ABSTRACT
Now the Egyptian, that is the Hermetic Art, or Art of Divine works, was by the Greeks called Theurgy ; and was extensively practised at Eleusis, and more or less in other temples of their Gods. On no subject has more difference of opinion arisen amongst the learned: the high veneration in which the Mysteries were held, the intellectual enthusiasm with which the Alexandrians speak of them, the philosophic explanations given in detail by Iamblicus and others, concerning the motive and divine nature of the initiatory rites and the spectacles they procured, have puzzled many inquirers who, unable in latter times to account rationally, have disposed of the greater part as a pantomymic show, sanctified by priestly artifice and exaggerated by a wild imagination,
natural as it has been supposed to those Ethnic souls. But then the Fathers of our Church, what frenzy should have possessed them, that St. Augustin, Cyrillus, Synesius and the rest, should imitate their follies, transferring the very language, disciplines, and rites of those" odious mysteries," to their own ceremonial worship as Christians, and that Clemens Alexandrinus should call them " blessed"? This has seemed extraordinary, and the authorities have been quoted and requoted and turned in many various ways by modern writers each to the support of his own peculiar view or modification, often, as may be imagined, at variance with the original sense in context.
