her country, to a life without end, placed
virtue and perfection in absolute immobility, in the destruction of all
sentiment, in the abnegation of physical organs, in the annihilation of
all our being; whence resulted fasts, penances, macerations, solitude,
contemplations, and all the practices of the deplorable delirium of the
Anchorites.

XII. Brahmism, or Indian System.

"And such, too, were the founders of the Indian System; who, refining
after Zoroaster on the two principles of creation and destruction,
introduced an intermediary principle, that of preservation, and on
their trinity in unity, of Brama, Chiven, and Vichenou, accumulated the
allegories of their ancient traditions, and the alembicated subtilities
of their metaphysics.

"These are the materials which existed in a scattered state for
many centuries in Asia; when a fortuitous concourse of events and
circumstances, on the borders of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean,
served to form them into new combinations.

XIII. Christianity, or the Allegorical Worship of the Sun, under the
cabalistical names of Chrish-en, or Christ, and Ye-sus or Jesus.

"In constituting a separate nation, Moses strove in vain to defend it
against the invasion of foreign ideas. An invisible inclination, founded
on the affinity of their origin, had constantly brought back the Hebrews
towards the worship of the neighboring nations; and the commercial and
political relations which necessarily existed between them, strengthened
this propensity from day to day. As long as the constitution of the
state remained entire, the coercive force of the government and the laws
opposed these innovations, and retarded their progress; nevertheless
the high places were full of idols; and the god Sun had his chariot and
horses painted in the palaces of the kings, and even in the temples of
Yahouh; but when the conquests of the sultans of Nineveh and Babylon had
dissolved the bands of civil power, the people, left to themselves and
solicited by their conquerors, restrained no longer their inclination
for profane opinions, and they were publicly established in Judea.
First, the Assyrian colonies, which came and occupied the lands of the
tribes, filled the kingdom of Samaria with dogmas of the Magi, which
very soon penetrated into the kingdom of Judea. Afterwards, Jerusalem
being subjugated, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Arabs, entering this
defenceless country, introduced their opinions;