Pagan deity

“ At this date also the public calendar indicated the feasts of the false gods by the side of those in honor of Christ and his saints. In a word, paganism is yet a living power, with its temples and idols, and sacrifices and sacred groves.
In Rome itself, where the smoke of incense ascends to the only true God, the smoke of sacrifice also rises to the false gods of Olympus. And beyond Rome, over Italy and Gaul and throughout the whole of Western Christendom, there are still symbols of pagan worship ”

“ The customs of pagan religion were only baptized with Christian names. Gregory the Great in the latter part of the 6th century, ignoring the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Gospel, directed the Monk Augustine, whom he sent to convert the idolaters of England, ‘not to suspend or abolish the pagan festivals, nor the customs of their worship, but rather retain them, contenting himself with substituting for the names of false gods, the names of saints borne by their temples, and whose relics were deposited in them.’” [188] ”

“ The pagan element is upon the whole the prevailing one, inasmuch as in most Gnostic systems Christianity is not represented as the conclusion and completion of the development of salvation given in the Old Testament, but often merely as the continuation and climax of the pagan religion of nature and the pagan mystery worship. ”

“ The spirit of Paganism never has been exorcised in any age of Christian progress and triumph, but has appeared from time to time in new forms. In the conquering Church of Constantine and Theodosius it adopted Pagan emblems and gorgeous rites and ceremonies; in the Middle Ages it appeared in the dialectical contests of the Greek philosophers; in our times in the deification of the reason, in the apotheosis of art, in the inordinate value placed on the enjoyments of the body, and in the splendor of an outside life. ”

“ The influence of pagan thought upon the Bible, and its interpretation; upon the organized Church, through the pagan water-worship cult; upon the practices and spiritual life of the Church by substituting pagan holidayism for Christian Sabbathism, through the sun-worship cult; and upon the spiritual life and subsequent character of the Church, by the union of Church and State, and the subjugation of Christianity to the civil power, according to the pagan model. Facts do not cease to be facts, though denied and ignored. ”

“ It is a valuable example to us of the complete and radical difference that existed between the Pagan and the Christian ideas of worship. The Pagan world had no idea of gathering a congregation together, any more than I may say have the old canons of Florence, or of S. Peter's, Rome, who shut themselves into glass boxes, of bringing all men into one building to unite in prayer and praise. The sanctuaries of the Pagan gods were quite small and dark. Worship was simply an individual matter, a bringing of a sacrifice to an altar. ”

“ The Pagan is as fervent in his desires to his god for a good and holy influence to attend him in the worship of his idols, as we are to the God of heaven—the Father of us all—the Being who has brought all mankind into existence and sustains them by his providence and fatherly care. He bestows blessings upon all his children, and enlightens them more or less by his Spirit, and guides the affairs of all nations, states, countries, and peoples. ”

“ In a generous eclecticism, within the bounds of her liberty, and as by some providential power within her, she gathers and serviceably adopts, as in other matters so in ritual, one thing here, another there, from various sources—Gnostic, Jewish, Pagan—to adorn and beautify the greatest act of worship the world has seen. It was thus the liturgy of the church came to be—full of consolations for the human soul, and destined, surely! one day, under the sanction of so many ages of human experience, to take exclusive possession of the religious consciousness. ”

“ The Christians of the first centuries had no doubt of the real existence of the pagan divinities, but they regarded them as evil spirits who had turned the worship of men from the only God by a caricature of the true religion. ”

“ As the first step in perverting Christianity was to set aside the authority of God’s book, and to teach error for truth through false exegesis, so the first step toward reformation was the unchaining of that Word. Paganized Christianity had placed itself between men and God, and His Word. Faith, hedged and crippled, trusted in human traditions, forms, and ceremonies, and in priestly absolution from sin. Help could not come, neither could hope arise, until the pagan elements should be so far removed that men could stand face to face with the Bible, with Christ, and with God. ”

“ The practice of worshipping the gods in woods and trees continued for many centuries, till the introduction of Christianity (Vid. Willibald, A.D. 786, in Vita Bonifacii) , and the converters did not disdain to adopt every means to raise Christian cultus to higher authority than that of Paganism, by acting upon the senses of the heathen, e.g. using white robes for those baptized, lighting of candles, burning of incense, &c.; and they erected the Christian churches, for the most part, upon the site of Pagan tree or temple ”

“ The real difference between Paganism and Christianity is perfectly summed up in the difference between the pagan, or natural, virtues, and those three virtues of Christianity which the Church of Rome calls virtues of grace. The pagan, or rational, virtues are such things as justice and temperance, and Christianity has adopted them. The three mystical virtues which Christianity has not adopted, but invented, are faith, hope, and charity. ”

“ Many are drifting farther away.
It is scarcely necessary to add that every form of baptism except submersion was borrowed from paganism; that faith in baptism as producing spiritual purity, and hence as a “saving ordinance,” was borrowed from paganism: the notion that only the baptized can be saved was borrowed from paganism; the use of oil, of spittle, of the sign of the cross, of lights, of white robes, is a remnant of paganism; baptising for the dead, and delaying baptism until near death, are a part of the pagan residuum; faith in water from the Jordan or elsewhere is paganism. ”

“ That the scruples with which they recoiled from all usages and customs which could be associated with the elegant pomp of Pagan worship, and the suspicion with which, as having been linked with idolatry, they looked on every emanation of that spirit of beauty which reigned over the exterior life of Paganism, would operate as a charm in their favor! ”

