om evil, that is to say, from the constellation of
the serpent, from that great snake, the parent of winter, the emblem of
the Ahrimanes, or Satan of the Persians, your school masters. Yes, in
vain does your imprudent zeal consign idolaters to the torments of the
Tartarus which they invented; the whole basis of your system is only
the worship of the sun, with whose attributes you have decorated your
principal personage. It is the sun which, under the name of Horus,
was born, like your God, at the winter solstice, in the arms of the
celestial virgin, and who passed a childhood of obscurity, indigence,
and want, answering to the season of cold and frost. It is he that,
under the name of Osiris, persecuted by Typhon and by the tyrants of the
air, was put to death, shut up in a dark tomb, emblem of the hemisphere
of winter, and afterwards, ascending from the inferior zone towards the
zenith of heaven, arose again from the dead triumphant over the giants
and the angels of destruction.

"Ye priests! who murmur at this relation, you wear his emblems all over
your bodies; your tonsure is the disk of the sun; your stole is his
zodiac;* your rosaries are symbols of the stars and planets. Ye pontiffs
and prelates! your mitre, your crozier, your mantle are those of Osiris;
and that cross whose mystery you extol without comprehending it, is the
cross of Serapis, traced by the hands of Egyptian priests on the plan
of the figurative world; which, passing through the equinoxes and the
tropics, became the emblem of the future life and of the resurrection,
because it touched the gates of ivory and of horn, through which the
soul passed to heaven."

* "The Arabs," says Herodotus, "shave their heads in a
circle and about the temples, in imitation of Bacchus (that
is the sun), who shaves himself is this manner." Jeremiah
speaks also of this custom. The tuft of hair which the
Mahometans preserve, is taken also from the sun, who was
painted by the Egyptians at the winter solstice, as having
but a single hair upon his head. . . .

The robes of the goddess of Syria and of Diana of Ephesus,
from whence are borrowed the dress of the priests; have the
twelve animals of the zodiac painted on them. . . .

Rosaries are found upon all the Indian idols, constructed
more than four thousand years ago, and their use in the East
has been universal from time immemorial. . . .

The