Eureka Vol 3 2.Pdf

EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE. 129 before the throne. The reader, therefore, may easily perceive the fitness of the historian's style, in continuing: "The throne of the Almighty was darkened by a cloud of martyrs, saints, and angels, the objects of popular veneration; while the Virgin Mary was invested with the name and honors of a goddess." They are,indeed, a cloud darkening the Al- mighty's throne, so that no worshipper of daemonial ghosts, daemonial relics, and daemonial images, can see that throne, or find transmission for a single sigh. Such were the many new deities raised to the rank of celestial and invincible protectors of the Roman empire. The intelligent reader will know that they exist only in the intoxicated imaginations of their de- luded worshippers, as do the phantoms seen by an inebriate in delirium tremens. Immortality is neither innate nor disembodied. "The Deity only hath it," Paul says; and he only bestows it upon obedient believers of the truth as it is in the Jesus he preached; and that bestowal is upon men and women bodily existing; and by clothing their bodies with incor- ruptibility and deathlessness after resurrection from among the dead. This is what the scripture teaches in opposition to the mythologies of the ancient and modern worlds. If "the simplicity which is in Christ" had not been departed from, there would have been no catholic and protestant daemonialism. The dogma of inherent immortality in sin's flesh would have remained with the old pagans; but the faith was departed from by those who ought to have been its earnest defenders. They abandoned the word, and substituted the vain imaginations of the heathen, which are all resolvable into the reasonings and speculations of the brain, un- enlightened by revelation of any kind. They became polytheists in spite of revelation; and polytheists they will remain till Babylon falls; and the divine reprobation is stamped upon its idolatry in its destruction by the judgment to be executed by the saints. The clergy, who are in all ages the blind adherents and patrons of pro- fitable errors, came to perceive that this polytheistic daemonialism would be more valuable to them than gold or precious stones. This stimulated them to a fraudulent multiplication of daemonial relics, such as the bones, hair, teeth, toe nails, blood, and so forth, of some fictitious saint or martyr; all of which were declared to be holy and endowed with miraculous powers for the healing of the sick, and even for the resurrection of the dead. "Without much regard for truth or probability," says Gibbon, "they invented names for skeletons, and actions for names. The fame of the apostles, and of the holy men who had imitated their virtues, was darkened by religious fiction. To the invincible band of genuine and primitive martyrs, they added myriads of imaginary heroes who had never existed, except in the fancy of crafty or credulous legen- 130 EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE. daries; and there is reason to suspect that Tours might not be the only diocese in which the bones of a malefactor were adored instead of those of a saint." But, he believes that "the progress of superstition would have been much less rapid and victorious if the faith of the people had not been as- sisted by the seasonable aid of visions and miracles" (termed by Paul, "all power, and signs, and wonders of falsehood") "to ascertain the authenticity and virtue of the most suspicious relics." He then gives an account of how the remains of Stephen were discovered by the appear- ance of Gamaliel to one Lucian, a presbyter of Jerusalem, in the reign of Theodosius II., A.D. 421-460. The ghost named Gamaliel revealed the place of Stephen's burial. When his alleged coffin came into view, the earth trembled, and an odor such as that of Paradise was smelt, which instantly cured the various diseases of seventy-three of the assistants. These fragrant daemonial relics were transported in clerical procession to a church-bazaar constructed in their honor on Mount Zion; and the minute particles of those relics, a drop of blood, or the scrapings of a bone, were acknowledged in almost every province of the Roman world to possess a divine and miraculous virtue. Augustine, bishop of Hippo, a renowned saint of the Apostasy, and the great exemplar of Mr. Elliott's "sealed ones," attests the innumerable prodigies performed in Africa by the daemonial relics of the catholic St. Stephen. In his work, the City of God, he enumerates about seventy miracles, of which three were resur- rections from the dead, in the space of two years, and within the limits of his own diocese! Paul had such "saints" as this Augustine before his mind when he wrote to Timothy that in later times there would be "seducing spirits, with teachings concerning daemonials; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared