This new version of the old mythology was gradually constructed by priestcraft during the second, third, and fourth centuries, of materials taken from all the oriental polytheisms; and is a similar sort of fraudful quackery upon these allegorical religions, that astrology is upon legitimate astronomy. Thus, (let us repeat the melancholy truth) out of the comparatively harmless astro-fables of antiquity hath sprung a foul collusion of religious and political tyranny, that has been dreadful in its effects; and every successive invention to strengthen this accursed coalition of an aristocracy of nobles and priests, linked together with royalty,* has tended more and more to depress the interests of the laboring population, or wealth producers of Europe, and served to crush them under the most merciless of all despotisms. And as it is utterly hopeless that our English _hereditary lawgivers_, who are virtually our feudal rulers, and whose interests are entirely exclusive, will ever pass any laws but such as support and perpetuate these interests, it is much to be feared that, as in France before the revolution, nothing but a sanguinary reaction on the part of the people, will reestablish their right to just representation in Parliament, equal laws, and a dissolution of that baneful state-confederacy between our aristocratic rulers and the reigning superstition; the support of which, we are tempted to conclude, _is more the object of government than the interests of the common weal_. * In 1822, the clergy of Austria persuaded the monarch of over forty millions of people to declare, "I want no men of science; I want only obedient subjects. I want no education among my subjects, but what is given by the priesthood." END OF LECTURE THIRD. LECTURE FOURTH. PAGAN ALLEGORIES MADE CHRISTIAN DOGMAS (Continued.) All these fragments of crack-brained opiniatry and silly solaces, played off, in the sweetness of song, by deceitful poets, have, by you too credulous creatures, been shamefully reformed and made over to your own God. MINUTIUS FELIX. DOES not the New Testament speak very distinctly of two crucifixions, viz., one as having taken place upon Mount Calvary, and another at, or in a Garden? There is even a third mentioned, as having occurred in Egypt, "where also our Lord was crucified," Rev. xi., 8; which is a plain recognition of the astro-religion, and solar worship of the Egyptian priests. The crucifixion upon Mount* Calvary was allegorical of the sun's _passing over, or crossing_ the equator in March; of which month the Ram, or Lamb of God, was the zodiacal emblem, God, the sun, being in that sign at the spring equinox. This was also the origin of the Pascal Lamb, and the _Passover_ of the Jews, which they borrowed of their masters, the Egyptians. * The word mount, as here used, is figurative of the sun's being in the state of elevation in the horizon, at the spring equinox.