sary man, called Sammael,
the Supreme Devil.'"[55]

In conformity with this exclusive attitude towards the rest of the human
race, the Messianic idea which forms the dominating theme of the Cabala
is made to serve purely Jewish interests. Yet in its origins this idea
was possibly not Jewish. It is said by believers in an ancient secret
tradition common to other races besides the Jews, that a part of this
tradition related to a past Golden Age when man was free from care and
evil non-existent, to the subsequent fall of Man and the loss of this
primitive felicity, and finally to a revelation received from Heaven
foretelling the reparation of this loss and the coming of a Redeemer who
should save the world and restore the Golden Age. According to Drach:

The tradition of a Man-God who should present Himself as the
teacher and liberator of the fallen human race was constantly
taught amongst all the enlightened nations of the globe. _Vetus et
constans opinio_, as Suetonius says. It is of all times and of all
places.[56]

And Drach goes on to quote the evidence of Volney, who had travelled in
the East and declared that--

The sacred and mythological traditions of earlier times had spread
throughout all Asia the belief in a great Mediator who was to come,
of a future Saviour, King, God, Conqueror, and Legislator who would
bring back the Golden Age to earth and deliver men from the empire
of evil.[57]

All that can be said with any degree of certainty with regard to this
belief is that it did exist amongst the Zoroastrians of Persia as well
as amongst the Jews. D'Herbelot, quoting Abulfaraj, shows that five
hundred years before Christ, Zerdascht, the leader of the Zoroastrians,
predicted the coming of the Messiah, at whose birth a star would appear.
He also told his disciples that the Messiah would be born of a virgin,
that they would be the first to hear of Him, and that they should bring
Him gifts.[58]

Drach believes that this tradition was taught in the ancient
synagogue,[59] thus explaining the words of St. Paul that unto the Jews
"were committed the oracles of God"[60]:

This oral doctrine, which is the Cabala, had for its object the
most sublime truths of the Faith which it brought back incessantly
to the promised Redeemer, the foundation of the whole system of the
ancient tradition.[61]

Drach further asserts that the doctrine of the Trinity