as with a hot iron." If we enlarge our view to all the dioceses and all the saints of the catholic world, it will not be easy to calculate the fables and the errors which is- sued from this inexhaustible source. "Whatever might be the condition of vulgar souls in the long inter- val between the dissolution and the resurrection of their bodies, it was evident," says Gibbon, satirically, "that the superior spirits (or deified ghosts) of the saints and martyrs did not consume that portion of their existence in silent and inglorious sleep. To the pious worshippers, it was evident that these daemonial spirits enjoyed the lively and active con- sciousness of their happiness, their virtues, and their powers, and that they had already secured the possession of their eternal reward. The en- largement of their intellectual faculties surpassed the measure of the human imagination, since it was proved by the (alleged) experience of their worshippers that they were capable of hearing and understanding EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE. 131 the various petitions of their numerous votaries, who, in the same moment of time, but in the most distant parts of the world, invoked the name and assistance of Stephen or of Martin." The confidence of their suppliants was based on the supposition that the saints, by daemonial transformation were reigning with Christ, and were warmly interested in the prosperity of the catholic church; and that the individuals who imitated the examples of their faith and piety, were the peculiar and fa- vorite objects of their most tender regard.They imagined that the daemonials viewed, with partial affection, the places which had been conse- crated by their birth, their residence, their death, their burial, or the possession of their relics. In short, as the daemonials of the aerial were the mere fictions of disordered imaginations, the vagaries of the human mind in its passion and desires were ascribed to them. Thus, they were as proud, avaricious, and revengeful as their votaries, neither more nor less. As all they had to say to their worshippers was said or interpreted by lying and hypocritical priests and monks, they testified their grateful approbation of the liberality of their votaries; and hurled the sharpest bolts of punishment against those impious wretches who violated their magnificent shrines or disbelieved their supernatural power. "The imagination, which had been raised by a painful effort to the contemplation and worship of the Universal Cause, eagerly embraced such inferior objects of adoration as were more proportioned to its gross conceptions and imperfect faculties. The sublime and simple theology of the primitive Christians was gradually corrupted; and the monarchy of heaven, already clouded by metaphysical subtleties, was degraded by the intro- duction of a popular mythology, which tended to restore the reign of polytheism."— Gibbon. Thus, contemporary with the sounding of the fifth and sixth trumpets the latter of which did not cease to sound till A.D. 1794, the daemons of pagan Rome recovered their places in the aerial under new names; and became the patrons and protectors of the catholic apostasy. These trumpets were terrible judgments inflicted upon mankind be- cause of their daemonolatry and idolatry. Protestantism appeared on the stage of action about the time of, or a few years before, the killing of the third of the men by the fourth angel power. But, though it protested against some catholic abominations of the grosser sort, it still clung tenaciously to the beatified existence of the daemonials in the aerial. It holds to all the absurdities which flow from the dogma of hereditary immortality, and the disembodied existence of the immortal essence after death. It erects statues in honor of its departed great, and dedicates them with clerical prayers and other ceremonies; and proclaims the dead to be alive in heaven, whence they look down with pleasure and 132 EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE. grateful satisfaction upon the demonstrations of their admirers. Protestant daemonolatry is no more agreeable to heaven than the dae- mon worship of the catholic world. Behold the vengeance that desolates the protestant South, and that oppresses the protestant North with death and perplexity. These sectarian sections, being composed of all kinds of polytheists, are being plagued for reasons similiar to those which caused the locust-torment, and the loosing of the four trans-Euphratean angel- powers. Erecting statues, and memorial windows in churches, in honor of "immortal souls in heaven," is worship, homage, or reverence, and they who practise such things are as much guilty of "worshipping the demonials," as are they who bow down before the image of a "saint." 12. "Idols" The All Seeing Spirit, in ch.

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