[153] “An allegory is that in which, under borrowed characters and allusions, is shadowed some real action or moral instruction; or, to keep more strictly to its derivation ([Greek:  a)/llos], alius, and [Greek:  a)gorey/o], dico), it is that in which one thing is related and another thing is understood.  Hence it is apparent that an allegory must have two senses—­the literal and mystical; and for that reason it must convey its instruction under borrowed characters and allusions throughout.”—­The Antiquity, Evidence, and Certainty of Christianity canvassed, or Dr. Middleton’s Examination of the Bishop of London’s Discourses on Prophecy.  By Anselm Bayly, LL.B., Minor Canon of St. Paul’s. Lond, 1751.

[154] The words themselves are purely classical, but the meanings here given to them are of a mediaeval or corrupt Latinity.  Among the old Romans, a trivium meant a place where three ways met, and a quadrivium where four, or what we now call a cross-road.  When we speak of the paths of learning, we readily discover the origin of the signification given by the scholastic philosophers to these terms.

[155] Hist. of Philos. vol. ii. p. 337.

[156] Such a talisman was the following figure:—­

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| 8 | 1 | 6 |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | 5 | 7 |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | 9 | 2 |
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[157] Anderson’s Constitutions, 2d ed. 1738, p. 14.

[158] Anderson’s Constitutions, 3d ed. 1756, p. 24.

[159] “The hidden doctrines of the unity of the Deity and the immortality of the soul were originally in all the Mysteries, even those of Cupid and Bacchus.”—­WARBURTON, in Spence’s Anecdotes, p. 309.

[160] “The allegorical interpretation of the myths has been, by several learned investigators, especially by Creuzer, connected with the hypothesis of an ancient and highly instructed body of priests, having their origin either in Egypt or in the East, and communicating to the rude and barbarous Greeks religious, physical, and historical knowledge, under the veil of symbols.”—­GROTE, Hist. of Greece, vol. i. ch. xvi. p. 579.—­And the Chevalier Ramsay corroborates this theory:  “Vestiges of the most sublime truths are to be found in the sages of all nations, times, and religions, both sacred and profane, and these vestiges are emanations of the antediluvian and noevian tradition, more or less disguised and adulterated.”—­Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion unfolded in a Geometrical Order, vol. 1, p. iv.

[161] Of this there is abundant evidence in all the ancient and modern writers on the Mysteries.  Apuleius, cautiously describing his initiation into the Mysteries of Isis, says, “I approached the confines of death, and having trod on the threshold of Proserpine, I returned therefrom, being borne through all the elements.  At midnight I saw the sun shining with its brilliant light; and I approached the presence of the gods beneath, and the gods of heaven, and stood near and worshipped them.”—­Metam. lib. vi.  The context shows that all this was a scenic representation.