The Devil's Pulpit, or Astro-Theological Sermons

With a Sketch of His Life, and an Astronomical Introduction

Robert Taylor

• Publisher: Left of Brain Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781396317941
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Critica e interpretazione biblica

This book shakes the core of Christian belief. It challenged the uncompromising views of the 19th century Catholic Church, put its author in jail, and was endorsed by Charles Darwin.It's a collection of sermons delivered by reverend Robert Taylor, establishing that Christianity is based on older religions, and that its rituals are descended from ancient Egyptian and pagan practices. It includes an astronomical introduction to Taylor's theories, and a sketch of his tumultuous life.Taylor reveals the real purpose of Jesus and the apostles, providing proof that they're symbols of astronomical phenomena. Jesus being a symbol of the sun, and the twelve apostles of the twelve zodiac signs. He then goes on to unveil secrets about the origin and practices of freemasonry in four lectures.Taylor debated with and beat virtually everyone at the time with the contents of this book. You may find his radical views eye-opening to the uncanny origins of Christianity and religion, but only if you're open-minded enough. You may otherwise find them offensive and blasphemous."…Throwing some doubt on the reality even of the existence in flesh and blood of Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John, for here on the windows of Trinity are they represented as emblems of the seasons, and of these seasons too as they were five thousand years ago."

Part I. The Star of Bethlehem:

A SERMON,
Preached by His Highness’s Chaplain, the Rev. Robert Taylor, B. A., at the Rotunda, Blackfriars-Road, November 7, 1830.

“Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his Star in the East, and are come to worship him”—Matthew ii. 2.

Who are the inquirers? The wise men of the East. Very well! Show them in here, and we will show these wise men of the East this mighty King of the Jews—the new-born omnipotence—the little baby-God.

“Hark! the herald angels sing,

Glory to the new-born King,

Peace on earth and Mercy mild,

God and sinners reconciled:

Joyful all ye nations, rise,

Join the triumph of the skies;

With the angelic host proclaim,

Christ is born in Bethlehem.”

And these wise men were come from the East to worship him. I only beg leave to think I see them at it. I only ask to be permitted to imagine that such a scene really occurred, and to imagine what your impressions, as well as mine, would have been, bad we been spectators of it. If such a scene really occurred on earth, like every other real occurrence, it must admit of being imagined to have occurred. And even they who require us to surrender our reason, should at least leave us the exercise of our imagination: so that we may have some part of our minds left, and not be out of our minds—out-and-out. For ’t is rather riding us hard, of our Christian divines, to require us to believe that, as true, which they themselves do not only not know to be true, but dare not trust themselves, or anybody else, so much as to imagine to be true. The mind’s excursive faculty is found to be as great a rebel against faith, as its reason. To be a Christian indeed, you must lay aside the use of your minds altogether. For the facts of the gospel are of such a mysterious nature, that they will not merely not bear to be reasoned on, but they will not bear to be thought on. You may believe that it is true—you may make believe that it is true—you may say that it is true—you may swear that it is true: but the moment you begin to think that it is true, you will find yourself within half an inch of thinking that it is false. So that there is really no other way of believing the gospel, than that in which the archbishop of Dublin believes the Thirty-nine Articles—that is, taking them in the lump—and so believing, without thinking. The sanctity, the seriousness, the charm, are gone, the moment you begin to let in daylight on the gospel theatre, by imagining that its person ages had a real existence, and its incidents an historical occurrence. Who are these wise men, come from the East, to say their prayers to a little squalling God-a-mighty, sucking his thumb as fast as he could suck?

“And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary, his mamma.” But it does not say what Mary, his mamma, was doing to the young child. But it says that the wise men fell down; but then, again, it does not say what it was that knocked them down: only, it immediately informs us that they brought out some frankincense, which could be of no other use than to sweeten the apartment—the stable, I should say: for we are never to forget that our blessed Savior was born in a stable—as the angels told the shepherds—

“The heavenly babe you there shall find,

To human View displayed,

All meanly wrapped in dirty rags,

And in a manger laid.”

