The Origine of Pagan Idolatry

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I. Respecting the Fable of the Four Ages. ancient notion has very generally prevailed both in the east and in the west, that there have been four successive ages, symbolized by the four metals of gold, silver, brass, and iron, during which mankind gradually degenerated from a state of peace and...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I. Respecting the Fable of the Four Ages. ancient notion has very generally prevailed both in the east and in the west, that there have been four successive ages, symbolized by the four metals of gold, silver, brass, and iron, during which mankind gradually degenerated from a state of peace and holiness to one of violence and wickedness. But this notion is not always exhibited precisely in the same form: in the fables that have been founded upon it a variety may be observed, which at first might seem to involve a sort of contradiction, but which in reality was only the natural consequence of the doctrine of an endless succession of similar worlds. The variety is this: the series of the four ages is sometimes deduced from the creation, and sometimes from the deluge; so that, when the two fables are joined together, the series of the latter commences precisely where the series of the former terminates. At the head of each series however the great father, in the west denominated Cronus or Saturn, and by the oriental Hindoos Menu, is universally placed: so that the four ages, in whatever manner they are reckoned, always begin from the days of the great father; whence the golden age isproperly the age of the great father's manifestation at the commencement of a new world. Book in. Now, since world was believed to succeed world, and since each successive manifestation of the great father was esteemed only a reappearance of the same personage at the opening of each mundane system; the golden age, being the age of the great father, was of course placed at the beginning of every world: and hence we perceive the cause, why the series of the four ages, though always deduced from Saturn or Menu, is yet sometimes deduced from the epoch of the creation and at other times ...