Pagan Origin of Partialist Doctrines

by John Claudius Pitrat

The Pagans believed that in piously gazing upon certain statues of the gods their souls were purified; and that the punishment of their sins was remitted; so, even now, the Indians believe that in simply gazing upon the shrub Toulouschi they obtain the forgiveness of their sins, and obtain the exemption from their punishment. Likewise the Church of Rome holds, that, in gazing piously upon the cross, the Catholics obtain the forgiveness of their venial sins, and the exemption from their punishment. The ancient initiations of the Pagans had tribunals of penance, where a priest, under the name of Koës, heard from the mouth of the sinners themselves the avowal of their sins, of which their souls were to be purified, and from the punishment of which they wished to be exempted. One day the famous Lysandre, confessing his sins to one of those Koës, was asked by him impudent questions. Lysandre answered him with this question, "Do you address me those questions in your own name, or in the name of the Deity?" The Koës answered: "In the name of the Deity." "Well," Lysandre rejoined, "let me be; if God questions me, I will answer him." Likewise the Church of Rome has tribunals of penance, where priests hear from the mouth of the sinners themselves the avowal of their sins, of which their souls are to be purified, and from the punishment of which they wish to be exempted. Through the absolution of the priests the greatest sins, without any exemption, are remitted entirely, so that they not only are forgiven, but even their punishment.

Even the Church of Rome goes farther in regard to the pretended virtue of her expiatory practices, than the Pagans ever went. Indeed, it was a common thing among the Pagans to stigmatize certain crimes, and to call them irremissible—unexpiable. They excluded from the sanctuaries of Eleusis, the murderers, the traitors to their country, in a word, all those who were guilty of atrocious crimes; they were to be excluded from the Elysium forever, and to be endlessly tortured in the Tartarus. There were purifications for murder, it is true, but only for involuntary or necessary murder. When the ancient heroes had committed a murder, they resorted to expiation; after the sacrifices which were required, lustral water was poured on the murderous hand; from that moment they were readmitted in society; and they prepared themselves to new deeds of bravery. Hercules resorted to expiation when he had slain the Centaurs. But those sorts of expiations did not purify the soul from all impurities and crimes.

The great criminals had to dread all their lifetime the horrors of the Tartarus, or could not expiate their crimes, except by constantly practicing virtue, and constantly doing good to their fellow men. The legal purifications were not considered as having the virtue of securing to all criminals the hope of bliss, to which the righteous were entitled. Nero did not dare present himself to the temple of Eleusis; because he was debarred from entering its sanctuary on account of his atrocious crimes.

The famous Constantine I., to whom the Church of Rome is indebted for all her past and present aggrandizement, wealth, and power; and whose name has been, is, and shall always be, accursed by nations, because of the rivers of blood, of the deluge of ignorance, of superstition, in one word, of the ocean of crimes against God, against Christ, and against mankind, which the Church of Rome, enabled by his protection, poured over the world: Constantine, we say, guilty of all sorts of crimes; his hands reeking with the blood of his own mother, whom he had slain; and with the blood of the many, whom he had murdered; and guilty of many perjuries, presented himself to the Pagan priests to obtain the absolution of those atrocious crimes, and the exemption from their punishment.

Constantine was answered, that, among the various sorts of expiations, there was not one which had the virtue of purifying his soul from so many and so atrocious crimes, and of exempting him from the punishment they deserved; and that no religion had resources enough to appease the justice of the irritated gods; and, let us mark: Constantine was a mighty emperor. One of his courtiers, seeing the trouble and agitation of his soul, devoured by the restless and undying remorse, told him that his sufferings were not hopeless; that there were in the Church of Rome, purifications which had the virtue of expiating all crimes, without any exception, that this Church held, that whoever joined it, whatever may be his crimes, might hope that all his crimes will be forgiven by the Deity, and that the exemption from their punishment will be obtained.

From that time Constantine took the Church of Rome under his protection. He was a wicked man who tried to deceive himself, and to appease the remorse of his conscience. He gave then full scope to his flagitiousness; and he postponed being baptized until the hour of his death, because it was, as it is now, a dogma of the Church of Rome, that baptism purifies the soul from the original and all other sins and crimes, and that it has also the virtue of exempting those baptized from the punishment of all their sins. Thus the entry of the temple of Eleusis was interdicted to Nero; and yet the Church of Rome would have admitted him within her pale; would have purified his soul; and would have exempted him from the punishment of all his monstrous crimes, if he had taken her under his protection. How abominable a Church must be, when she deals so with tyrants and monsters with a human face! What! if Nero had been a Roman Catholic and had protected the Church of Rome, she would have canonized him! Why not? Constantine, as great a criminal as he was, has been canonized. In the ninth century his name was invoked at Rome in the ceremonies of the Church, and even now he is considered as a saint.

In England several churches have been built under the invocation of this pretended Saint Constantine, who founded at Constantinople a vast and costly establishment of ill fame. Such are the saints worshiped by the Church of Rome when she obtains their protection. Christ, reason, and nature, would never have absolved Nero from his crimes, and from the punishment they deserved; and yet the Church of Rome would have done it. Sophocles, in his Ædipe, says, that all the waters of the Danube, and of the Phase, would have been insufficient to purify, from their crimes, the souls of the family of Laïus; and yet the Church of Rome would have done it. How truly the Arab poet Abu-Naovas exclaimed: "Lord, we have indulged to sin and to crime, because we saw that forgiveness soon followed them."

Therefore there is a striking similarity between the practices required by the Church of Rome, to obtain the forgiveness of sins, and to be exempted from the punishment of those sins, through the medium of a substitute, and those which were required in the Pagan religion for the same purpose.

2. We prove that the practices required by the Church of Rome to obtain the forgiveness of sins, and to be exempted from the punishment of those sins, through the medium of a substitute, were not instituted among Christians in the first two centuries.

The Roman Catholic theologians do not pretend that the Christians of the first two centuries held those practices, nor that the Church of Rome herself held them; but they say that the Church of Rome established them successively, as the good of Christians required it, according to the power of government and infallibility granted to her, and to her alone, by Jesus Christ.