Indeed, one would be utterly at a loss to guess in what the wisdom of the wise men consisted, unless it had been that they had anticipated that the heavenly babe might have such a heavenly smell about him as would have rendered a little frankincense, or aromatic vinegar, very refreshing. And they worshipped him—the wise men worshipped him. What sort of worship wise men would be likely to pay to a new-born child, might be easier guessed at than told—only it was not very wise of them to open their treasures, and present unto him gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, when a ha’p’orth of lolipop, and some bull’s-eyes and sugar-plums, would have suited his Royal Highness so much better, and have been quite sufficient to have insured their own everlasting salvation: but, somehow or other, the wise men have always contrived it that salvation should never be cheap; and however little of the profit may go to God (God help him!), his vicegerents and ministers take pretty good care that, if you want to go worshipping, you must open your treasures.

“And being warned of God, in a dream, that they should not return unto Herod, they departed into their own country another way.” However these wise men found their way to Bethlehem, it is admitted that they dreamed their way back again. But sure, they could never have dreamed that the King of the Jews, who ought to have been born in a palace, should be so superfluous in his humility, as to suffer himself to be born in a stable; and thus, while he was taking upon himself the nature of man, rendering it very doubtful whether he was not, at the same time, going to take on himself the nature of a horse? For those good Christians, who, believe that our blessed Savior was both God and man, can have no right to quarrel with me for carrying my faith a little bit further than theirs, and believing, as I most sincerely do, that he was both man and horse. To which most true faith I am led, not merely by the most natural suspicion attaching to the circumstance of his having been born in a stable—as where else should a horse be born? But not to make any sort of play on words, or to strain any phrase whatever from its obvious sense, which I would not for the world—not to build on the certainty of the fact that he had no human father—that the angel spoke of him to the mare, or Mary his mother, not as the holy babe or holy child, but as the holy thing that should be born of her: I appeal to the whole angelic chorus—to the multitude of the heavenly host who appeared to the shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night, in ratification of that express definition, than which no words can be more express: “Unto you is born, this day, in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord; and this shall be a sign.”

Now the key of the whole mystery lies in that single phrase (Κάι τουτο υμιν το Σημειον), and “this to you shall be the sign:” that is, this Savior, which is Christ the Lord, shall be a sign. The false punctuation of our English Testaments, contrived as much as possible to lead the people into error, and keep them in it, would make it seem that the sign had meant no more than a signal or token that the angel’s testimony was correct; and that that token was, that they should find a babe wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and lying in a manger, than which a dog in the manger might have known better. For not so ordinary and indifferent a circumstance as a frail young woman running away from her home (as she might have reason enough to do), and being brought to bed in the best lodging that could be hired for nothing, was the sign (which would have been a sign of nothing else than that the young woman had not been so prudent as she ought to have been); but Christ himself, the Savior, which is Christ the Lord, was the sign, and that sign was to be seen in the city of David.

Now, there are but twelve signs in the city of David; and if, among them, you will look for the sign of the month of November, the season upon which we are now entering, you will find that that sign actually is Sagittarius, with his bow and arrow—uniting the two natures in his own person: that is, not the two natures of God and man, but the two natures of man and horse—being down to the loins a human form, but all the rest a horse. So that the creed of St. Athanasius ought to have run, that, as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so man and horse is one Christ. Perfect man and perfect horse, of a reasonable soul and human flesh, subsisting, who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven (and it is precisely when the sun is coming down from heaven that he appears in the sign of the man and the horse), and was born in a stable; which gives us the true and astronomical explication, where I defy the wit of man to give any other explication, of that prophecy of Simeon, in the second of Luke. Behold this (Child)! Child, says our fraudulent English translation; but the devil a word about a child is there in the original, or anything half so childish. But it is ιδε ουτος κειται: Behold this, that is, this thing-a-me-bob, this half man and half horse, this Sagittarius, is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against, εις σημειον αντιλεγομενον; that is, he shall be one of the adverse signs—one of the signs of the winter-months, the sign of the month November, when many in Israel—that is, the many stars (that make up this constellation) sink below the horizon, and do not rise again nor appear in the holy city, till after his resurrection, that is, after the sun, having passed through the humiliation of his wintry state; in November, December, January, and February, appears as the Lamb of God crossing the line of the equator in March, where, having overcome the sharpness of death, he opens the kingdom of heaven to all believers; thus giving us the meaning again, where no other meaning can be imagined, of those words of St. Matthew, that “the earth did quake, and the rocks rent, and the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the Holy City, and appeared unto many.”

