And so above, below, outside, and inside, the Christian Church, in the priestly garments, and the religious rites, we recognize the stamp of exoteric heathenism. On no subject within the wide range of human knowledge, has the world been more blinded or deceived with such persistent misrepresentation as on that of antiquity. Its hoary past and its religious faiths have been misrepresented and trampled under the feet of its successors. Its hierophants and prophets, mystæ and epoptæ,[147] of the once sacred adyta of the temple shown as demoniacs and devil-worshippers. Donned in the despoiled garments of the victim, the Christian priest now anathematizes the latter with rites and ceremonies which he has learned from the theurgists themselves. The Mosaic _Bible_ is used as a weapon against the people who furnished it. The heathen philosopher is cursed under the very roof which has witnessed his initiation; and the “monkey of God” (_i.e._, the devil of Tertullian), “the originator and founder of magical theurgy, the science of illusions and lies, whose father and author is the demon,” is exorcised with holy water by the hand which holds the identical _lituus_[148] with which the ancient augur, after a solemn prayer, used to determine the regions of heaven, and evoke, in the name of the HIGHEST, the minor god (now termed the Devil), who unveiled to his eyes futurity, and enabled him to prophesy! On the part of the Christians and the clergy it is nothing but shameful ignorance, prejudice, and that contemptible pride so boldly denounced by one of their own reverend ministers, T. Gross,[149] which rails against all investigation “as a useless or a criminal labor, when it must be feared that they will result in the overthrow of preëstablished systems of faith.” On the part of the scholars it is the same apprehension of the possible necessity of having to modify some of their erroneously-established theories of science. “Nothing but such pitiable prejudice,” says Gross, “can have thus misrepresented the theology of heathenism, and distorted--nay, caricatured--its forms of religious worship. It is time that posterity should raise its voice in vindication of violated truth, and that the present age should learn a little of that common sense of which it boasts with as much self-complacency as if the prerogative of reason was the birthright only of modern times.”