names of Saints and we worship them, so also they overthrew the images of the devils, and in their stead raised images of Christ, and God's Mother, and the Saints. And under the Old Covenant, Israel neither raised temples in the name of men, nor was memory of man made a festival; for, as yet, mau's nature was under a curse, and death was condemnation, and therefore was lamented, and a corpse was reckoned unclean and he who touched it; but now that the Godhead has been combined with our nature, as some life-giving and saving medicine, our nature has been glorified and is trans-elemented into incorruption. Wherefore the death of Saints is made a feast, and temples are raised to them, and Images are painted. . . For the Image is a triumph, and a manifestation, and a monument in memory of the victory of those who have done nobly and excelled, and of the shame of the devils defeated and overthrown.” Once more, “ If because of the Law thou dost forbid Images, you will soon have to sabbatize and be circumcised, for these ordinances the Law commands as indispensable; nay, to observe the whole law, and not to keep the festival of the Lord's Pascha out of Jerusalem : but know that if you keep the Law, Christ hath profited you nothing But away with this, for whoever of you are justified in the Law have fallen from grace.” 1

10. It is quite consistent with the tenor of these remarks to observe, or to allow, that real superstitions have sometimes obtained in parts of Christendom from its intercourse with the heathen; or have even been admitted, or all but admitted, though commonly resisted strenuously, by authorities in the Church, in consequence of the resemblance which exists between the heathen rites and certain portions of her ritual. As philosophy has at times corrupted her divines, so has paganism corrupted her worshippers; and as the more intellectual have been involved in heresy, so have the ignorant been corrupted by superstition. Thus St. Chrysostom is vehement against the superstitious usuges which Jews and Gentiles were introducing among Christians at Antioch and Constantinople. “What shall we say,” he asks in one place, “about the amulets and bells which are hung upon the hands, and the scarlet woof, and other things full of such extreme folly; when they ought to invest the child with nothing else save the protection of the Cross ? But now that is despised which hath converted the whole world, and given the sore wound to the devil, and overthrown all his power; while the thread, and the woof, and the other amulets of that kind, are entrusted with the child's safety.” After mentioning further superstitions, he proceeds, “Now that among Greeks such things should be done, is no wonder ; but among the worshippers of the Cross, and partakers in unspeakable mysteries, and professors of such morality, that such unseemliness should prevail, this is especially to be deplored again and again.

And in like manner St. Augustine suppressed the feasts called Agapæ, which had been allowed the African Christians on their first conversion. “It is time,” he says, “for men who dare not deny that they are Christians, to begin to live according to the will of Christ, and, now being Christians, to reject what was only allowed that they might become Christians.” The people objected the example of the Vatican Church at Rome, where such feasts were observed every day; St. Augustine answered,

I have heard that it has been often prohibited, but the place is far off from the Bishop's abode (the Lateran), and in so large a city there is a multitude of carnal persons, especially of strangers who resort daily thither.” 3 And

: Hom. xii, in Cor. 1, Oxf. Tr. 3 Fleury, Hist. xx. 11, Oxf. Tr.

in like manner it certainly is possible that the consciousness of the sanctifying power in Christianity may have acted as a temptation to sins, whether of deceit or of violence; as if the habit or state of grace destroyed the sinfulness of certain acts, or as if the end justified the

means.

11.

It is but enunciating in other words the principle we are tracing, to say that the Church has been entrusted with the dispensation of grace. For if she can convert heathen appointments into spiritual rites and usages, what is this but to be in possession of a treasure, and to exercise a discretionary power in its application ? IIence there has been from the first much variety and change, in the Sacramental acts and instruments which she has used. While the Eastern and African Churches baptized heretics on their reconciliation, the Church of Rome, as the Catholic Church since, maintained that imposition of hands was sufficient, if their prior baptism had been formally correct. The ceremony of imposition of hands was used on various occasions with a distinct meaning; at the rite of Catechumens, on admitting heretics, in Confirmation, in Ordination, in Benediction. Baptism was sometimes administered by immersion, sometimes by infusion. Infant Baptism was not at first enforced as afterwards. Children or even infants were admitted to the Eucharist in the African Church and the rest of the West, as now in the Greek. Oil had various uses, as for healing the sick, or as in the rite of extreme unction. Indulgences in works or in periods of penance, had a different meaning, according to circumstances. In like manner the Sign of the Cross was one of the earliest means of grace; then holy seasons, and holy places, and pilgrimage to them; holy water; prescribed prayers, or other observances; garments, as the scapular, or coronation robes; the rosary; the crucifix. And for some wise purpose doubtless, such as that of showing the power of the Church in the dispensation of divine grace, as well as the perfection and spirituality of the Eucharistic Presence, the Chalice is in the West withheld from all but the celebrant in the IIoly Eucharist.

CHAPTER IX.

APPLICATION OF THE FOURTH YOTE OF A TRUE

DEVELOPMENT.

LOGICAL SEQUENCE.

LOGICAL Sequence has been set down above as a fourth test of fidelity in development, and shall now be briefly illustrated in the history of Christian doctrine. That is, I mean to give instances of one doctrine leading to another; so that, if the former be admitted, the latter can hardly be denied, and the latter can hardly be called a corruption without taking exception to the former.

And I use “ logical sequence” in contrast both to that process of incorporation and assimilation which was last under review, and also to that principle of science, which has put into order and defended the developments after they have been made. Accordingly it will include any progress of the mind from one judgment to another, as, for instance,

of moral fitness, which may not admit of analysis into premiss and conclusion. Thus St. Peter argued in the case of Cornelius and his friends,“ Can any man forbid water that these should not be baptized, which have received the IIoly Ghost as well as we?”

Such is the series of doctrinal truths, which start from the dogma of our Lord's Divinity, and again from such texts of Scripture as “ Thou art Peter," and which I should

by way