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"I believe in the existence, the purity, and the indubitable truth of the good Mazdayaçna faith, and in the Creator Ormazd and the Amschaspands, in the exaction of an account, and in the resurrection of the new body. I remain in this faith, and confess that it is not to be doubted, as Ormazd imparted it to Zertuscht, Zertuscht to Fraschaostra and Jâmâçp, as Âderbât, the son of Mahresfand, ordered and purified it, as the just Paoiryotkaeshas and the Deçtûrs in family succession have brought it to us, and I thence am acquainted with it" (Av., vol. iii. p. 218.—Khorda-Avesta, xlv. 28).

In more than one respect this confession is interesting. First, it asserts the excellence and the unquestionable infallibility of the traditional faith in terms which a Catholic could hardly improve upon. Secondly, it brings before us in succinct form the leading points included in that faith—the Creator, at the head of all the created world; the seven Amshaspands or Amesha-Çpentas, heavenly powers of whom Ormazd himself was chief; the judgment to be expected after death, and the strict account then to be required; lastly, the general resurrection with its new body. Proceeding next to the manner in which this faith had been handed down from generation to generation, we have first the cardinal doctrine that God himself was the direct teacher of his prophet; after that, a statement that the prophet communicated it to others, from whom it descended to still later followers, one of whom is declared to have "ordered and purified it." Thus the consciousness of subsequent additions to the original law is betrayed. Thus amended, the priests, or Deçtûrs, are said to have transmitted it to the time of the speaker, the authority of the ecclesiastical order in the interpretation of the sacred records being thus carefully maintained.

How many generations had elapsed before the transmission of the law could thus become the subject of deliberate incorporation among recognized dogmas, it is impossible to say. Undoubtedly, however, we stand a long way off—not only in actual time, but in modes of thought and forms of worship—from the ancient Iranian prophet. The change from the faith of Peter to that of St. Augustine is not greater than that from the faith of Zarathustra's rude disciples to that of the subtle,