epithet piter, or father, having been applied to the
demi-ourgos of Plato, gave rise to an ambiguity which caused
an enquiry to be made respecting the son of this father. In
the opinion of the philosophers the son was understanding,
Nous and Logos, from which the Latins made their Verbum.
And thus we clearly perceive the origin of the eternal
father and of the Verbum his son, proceeding from him (Mens
Ex Deo nata, says Macrobius): the oenima or spiritus mundi,
was the Holy Ghost; and it is for this reason that Manes,
Pasilides, Valentinius, and other pretended heretics of the
first ages, who traced things to their source, said, that
God the Father was the supreme inaccessible light (that of
the heaven, the primum mobile, or the aplanes); the Son the
secondary light resident in the sun, and the Holy Ghost the
atmosphere of the earth (See Beausob. vol. II, p. 586):
hence, among the Syrians, the representation of the Holy
Ghost by a dove, the bird of Venus Urania, that is of the
air. The Syrians (says Nigidius de Germaico) assert that a
dove sat for a certain number of days on the egg of a fish,
and that from this incubation Venus was born: Sextus
Empiricus also observes (Inst. Pyrrh. lib. 3, c. 23) that
the Syrians abstain from eating doves; which intimates to us
a period commencing in the sign Pisces, in the winter
solstice. We may farther observe, that if Chris comes from
Harisch by a chin, it will signify artificer, an epithet
belonging to the sun. These variations, which must have
embarrassed the ancients, prove it to be the real type of
Jesus, as had been already remarked in the time of
Tertullian. "Many, says this writer, suppose with greater
probability that the sun is our God, and they refer us to
the religion of the Persians." Apologet. c. 16.

** See a curious ode to the sun, by Martianus Capella,
translated by Gebelin.

Here a great murmur having arisen among all the Christian groups, the
Lamas, the Mussulmans and the Indians called them to order, and the
orator went on to finish his discourse:

"You know at present," said he, "how the rest of this system was
composed in the chaos and anarchy of the three first centuries; what a
multitude of singular opinions divided the minds of men, and armed them
with an enthusiasm and a reciprocal obstinac