was dying said:  “I have hitherto lived an exile from my country, to which I now return.  Weep not for me, I ascend to the celestial abode where each of you will follow in his turn:  there God is:  this life is only death.”—­Chalcidius in Thinaeum.

Such was the profession of faith of the Samaneans, the sectaries of Orpheus, and the Pythagoreans.  Farther, Hermes is no other than Beddou himself; for among the Indians, Chinese, Lamas, etc., the planet Mercury and the corresponding day of the week (Wednesday) bear the name of Beddou, and this accounts for his being placed in the rank of mythological beings, and discovers the illusion of his pretended existence as a man; since it is evident that Mercury was not a human being, but the Genius or Decan, who, placed at the summer solstice, opened the Egyptian year; hence his attributes taken from the constellation Syrius, and his name of Anubis, as well as that of Esculapius, having the figure of a man and the head of a dog:  hence his serpent, which is the Hydra, emblem of the Nile (Hydor, humidity); and from this serpent he seems to have derived his name of Hermes, as Remes (with a schin) in the oriental languages, signifies serpent.  Now Beddou and Hermes being the same names, it is manifest of what antiquity is the system ascribed to the former.  As to the name of Samanean, it is precisely that of Chaman, still preserved in Tartary, China, and India.  The interpretation given to it is, man of the woods, a hermit mortifying the flesh, such being the characteristic of this sect; but its literal meaning is, celestial (Samaoui) and explains the system of those who are called by it.—­The system is the same as that of the sectaries of Orpheus, of the Essenians, of the ancient Anchorets of Persia, and the whole eastern country.  See Porphyry, de Abstin.  Animal.

These celestial and penitent men carried in India their insanity to such an extreme as to wish not to touch the earth, and they accordingly lived in cages suspended from the trees, where the people, whose admiration was not less absurd, brought them provisions.  During the night there were frequent robberies, rapes and murders, and it was at length discovered that they were committed by those men, who, descending from their cages, thus indemnified themselves for their restraint during the day.  The Bramins, their rivals, embraced the opportunity of exterminating them; and from that time their name in India has been synonymous with hypocrite.  See Hist. de la Chine, in 5 vols. quarto, at the note page 30; Hist. de Huns, 2 vols. and preface to the Ezour-Vedam.

Then, retorting the pretensions of the Christians against themselves:  “Prove to us,” said the Lama, “that you are not Samaneans degenerated, and that the man you make the author of your sect is not Fot himself disguised.  Prove to us by historical facts that he even existed at the epoch you pretend; for, it being destitute of authentic testimony,* we absolutely deny it; and we maintain that your very gospels are only the books of some Mithriacs of Persia, and the Essenians of Syria, who were a branch of reformed Samaneans."**