Pagan Origin of Partialist Doctrines

by John Claudius Pitrat

There were nearly among all nations expiatory rites, to purify infants when they were born. Usually this ceremony was done in the day when the child was named. Macrob informs us, in his Saturn, book 1, that "that day, among the Romans, was the ninth for the boys and the eighth for the girls. That day was called lustricus, because of the lustral water used to purify the new born child." In the Analysis of the Insc. of Rosette, page 145, we read that the Egyptians, the Persians, and the Greeks had a similar practice. In Yucatan the new born child was brought in the temple, where the priest poured on his head the waters destined to this use; and then he gave him a name. In the Canary islands the women performed this priestly function. Caril, in his American Letters, tome 1, pages 146, and 147, speaks of these ceremonies. A law prescribed these expiatory rites among the Mexicans.

M. de Humboldt, Views of the Cordilleras, and of the Monuments of America, tome 1, page 223, writes: "The midwife, in invoking the god Ometeuctly, (the god of celestial paradise,) and the goddess Omecihuatl, who live in the abode of the blessed, poured water on the forehead and on the breast of the new-born child. After pronouncing several prayers, in which water was considered as the symbol of the purification of the soul, the midwife called near her the children who had been invited to give a name to the new-born child. In some provinces a fire was kindled at the same time, and they did as if really the child was passed through the flame to purify him both with water and fire. This ceremony reminds the practices whose origin, in Asia, seems to be immemorial."

Likewise, the Thibetans have similar expiatory rites: this we find in the thirty-first page of the preface of the Thibetan Alphabet. We extract the following from the Works of the Society of Calcutta: "In India, when a name is given to a child, his name is written on his forehead, and he is plunged three times into the water of the river. Then the Brama exclaims, 'O God, pure, one, invisible and perfect! to thee we offer this offspring of a holy tribe, anointed with an incorruptible oil, and purified with water.'"

In the mysteries, the Hierophant taught the doctrine that our nature had been corrupted by a first sin. The sixth book of the poem Eneida is nothing but a brilliant exposition of this doctrine; and perhaps antiquity offers nothing that proves more the power of tradition on the human mind, than the passage in which the poet, following Eneas in the abode of the dead, describes in magnificent verses the dismal spectacle which first strikes his gaze. If there is any thing in the world that wakes up in our mind the idea of innocence, assuredly it is a child who has been unable neither to know nor to commit sin; and the supposition that he is subject to punishment and to suffering, is a thought which our soul abhors. However, Virgil, in the 6th book, verses 426, and 429, places the children dead when yet nursing, at the entry of the sad kingdoms, where he represents them in a state of pain, weeping and moaning—vagitus ingens. Why those tears, those cries of sufferings? Which faults do those children, to whom their mothers had not smiled, expiate? (Virgil, Ecloga 4, verse 62.) What has inspired the poet with this surprising fiction? On what does it rest? Whence does it originate, if not from the ancient belief that man was born in sin?

Therefore, the doctrine of original sin was generally believed by the Pagans.

We stated, at the commencement of this chapter, that the Roman Catholic writers are unanimous in the opinion that it was the belief of a large number of Pagans, that man had fallen from a higher state of existence. However, a small number only of the same writers are of the opinion that the Jews believed in the doctrine of original sin; and they find no other proof of the assertion than the ceremony of circumcision, which, as is familiar to all, was a mere legal and national observance, and had not the virtue of remitting sin. In the first centuries of the Christian era, baptism was considered as a mere ceremony for initiating catechumens to the Christian profession.

It was only towards the end of the third century, that the belief of the transmission of Adam's sin to all his descendants was introduced in the Church of Rome, which already considered herself the mistress of the other churches. Soon afterwards the dogma that baptism had the virtue of remitting original sin was established. As proof of these two facts, we have the testimony of more than twenty-three Christian sects of the first centuries, which did not admit the dogma of original sin; and did not believe that baptism had the virtue of remitting sin. We quote a few of those sects: the Simonians, the Nicolaïtes, the Valentinians, the Basilidians, the Carpocratians, the Ophites, the Sethians, the Pelagians, all the Gnostic sects, etc.

Therefore, the Church of Rome borrowed the dogma of original sin from the Pagans. To this many Roman Catholic writers say: true the Pagans held this doctrine, but we did not borrow it from them; we found it in the first chapters of Genesis. We rejoin that even the fathers of the fourth century did not understand those chapters literally, and thereby as teaching the dogma of original sin. St. Augustine, in his work, City of God, avers that it was a general opinion among Christians, that the first three chapters of Genesis are allegorical, and that he himself is inclined to think so. He confesses that it is impossible to take them literally without hurting piety, and ascribing to God unworthy actions. Origen says: "Where is the man of good sense, who can ever believe that there have been a first, a second, and a third days, and that those days had each an evening and morning, though there were not yet neither sun, nor moon, nor stars? Where is the man credulous enough to believe, that God was working like a gardener, and that he planted a garden in Orient; that the tree of life was a real tree, whose fruit would preserve life?"

Origen compared the temptation of Adam to that of the birth of Love, whose father was Porus, or Abundance, and whose mother was Poverty. He adds that there are in the Old Testament facts, which, if understood literally, are absurd, and which, if understood allegorically, contain valuable truths. We refer the reader for the above to the following works: See St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, liber xi, cap. 6, et liber 2, cap. xi, No. 24.—De Genesi ad Litteram, liber 4, No. 44.—De Catechis Rudibus, cap. 13. The opinion of St. Athanase can be found in his Oratio Contra Arium, No. 60.—That of Origen, in his work De Principiis, liber iv, No. 16, contra Celsum, liber 6, No. 50, 51. That of St. Ambrosius, in his Hexam, liber one, cap. 7, et Sequentia. That of Theodoret, in his Quest. in Genes. interpr. cap. v. et Sequentia, and that of St. Gregory in his Moral, in Job, liber 32, cap. 9.