When the foregoing sketches and opinions are considered as proof specimen of the true characters and conduct of a few of the men called "the Fathers," an estimate of the general worthlessness and fraudulent motives of the whole may easily be formed; yet such were the men who _systematized_ Christianism, headed by St. Paul, who afforded them a notable example in all the arts of mystery or fraud, these two terms being synonymous. His justification of lying is as follows:--"For if the truth of God hath more abounded _through my lie unto his glory_, why yet am I also judged as a sinner?" Rom. iii., 7. It ought not, therefore, to excite any surprise, that from so foul a source should emanate those unsightly and revolting dogmas, which, sooner or later, must bring this superstition into utter contempt, before the tribunal of reason and science. The root of all these dogmas is distinctly traceable to the astro-theology of the ancient Pagans; but the whole has been hideously perverted by the fabricator of our religion, either by knavishly teaching the exoteric, or literal sense, though they knew the esoteric, or hidden meaning; or by adopting the former through ignorance of the mythological mysteries. The fable of the fall of man, the garden of Eden, the serpent and Eve, etc., are clearly astronomical allegories;* and the most learned of the early fathers held them to be so; but they were abused by others, and taken in the literal sense, in order that they might serve as tenterhooks, upon which to stretch the New Testament dogmas of original sin and redemption. * "At the autumnal equinox, when the celestial sign, Virgo (Eye) is setting heliacally, she seems to be followed by the constellation Bootes (Adam, or a personification of solar heat) and by seeming to hold out to him a branch with beautiful fruit upon it, was said to tempt or seduce Adam, whom she appears to draw after her; and when the two link below the western horizon, they are said to fall; and to resign the heavens to the dominion of the serpent, and other wintry signs, i.e. cold and darkness, figuratively, evil. While the man and woman are retiring from the summer garden of fruits and flowers, the sign Perseus is seen rising in the east, and with his flaming sword is said to drive the happy pair from the reign of summer. As Virgo sinks first in the west, she is said to be first in transgression."