48 
THE MITHRATIC 
aged persons; fraternal affection for the whole human species ; 
and a compassionate tenderness even for the brute creation.” 
This divine code, breathing such general happiness over the 
whole earth, seems to have been too simple and benign to remain 
long unperverted by human fancies and human passions; and 
to excite our astonishment as well as regret, we find that those 
whose guardian care ought to have preserved it in purity, were 
the first to confuse and destroy it, by the introduction of types of 
omnipotence, which they caused to be worshipped under various 
forms, and with as many misleading ceremonies. When the 
corruption of the spiritual system of divinity took place, the 
first step in the path of darkness was to identify the sun with 
the Deity ; regarding it as the most perfect emblem' of the 
Supreme Being, from whose genial influence all nature appeared 
to receive birth or re-animation. The high priests of this new 
doctrine, in the midst of the confusion of ideas it wrought, 
would still talk of a superior God, the one eternal Ormuzd, who 
was the source of all others, and creator of this very sun, which 
was his emblem, and therefore animated by a mediatory intelli¬ 
gence, known to men by the name of Mithra. His orb, together 
with six of the planets, filled in like manner with each its 
celestial habitant, was supposed to revolve for ever round the 
throne of the Most High. Certain peculiar powers, and influ¬ 
ences on the fates of men, were imagined to belong to these sub¬ 
ordinate deities; and hence prayers and rites were devised, 
suitable to their supposed character, and proffered up to them 
accordingly. Here, then, began all the idolatry of the world. They 
first worshipped these seven tutelary divinities, in the orbs which 
were their Sacella or tabernacles; and then worshipped the orbs 
themselves, as the body of the celestial Being, which it animated 
