And you presume to say that Christianity is a thing which only commenced last week?
“Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.”
Wordsworth.
CHAPTER XXXI.
“They shall be astonished, and shall humble their countenances: and trouble shall seize them, when they shall behold the Son of Woman sitting upon the throne of his glory. Then shall the kings, the princes, and all who possess the earth glorify him who has dominion over all things—him who was concealed: for, from the beginning, the Son of Man existed in secret, whom the Most High preserved in the presence of his power, and revealed to the elect.”[543]
So speaks one of the most extraordinary productions that has ever appeared in England, in the shape of literature! And the commentary of its translator[544] is as follows:—
“In both these passages,” says he, “the pre-existence of the Messiah is asserted in language which admits not the slightest shade of ambiguity—nor is it such a pre-existence as the philosophical cabalists attributed to him, who believed the souls of all men, and, consequently, that of the Messiah, to have been originally created together, when the world itself was formed; but an existence antecedent to all creation, an existence previous to the formation of the luminaries of heaven; an existence prior to all things visible and invisible, before everything concealed.—It should likewise be remarked, that the pre-existence ascribed to him is a divine pre-existence.”[545]
As to the pre-existence of the Messiah, in the only way in which the Archbishop affirms, I did not think that the doctrine was so obscure as to require so much stress! Everybody acquiesces, who acquiesces in Christianity—that its Founder had existence and dominion with His Father before all worlds. And, therefore, when His Grace offers this as an illustration of our opening extract, he either unconsciously contradicts himself, or, else, by dealing in generalities, evades an exposition, which he was not at liberty to communicate!
I am quite ignorant as to whether or not Dr. Lawrence belongs to the order of Freemasons, but I confess that when first I glanced at the above remarks I fancied he did. The care with which the two words “secret” and “concealed” were distinguished by him in italics, led me to this conjecture. But the indefinite unsubstantiality into which he afterwards wandered, made the fact of his initiation become, itself, a secret.