aused a fermentation in the public mind.
Nothing was thought of but the approaching end. They consulted the
hierophants and the mystical books, which differed as to the term; the
great mediator, the final judge, was expected and desired, to put an
end to so many calamities. This being was so much spoken of, that some
person finally was said to have seen him; and a first rumor of this sort
was sufficient to establish a general certainty. Popular report became
an established fact: the imaginary being was realized; and all the
circumstances of mythological tradition, being assembled around this
phantom, produced a regular history, of which it was no longer permitted
to doubt.

* According to the computation of the Seventy, the period
elapsed consisted of about 5,600 years, and this computation
was principally followed. It is well known how much, in the
first ages of the church, this opinion of the end of the
world agitated the minds of men. In the sequel, the general
councils encouraged by finding that the general
conflagration did not come, pronounced the expectation that
prevailed heretical, and its believers were called
Millenarians; a circumstance curious enough, since it is
evident from the history of the gospels that Jesus Christ
was a Millenarian, and of consequence a heretic.

"These mythological traditions recounted that, in the beginning, a woman
and a man had by their fall introduced sin and misery into the world.
(Consult plate of the Astrological Heaven of the Ancients.)

"By this was denoted the astronomical fact, that the celestial virgin
and the herdsman (Bootes), by setting heliacally at the autumnal
equinox, delivered the world to the wintry constellations, and seemed,
on falling below the horizon, to introduce into the world the genius of
evil, Ahrimanes, represented by the constellation of the Serpent.*

* "The Persians," says Chardin, "call the constellation of
the serpent Ophiucus, serpent of Eve: and this serpent
Ophiucas or Ophioneus plays a similar part in the theology
of the Phoenicians," for Pherecydes, their disciple and the
master of Pythagoras, said "that Ophioneus Serpentinus had
been chief of the rebels against Jupiter." See Mars. Ficin.
Apol. Socrat. p. m. 797, col. 2. I shall add that ephah
(with ain) signifies in Hebrew, serpent.

These traditions related that the woman had decoyed and