is a populous city, filled with inhabitants gifted with immortal souls. The least wise remain attached to earth, others are made the servants of God; they are demons, angels, or messengers, a most suitable name, says Philo, for these holy beings transmit to the children, the commands of the Father, and to the Father, the prayers of the children, mediums between God and man; they serve us in this lower world as interpreters. Shortly before the Christian era there were, according to Josephus,* three sects among the Jews. That of the Essenians excelled the other two in the strictness of its morals, and sublimity of its principles. There were among them those who boasted of their knowledge of the future, less by their study of the Sacred Books, than by the care which they took to sanctify themselves, and it rarely happened, said the Jewish historian, that they were deceived in their predictions. Here is, then, a point of belief in the last church, sanctioned, so to speak, by these austere Jewish philosophers, who may be called the Stoics of Palestine; and who were held in so much honour by the ancients, that the Socinians have boldly declared that Jesus Christ owes the sublimity of his morality to the fact of his having belonged to that sect. The doctrine of the Rabbis, which, to speak correctly, forms the Hebraïc Mythology, and which is regarded as the Essenian philosophy in regard to the existence of God, the creation of the universe, and morality, develops the same principles as we have brought forward. Such an analogy will not appear surprising, if we admit, with Mosheim, that the opinions of the Rabbis, the Essenians, and the Therapeutians, were derived from that oriental mysticism which we have recognised as the religion of the Most Ancient Church. The Cabala, that is to say, oral transmission, in spite of its abuses and superstitions, is a science in perfect accordance with the religion of the Hebraistic Gnostics. It taught that every thing proceeds from God by means of radiation. † At each line we find Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Plato, grossly disfigured, it is true, but closely followed in their principles. Theurgy, sprung from the ideas of the Gnostics and Cabalists, brought with it devination and diverse superstitions; and, if we here invoke its testimony, it is less to adopt its conclusions than to shew that the ideas which have occupied us in the course of this work, have not wanted approvers among the ancients, since, like all truths which are abused, they have given place to fanciful sciences. Thus, from judicial astrology, we arrive at astronomy; from magic and the cabala, we are led to believe that there is an order of supernatural things to which reason may attain: error can only follow truth. Error is a distorted idea, and from it we arrive at the real truth. It is difficult not to recognize the Truth in that primitive light of the Cabalists, the One-Intelligence whence have emanated, according to their diverse degrees of perfection, in a descending scale, * Jewish Antiquities, ch. x. + History of the Gnostics, by James Mutter, vol. 1, p. 105. all created beings. The profound theory of degrees is there. We find it in the fundamental ideas of the Cabala, that all which exists, is only a condensation of the primitive material substance—that there are spirits—that man is a microcosm-that extasis is the means by which a knowledge of supernatural things is communicated. The Cabala, indited by Simeon, who lived some years before the ruin of Jerusalem, contained, under allegorical expressions, some fundamental truths. Basnage thus gives a summary of them :- "The Cabalist believed in three sorts of worlds represented under the figures of three men, namely, the terrestrial man, the celestial, and the archetype." It is easy to see here the theory of degrees and the idea of the GodMan giving His form to all which proceeds from Him. The Cabalist believed further, that each of these three men was endowed with all the parts of the human body, because they imagined that these parts were so many symbols suitable for representing the operations of the Divinity. This method of depicting the operations of the Divinity by human figures, is also that of the Egyptians, "who," says Basnage, "represented Jupiter, or the Sun, and the effects which he produced, by the figure of a man." If any one is surprised that we should quote here the facts of the Cabala as proofs, we answer, that the Cabala, created by extatics, offers even in its extravagances, irrefutable testimony to the spiritual communications in which it has originated. Reduced to fundamental principles, it is in perfect accordance with that which enlightened reason declares in the Revelations of the New Jerusalem. These are the principles which we invoke-they can brave the severity of criticism. They prove that truth, whatever may be its origin, has the same character among all men. If the absurd details of the Cabalistic mythology, at once so complicated and so ridiculous, are brought forward to weaken the value of these points of resemblance, we answer that there is no truth so simple in its origin which does not equally become a confused error in the hands of blind enthusiasts who are carried away by it. It is, then, possible that the Cabala may have had the fate of the primary truths which have served for a basis to all philosophers; it is possible that the love of the marvellous may, in the course of time, have brought it into ridicule. In that case, the science which accords with the general principles of this theology is not responsible for the absurdities which have mingled with it. If, on the contrary, the details added to the primitive Cabala have been the result of individual revelations, necessarily as variable as the character and opinions of each of those who have received them, there [Enl. Series.