Page 83 (part 4)

The Book of Enoch, in short, is a resume, a compound of the main features of the History of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Races; a very few prophecies from the present age of the world; a long retrospective, introspective and prophetic summary of universal and quite historical events -- geological, ethnological, astronomical, and psychic -- with a touch of theogony out of the antediluvian records. The Book of this mysterious personage is referred to and quoted copiously in the Pistis Sophia, and also in the Zohar and its most ancient Midrashim. Origen and Clement of Alexandria held it in the highest esteem. To say, therefore, that it is a post-Christian forgery is to utter an absurdity and to become guilty of an anachronism, since Origen, among others, lived in the second century of the Christian era, yet he mentions it as an ancient and venerable work. The secret and sacred name and its potency are well and clearly though allegorically described in the old volume. From the XVIII th to the Lth chapter, the Visions of Enoch are all descriptive of the Mysteries of Initiation, one of which is the Burning Valley of the "Fallen Angels." Perhaps St. Augustine was quite right in saying that the Church rejected the B OOK OF E NOCH out of her canon owing to its too great antiquity, ob nimiam antiquitatem. * There was no room for the events noticed in it within the limit of the 4004 years B.C . assigned to the world from its "creation"! [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * City of God, I. xv. ch. xxiii.