The οι αλιοι, the saints, in the proper significancy of that word, never having meant any persons that ever existed upon earth, but referring only to the stars of heaven, or the holy ones of God, as the holy city, and the city of David, and the city of our God, and the Jerusalem, in which all these fallings and risings again, these crucifixions, resurrections, and ascensions (than which no language of astronomy could possibly be more astronomical), do all of them annually occur, was no Jerusalem, no city, no place on hearth, but Jerusalem which is above.

As the apostle expressly admonishes us in these words to the Colossians: “Set your affections on things above, not on things on earth;” that is, set your understanding and apprehension on the great principles of astronomical science, and do not be so stupid as to suppose that Jesus Christ and his apostles were persons that ever existed upon earth. And as, again, to the Philippians, chap. iii., v. 20: Hμων γαρ το πολιτευμα εν ουρανοις—for our conversation is in the heavens; that is, most explicitly, this whole affair of which we speak and preach, and which is called gospel, has no reference at all to any persons that ever existed, or events that ever occurred upon earth: but it is astronomical; it is all to be seen, and is all exhibited in the visible heavens—as the great Albertus has expressly said: “All the mysteries of the incarnation of our Savior Christ, and all the circumstances of his marvellous life, from his conception to his ascension, are to be traced out in the constellation, and are figured in the stars.”

And there, in that heavenly Jerusalem, and only there, are Bethlehem—the house of bread—that is, the tent of the Virgin of August, in which Christ is conceived: and all the Bethsaidas, Bethanies, Beth-shemeshes, and Bethels, in which every one of the imagined events of your gospel, not excepting one, have their astronomical significancy; and which, escaping the discernment of vulgar and uncurious ignorance, have been stupidly mistaken for historical facts: just as a fool, who has but seen the diagrams and delineations in the elements of Euclid, will make himself dead sure that all the mathematics in the world could have consisted in nothing more than in making hobscotches, and catgallowses, and scratchcradles, to play at tit-tat-toe with.

While our Christian clergy of the present day, either the most ignorant or the most deceitful of the whole human race, have played into this fool’s game, have pandered to the passions of barbarous ignorance, and found that the swinish multitude would be quite as well satisfied with the shells and husks of science, as the kernel; and so the tale was but bloody enough, and monstrous enough, impossible to have happened, and inconceivable to be conceived, they would never endanger the power of the clergy by seeking to be wise above what is written.

Thus the clergy have laid the bars of a fraudulently-pretended historical evidence across the path of knowledge; and I wish those had been the only bars that they had laid. But here, sirs, minds will be of use to you: here, I ask you not, as new-born babes, to desire the sincere milk of the word, but I call upon you, as full-grown men, to hold me to the debt of supplying you with the solid intellectual feast of the meaning; in which I ask no sensible man’s assent from his favor, but will challenge it from his conviction.

And not a man who hath the intellectual cravings of a man, but shall rise from this feast, to tread the fetters of superstition and ignorance under his feet, and only to wonder how he could have been held in them so long; and to say with me—

“How charming is divine philosophy,

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,

But musical as is Apollo’s lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets,

Where no crude surfeit reigns.”

I have explained to you how the Sun, who is the Jesus Christ, and the only Jesus Christ that ever existed, as he passes respectively into each one of the twelve signs of the Zodiac, assumes the character of that particular sign, and is assimilated and entirely identified with it. So that while he is still one, and the selfsame Supreme and only God, we find him continually spoken of under the most opposite and contradictory characteristics and attributes. He is even sometimes spoken of as his own enemy, and is as often the destroyer as the savior of the world: sometimes loving the world, then hating the world, then reconciling the wor...