A Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries

As there is nothing more celebrated than the mysteries of the ancients, so there is perhaps nothing which has hitherto been less solidly known. Of the truth of this observation, the liberal reader will, I persuade myself, be fully convinced from an attentive perusal of the following sheets; in which the secret meaning of the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries is unfolded from the most respectable authority and from a philosophy of all others the most venerable and august.

The authority, indeed, is principally derived from manuscript writings, which are, of course, in the possession of but a few; but its respectability is no more lessened by its concealment than the value of a diamond is when secluded from the light. And as to the philosophy...