civilization of Greece and Rome, and inaugurated that long reign of
intellectual night known as the Dark Ages, which, materially aiding in
effecting the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, made it possible to
erect upon its ruins that Italian Oligarchy, which, since then, has
ruled the greater part of Christendom.

The dogmatic element of the ancient astrolatry, as incorporated into
the Christian creed, underwent no material change until the
inauguration of the dark ages, when the bishops of the several
churches, in the delirium of metaphysical speculation, concocted the
previously unheard of doctrine of pre-existence of spirit, in
conformity to which God was declared to be purely a spiritual deity,
who, existing before matter, created the universe of nothing. Being the
sole custodians of the scriptures; and changing the six periods of a
thousand years each to the six days of creation, they altered Gen. i,
1, to read, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,"
which in the original read: "In the beginning, when the Gods (Elohim or
Alehim) had made (shaped or formed) this heaven and this earth." These
radical changes necessitating others, they made two distinct and
independent beings of the principles of Good and Evil personified in
the God Sol; the former they embodied in Jesus the Christ and the
latter in the Christian Devil, thus supplanting old Pluto; the
presiding genius of the under world.

Rejecting the ancient doctrines relative to the soul, and teaching
that, having proceeded from a purely spiritual deity, it would exist
eternally as an independent spiritual entity, they substituted for the
ancient system of limited rewards and punishments the one inculcating
their endless duration. These changes in the creed, which were
confirmed at the general council of Constantinople, in the year 553,