“What pagan “teaching”? AFAIK, there never was anything in any form of paganism that amounted to “teaching” in any meaningful sense of the word. They had practices and customs and the inborn impulse to worship they knew not what, made up some stories to fill the gap.”
Here is what Newman said in his Essay,
“The phenomenon, admitted on all hands, is this: That great portion of what is generally received as Christian truth is, in its rudiments or in its separate parts, to be found in heathen philosophies and religions. For instance, the doctrine of a Trinity is found both in the East and in the West; so is the ceremony of washing; so is the rite of sacrifice. The doctrine of the Divine Word is Platonic; the doctrine of the Incarnation is Indian; of a divine kingdom is Judaic; of Angels and demons is Magian; the connexion of sin with the body is Gnostic; celibacy is known to Bonze and Talapoin; a sacerdotal order is Egyptian; the idea of a new birth is Chinese and Eleusinian; belief in sacramental virtue is Pythagorean; and honours to the dead are a polytheism. Such is the general nature of the fact before us; Mr. Milman argues from it ‘These things are in heathenism, therefore they are not Christian’. We, on the contrary, prefer to say, ‘these things are in Christianity, therefore they are not heathen! ... so the philosophies and religions of men have their life in certain true ideas, though they are not directly divine.”
You DID ask if I had any quotes from Newman.
Yes, I read that in Newman. I still maintain that no form of paganism had any more than practices, sometimes elaborate, and inchoate notions, traditional stories and myths in an effort to understand and express reality, without direct revelation. I know Newman uses the word “doctrine”, but there simply wasn’t anything approaching the doctrinal, properly speaking, before Christianity. Where is Plato’s Creed? Is Gilgamesh a doctrinal statement? Is Antigone or OEdipus Rex? Paganism is just an entirely different kind of thing.