“ In the use of holy water it sprinkled repeatedly and indefinitely. According to the New Testament, baptism is submersion, as the symbol of death to sin and resurrection to righteousness. All beyond that was pagan-born.
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The central point of the evil which came from pagan water-worship is found in “baptismal regeneration”; i. e., the idea that by virtue of the power and sacredness of water spiritual purity is produced, and the candidate is fitted for membership in the Church, and for heaven. In so far as this idea remains, paganism remains. ”

“ The Accusations of the Pagans.—The simplicity of the Christian religion was made a reproach to the church of Christ by the pagan priests. The saints were accused of atheism, an accusation which found support in the fact that the primitive church had no temples, no incense, no sacrifice, no incantations, pomp or ceremony in its worship. "The Christians have no temples, therefore they have no gods," was an argument sufficiently convincing to the heathen. ”

“ The Pagan may be honest in his belief; he may worship according to the light that is in him, or the knowledge that has reached him. He may never have seen the Gospel. The Day Star from on high may never have arisen over him, or illumined his path! ”

“ Paganism was a religion of form and ceremony, based on polytheism—a belief in the existence of a multitude of gods, which deities were subject to all the vices and passions of humanity, while distinguished by immunity from death. Morality and virtue were unknown as elements of heathen service; and the dominant idea in pagan worship was that of propitiating the gods, in the hope of averting their anger and purchasing their favor.—See the author's The Great Apostasy, 1:2-4, and notes following the chapter cited. ”

“ Baptism in primitive Christianity was at first symbolical—an act of ritual purification, which was believed to indicate the remission of sins and the bestowal of the Holy Spirit. [37] But by the second century Christianity had become a mystery in the Greek sense, into which the novice, after a period of preparation, was duly initiated by baptism; and indeed the act was believed to have a magic power to secure immortality, closely parallel to that of the pagan initiation.{53} [38] We all know that the ecclesiastical confidence which such belief inspires is far from unknown today. ”

“ It is curious to see all these solemnities—many of them doubtless of Pagan origin—dear to the people, and therefore preserved and christianised by the Popes—and to reflect, that such, for many, many centuries, was the chief link fostered by religion between man and the Divinity. ”

“ Baptism signifies purification; Communion signifies enlightening; the Holy Chrism signifies perfecting. The second triad is made up of the three orders of Bishops, Presbyters and Deacons, or rather, as the Areopagite names them: Hierarchs, Light-bearers, Servitors. The third triad consists of monks, who are in a state of perfection, the initiated laity, who are in a state of illumination, and the catechumens, in a state of purification. All worship, in this treatise, is a celebration of mysteries, and the pagan mysteries are continually suggested by the terms employed. ”

“ Those who find the Catholic worship too like the pagan would have condemned the divinely-instituted worship of the Mosaic law as still more like it. That paganism bears its testimony to the Catholic worship is an argument [pg 330] in its favor, not against it; for the pagan worship was a divine institution, perverted more in its object than in its form. Had it been purely the coinage of man's brain, of man's private judgment—one of those ways that seem right unto a man, though the ends thereof lead to death—there would be no such resemblance. ”

“ Others, without sufficient grounds, have referred the title to the papacy, interpreting the First and Second Beasts as Rome pagan and papal. Another interpretation is that the First Beast is the secular persecuting power, pagan or Christian, and the Second Beast is the sacerdotal persecuting power, pagan and Christian; while still another and better interpretation is that world-force is the first, and world-worship, i. e. world-religion and superstition, the second.477 Symbolist interpreters always prefer the wider to a narrower symbolism in accordance with their general view of the book. ”

“ Modern indifferentism may regard all the pagan worships as expressions of truth, and the worship of their deities as something merely symbolical of the operations of nature, not the actual rendering of divine honors. But to us there can be no such theory. The worship was real and the objects were demons, blinding and misleading men through their passions and ignorance. ”

“ And if their rite of circumcision, their celebration of the Sabbath, their laws respecting food, and their shy habits of seclusion, excited much derision and contempt, there was still in their cultus of the one purely spiritual God, who was represented by no image, a powerful attraction for the minds of pagans, who were surfeited with the numberless divinities of their religion. "Enemies are they of the gods as well as men"—such was the frequently pronounced judgment of the pagan populace on this nation, whose character was so mysterious to them. ”

“ The worship of a Mother Goddess and her son formed a distinct feature in the paganism of Babylon, India, Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and Rome. Though variant in conception, the core of Mariolatry runs through all these pagan systems. Those who desire to follow this theme in detail will do well to consult Alexander Hislop. [245] A single extract from page 82 of that work is all that space will permit:
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“The worship of the Goddess-Mother with the child in her arms continued to be observed in Egypt till Christianity entered. ”

“ It only proves the absolute need of a divine Revelation to instruct us, in the alone proper object of all religious adoration and praise, the one living and true God, and the manner in which we may acceptably serve him. Almost all the writers of pagan antiquity, who have come down to us, and have not been buried in the rubbish of time, in some part of their writings, either speak of, or recommend worship of their Gods—or the divinities acknowledged, in the respective Countries where they lived. ”

“ The survivals of pagan religion at Christian festivals relate not so much to the worship of definite divinities—against this the missionaries made their most determined efforts, and the names of the old gods have practically disappeared—as to cults which preceded the development of anthropomorphic gods with names and attributes. These cults, paid to less personally conceived spirits, were of older standing and no doubt had deeper roots in the popular mind. ”

“ Pagan Christianity, or Catholicism, may accordingly be said to consist of two elements: first, the genius of paganism, the faculty of expressing spiritual experience in myth and external symbol, and, second, the experience of disillusion, forcing that pagan imagination to take wing from earth and to decorate no longer the political and material circumstances of life, but rather to remove beyond the clouds and constitute its realm of spirit beyond the veil of time and nature, in a posthumous and metaphysical sphere. ”