-No. 18, vol. ii.] 2 I is nothing to be concluded thence against the enlightened theory, which, whilst it adopts the primitive revelation, is not, on that account, obliged to subscribe to private revelations. The extravagance of these latter is not an objection of which the disciples of the New Jerusalem need be afraid. So far from it, their theory serves to develop fundamental truths, and, at the same time, rejects superadded extravagances, whilst it reveals their suspected origin. Christianity, at its first establishment, regarded as religious truths those which rested on ancient revelation, and consequently a perfect accordance is seen between the writings of the primitive fathers of the church and those of the Platonic philosophers, whose authority we have brought forward in support of our argument. There lived at Rome, during the early ages of Christianity, under the pontificate of St. Clement, Hermas, the author of the book entitled "The Shepherd,” which was regarded by some of the ancient fathers as a canonical book. It is thought to be this author whom St. Paul mentions among the illustrious Romans. (Rom. xvi. 14.) His book contains a certain number of visions, of which the theory of the New Jerusalem gives us the sense. In the first of the visions of Hermas that writer saw heaven opened before him; human beings appeared to him in their bodily form; one of them announced to him the end of the world in the Apocalyptic style of St. John. That there may have been here something of imagination, we agree; but a mind wrought upon by the reading of ascetic books, and who sees in ecstatic representation what it has read before, may be in error, but is not on that account a deceiver. The impression received may be doubtful; it is simply the moral truth which may be changed by an intercourse, more or less pure, with intermediate spirits. In this vision Hermas, like Swedenborg, sees the pure spirits-interpreters of the Divine will disappear from his sight towards the east. The second vision contains nothing striking. In the third, the church appeared to him under the form of a building. The stones here represent the truths of faith; the water on which it was constructed, truth in general. The fourth vision contains the recital of an apparition in which, as with St. John, the events in the other world are figured by material forms. In a part of the same book entitled "Precepts," the author gives a summary of the principal rules of Christian morality. In the sixth precept, he declares that each man has two angels, one good and the other evil. The first inclines us to virtue, the last to vice. Our dispositions reveal to us which is with us. In conclusion, the visions of Hermas were in accordance with the austerity of his life; he joined fasting and prayer to seclusion. Bergier says that the book of Hermas is exempt from errors, and that it is a monument of the sanctity of the manners of the primitive church. There were among the admirers of early Christianity, men imbued with the philosophical ideas then prevalent. Some heathen philosophers did not subscribe to the truths of Christianity, but sought to combat them in order to strengthen the former in their conviction, as well as to repel the attacks of the latter. The fathers of the church saw themselves obliged to speak in the language of philosophy. The first Christian teachers represent God in space as a corporeal being; succeeding ones adopted the idea of an infinite extension, which led to a belief in absolute immateriality. All admit a general and particular providence, and the government of the world through the ministry of angels. According to them evil proceeds partly from the human will, and partly from the influence of spirits. Being produced contrary to the order of God, it is only permitted. These spirits are spiritual beings provided with a subtile body. St. Justin, known by the enlightened tolerance of his opinions, has an additional point of conformity with Swedenborg-that of recognising in God, form and substance. "Every substance," says he, “which cannot be submitted to another on account of its imponderability, has yet a body which constitutes its essence. If we call God incorporeal, it is not because He is so, but because we are accustomed to appropriate certain names to certain things, to designate, as reverentially as possible, the attributes of the Divinity. Thus, because the Essence of Divinity cannot be perceived and is not sensible to us, we call it incorporeal." 66 66 We have too often quoted Origen and Tertullian to return to them; but we will dwell for a short time upon one of the finest geniuses of antiquity, that is, St. Augustine. "There is," says this great man, an interior sense which sees, by a sort of incorporeal light, the objects which the external senses cannot seize." Here is an avowal of spiritual communications. Truth," says he, "is the cause of intelligence." This is to declare, in a lucid maxim, the relations that we have recognized between God and man. Order is good, perfection; evil is disorder. It is thus that we have regarded the admirable laws of Divine Providence. We shall continue to quote this father without pointing out the resemblances, which the reader can do for himself. "We may easily attribute to the true God all that heathen theology ascribes to the world and its parts." "The difference between good and evil angels does not arise from their nature, but from their will." "The true cause of the happiness of good angels is, that they attach them |