How was this "salvation" attained or conferred? We find that several conflicting views were held, which it is impossible to keep rigidly separate, since the human mind at one time inclines to one of them, at another time to another.
(a) Salvation is imparted by revelation. This makes it to depend upon knowledge; but this knowledge was in the Mysteries conveyed by the spectacle or drama, not by any intellectual process. Plutarch (de Defect. Orac. 22) says that those who had been initiated could produce no demonstration or proof of the beliefs which they had acquired. And Synesius quotes Aristotle as saying that the initiated do not learn anything, but rather receive impressions ([Greek: ou mathein ti dein alla pathein]). The old notion that monotheism was taught as a secret dogma rests on no evidence, and is very unlikely. There was a good deal of [Greek: theokrasia], as the ancients called it, and some departures from the current theogonies, but such doctrine as there was, was much nearer to pantheism than to monotheism. Certain truths about nature and the facts of life were communicated in the "greatest mysteries," according to Clement, and Cicero says the same thing. And sometimes the [Greek: gnôsis sôtêrias] includes knowledge about the whence and whither of man ([Greek: tines esmen kai ti gegonamen], Clem. Exc. ex Theod. 78). Some of the mystical formulæ were no doubt susceptible of deep and edifying interpretations, especially in the direction of an elevated nature-worship.
(b) Salvation was regarded, as in the Oriental religions, as emancipation from the fetters of human existence. Doctrines of this kind were taught especially in the Orphic Mysteries, where it was a secret doctrine ([Greek: aporrêtos logos], Plat. Phædr. 62) that "we men are here in a kind of prison," or in a tomb ([Greek: sêma tines to sôma einai tês psychês, ôs tethammenês en tô paronti], Plat. Crat. 400). They also believed in transmigration of souls, and in a [Greek: kuklos tês geneseôs] (rota fati et generationis). The "Orphic life," or rules of conduct enjoined upon these mystics, comprised asceticism, and, in particular, abstinence from flesh; and laid great stress on "following of God" [Greek: epesthai] or [Greek: akolouthein tô theô] as the goal of moral endeavour. This cult, however, was tinged with Thracian barbarism; its heaven was a kind of Valhalla ([Greek: methê aiônios], Plat. Rep. ii. 363). Very similar was the rule of life prescribed by the Pythagorean brotherhood, who were also vegetarians, and advocates of virginity. Their system of purgation, followed by initiation, liberated men "from the grievous woeful circle" ([Greek: kyklou d'exeptan Barypentheos argaleoio] on a tombstone), and entitled them "to a happy life with the gods." (For the conception of salvation as deification, see Appendix C.) Whether these sects taught that our separate individuality must be merged is uncertain; but among the Gnostics, who had much in common with the Orphic mystæ, the formula, "I am thou, and thou art I," was common (Pistis Sophia; formulæ of the Marcosians; also in an invocation of Hermes: [Greek: to son onoma emon kai to emon son. egô gar eimi to eidôlon son]. Rohde, Psyche, vol. ii. p. 61). A foretaste of this deliverance was given by initiation, which conducts the mystic to ecstasy, an [Greek: oligochronios mania] (Galen), in which "animus ita solutus est et vacuus ut ei plane nihil sit cum corpore" (Cic. De Divin. i. I. 113); which was otherwise conceived as [Greek: enthousiasmos] ([Greek: enthousiôsês kai ouketi ousês en eautê dianoias], Philo).
(c) The imperishable Divine nature is infused by mechanical means. Sacraments and the like have a magical or miraculous potency. The Homeric hymn to Demeter insists only on ritual purity as the condition of salvation, and we hear that people trusted to the mystic baptism to wash out all their previous sins. Similarly the baptism of blood, the taurobolium, was supposed to secure eternal happiness, at any rate if death occurred within twenty years after the ceremony; when that interval had elapsed, it was common to renew the rite. (We find on inscriptions such phrases as "arcanis perfusionibus in æternum renatus.") So mechanical was the operation of the Mysteries supposed to be, that rites were performed for the dead (Plat. Rep. 364. St. Paul seems to refer to a similar custom in 1 Cor. xv. 29), and infants were appointed "priests," and thoroughly initiated, that they might be clean from their "original sin." Among the Gnostics, a favourite phrase was that initiation releases men "from the fetters of fate and necessity"; the gods of the intelligible world ([Greek: theoi noêtoi]) with whom we hold communion in the Mysteries being above "fate."
(d) Salvation consists of moral regeneration. The efficacy of initiation without moral reformation naturally appeared doubtful to serious thinkers. Diogenes is reported to have asked, "What say you? Will Patæcion the thief be happier in the next world than Epaminondas, because he has been initiated?" And Philo says, "It often happens that good men are not initiated, but that robbers, and murderers, and lewd women are, if they pay money to the initiators and hierophants." Ovid protests against the immoral doctrine of mechanical purgation with more than his usual earnestness (Fasti, ii. 35):—
"Omne nefas omnemque mali purgamina causam
Credebant nostri tollere posse senes.
Græcia principium moris fuit; ilia nocentes
Impia lustratos ponere facta putat.
A! nimium faciles, qui tristia crimina cædis
Fluminea tolli posse putetis aqua!"
Such passages show that abuses existed, but also that it was felt to be a scandal if the initiated person failed to exhibit any moral improvement.
These different conceptions of the office of the Mysteries cannot, as I have said, be separated historically. They all reappear in the history of the Christian sacraments. The main features of the Mystery-system which passed into Catholicism are the notions of secrecy, of symbolism, of mystical brotherhood, of sacramental grace, and, above all, of the three stages in the spiritual life, ascetic purification, illumination, and [Greek: epopteia] as the crown.
The secrecy observed about creeds and liturgical forms had not much to do with the development of Mysticism, except by associating sacredness with obscurity (cf. Strabo, x. 467, [Greek: hê krypsis hê mystikê semnopoiei to theion, mimoumenê tên physin autou ekpheugousan tên aisthêsin]), a tendency which also showed itself in the love of symbolism. This certainly had a great influence, both in the form of allegorism (cf. Clem. Strom, i. 1. 15, [Greek: esti de ha kai ainixetai moi hê graphê; peirasetai de kai ganthanousa eipein kai epikryptomenê ekphênai kai deixai siôpôsa]), which Philo calls "the method of the Greek Mysteries," and in the various kinds of Nature-Mysticism. The great value of the Mysteries lay in the facilities which they offered for free symbolical interpretation.
The idea of mystical union by means of a common meal was, as we have seen, familiar to the Greeks. For instance, Plutarch says (Non fosse suav. vivi sec. Epic. 21), "It is not the wine or the cookery that delights us at these feasts, but good hope, and the belief that God is present with us, and that He accepts our service graciously." There have always been two ideas of sacrifice, alike in savage and civilised cults—the mystical, in which it is a communion, the victim who is slain and eaten being himself the god, or a symbol of the god; and the commercial, in which something valuable is offered to the god in the hope of receiving some benefit in exchange. The Mysteries certainly encouraged the idea of communion, and made it easier for the Christian rite to gather up into itself all the religious elements which can be contained in a sacrament of this kind.