18 This is most probably the oldest of the creed forms, if for a “creed” it was intended, long lost but now restored It clearly expresses the faith and the practice of the Early Christian Church (reaching back,

perhaps, in some truths, to the days before Noah), which we see glimpses of elsewhere in the writings that remain to us. The decree of the Church in her first general council at Jerusalem, founded on it as a deep psychological insight, and given under the direct influence of the Holy Spirit, is well known, though generally forgotten or ignored by Christians; for the logical deduction is total abstinence from flesh meat, which can only be obtained for food by the destruction of innocent life, whether by bloodshed or by strangling. And such destruction of life for selfish ends is placed with fornication and other deadly sins. Some portions of the Epistles of S. Paul in the A.V., notwithstanding all these, are manifestly interpolations of a later date after the discipline of the Church had been relaxed, and the evil customs Bond fashions of the world had sought and gained admission in the Church in union with a corrupt state. Both this symbol of Faith and the 12 Precepts of Jesus have been published before in a separate leaflet form in the year 1881.

v. 22. -It has been asserted by Church historians of all shades of opinion that incense was not used in the Christian

Church till the fourth century. Here we have evidence of the contrary, and proof that in the early Church of

Jerusalem It was in use at the time this Gospel was written. This with other ceremonies, ornaments, etc., not peculiar to Judaism (e.g., the high priest’s golden plate or mitre, which S. James is said to have worn as president of the Church of Jerusalem), were retained. The truth seems to be that the use of it was laid aside for a time as a matter of expediency on account of the danger to the lives of the brethren, as it helped materially their persecutors to find out their hidden places of meeting. When the persecutions were over and the Church emerged from the concealment of the catacombs into the light of open day in the fourth century, then it was resumed, and this was the only reason of what could exist, for its discontinuance being of divine appointment as we have seen, though not essentially necessary any more perhaps than music, or lights or vestments.

v. 22. -Probably as a traditional memory of this recorded event, a peculiar custom exists in the East to this day. The

Great Bell of the Kremlin Tower is heard during the entire time of the chanting of the Creed. The same in other Oriental Churches, where every bell in the Church rings during the creed, as well as at the elevation and other parts of the Liturgy. (See O’Brien’s “History of the Mass,” &c.)

Again, referring to the Essenes as a religious body, the popular impression is that the Cenobite or Monastic life did not rise in Christendom till the Fourth Century. The fact is, it was coeval with, if not antecedent to, Christendom, as among the Essenes and Therapeutre, and even before them in the “school of the Prophets” in the Jewish Church. The Carthusian Monasteries in the Catholic Church give a good idea of these early monks and nuns, and their mode of life, &c. (See Arthur Lillies “Christianity and Buddhism,” larger work.) It is the natural outcome of earnestness and devotion, despised and rejected by the world that will not receive nor give heed to higher teachings but only to its own self-interests, insanities and follies, and reject the life of obedience to God’s laws.” Ye are the salt of the earth, a city set on a hill, a light shining in a dark place.” Thus, with few exceptions, were these institutions of old, and still are, where the evil influence of the world has not crept in like a serpent coiling round the Tree of Life.

v. 26. -Here we subjoin the ancient Anathema omitted in the first Edition which we are now admonished to restore

M.A. (1835 - 1906)

Translator of the Gospel of the Holy Twelve. The Rev. Gideon Jasper Richard Ouseley was born in Lisbon on the 15th October, 1835, the younger son of Sir Ralph Ouseley, K.C.B., brought over to Ireland on the death of his father, 14th May, 1842, by relatives, and educated in Dublin University, in which he graduated in 1858. On the 9th of December, 1906 he passed away in his seventy-second year. He was ordained as a clergyman of the Established Church by the Bishop of Down and Connor, and appointed Curate of Warren-point, Co. Down in 1861.He did not long remain in a Church in which he found himself to be in a false position; and in 1870, having voluntarily renounced all eating of flesh, strong drink and tobacco as inconsistent with the humanity and the true religion of Christ, as taught by Him and His apostles, he was received as a priest of the Catholic Apostolic Church.

Before his reception into the Catholic Church, he fully explained to the Prior his views and beliefs—which on no account would he abandon. The Prior said he did not find in that which he expressed anything contrary to the faith of the Catholic Church. “Why then,” asked the Rev. Ouseley, “does not the Church teach it?” To which the Prior replied, “You are not at liberty to say it is the teaching of the Catholic Church, but you are free to believe and hold your views as a pious opinion.”

It was in such circumstances that he sought to propagate his beliefs. His desire was to saturate and transmute the Church’s own formularies with the true teaching of Christ and His

Humanitarianism. He set about revising the formularies in place of concealing them. While he was not a sectarian and hated to be dubbed as such, he would work with all true reformers and good men who would try to bring the people into ways of righteousness and raise them out of their barbarous habits of flesh-eating, strong drinking, and cruelty of every sort and kind.

He considered that “the direct cause of poverty, bad health and social misery was due to flesh- eating, alcoholic drinking and tobacco smoking.” He saw in their abolition “the only effectual means of the world’s redemption, whether as regards men themselves or the animals.” “The true and proper food for man was that which Mother Earth brought forth in plenty for the sustenance of her children.”

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He founded the Order of At-one-ment and United Templars Society, having for its motto: “One God, one Religion, various names, various forms.” Its object was to bring about a reconciliation of opposing ideas, things, persons, and systems; at-one-ing the human with the Divine, and man with God; by the Spirit of Christ within the soul.

On account of his views, the personal relationship between the reformer and his Church became strained; which led, in the first instance, to the Rev. Ouseley being suspended, and later to his being, literally, cast out of the Church. His views being called “anti-Christian.”

This because, believing that he had been called to undertake this important mission, he set about to present to the world the hidden text “The Gospel of the Holy Twelve,” the Christian

Dispensation pieced together from the most ancient and complete collection of Christian fragments, preserved in one of the Monasteries of the Buddhist monks in Thibet, where it was hidden by some of the Essene community for safety from the hands of the Corrupters and for the first time to be translated from the Aramaic. It was a translation of an original Aramaic document purporting to be a reconstruction and revision of the Gospel narrative.

Also because the contents of this most ancient Gospel set forth a higher moral and religious teaching, as the basis of the Christian Church, than any other that has come down to us, requires but the reading of eyes divested of prejudice, and the perception of a regenerate heart, and intelligent mind, to receive and appreciate that the Rev. Ouseley was undaunted in proclaiming the true religion of Christ.

One thing is unquestionable, he could not unaided by some Power higher than and above that of his normal intellect, have written this Gospel, and that such Power was of a Divine nature, is manifest from its contents. At the end of the Gospel are the words: “Glory be to God by Whose Power and help it has been written.”

It must not on this account be assumed that the original of which this Gospel is claimed to be a translation is of greater historical value than are the Four Gospels— none of which is historical in the sense commonly supposed—the object of all being to portray “the divine drama of the Spiritual history of man”—that is, of the Soul. But this Gospel has the advantage over the others in that it escaped the hands of the “Correctors” and “Corrupters” from which they suffered. In 1905, he wrote to a friend, “I have finished my work and my destiny awaits me. They are ready to receive me.”

On the 9th of December, 1906 he passed away in his seventy-second year. A notice of him appeared in “Light” (5th and 12th January, 1907): “And now may he rest in peace with the knowledge that his life of self-sacrifice for Truth and Humanity—a life without ambition for any worldly honour or desire for any worldly gain—was not lived in vain, for “Where Mercy, Love and Pity dwell, There God is dwelling too.”