the tonsure, the ring in marriage, turning to the East, images at a later date, perhaps the ecclesiastical chant, and the Kyrie Eleison,1 are all of pagan origin, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church.

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The eighth book of Theodoret's work Adversus Gentiles, which is "On the Martyrs," treats so largely on the subject, that we must content ourselves with but a specimen of the illustrations which it affords, to the principle acted on by St. Gregory Thaumaturgus. Time, which makes all things decay," he says, speaking of the Martyrs, "has preserved their glory incorruptible. For as the noble souls of those conquerors traverse the heavens, and take part in the spiritual choirs, so their bodies are not consigned to separate tombs, but cities and towns have distributed them; and they call them saviours of souls and bodies, and physicians, and honour them as the protectors and guards of cities, and, using their intervention with the Lord of all, through them they obtain divine gifts. And though the body be divided, the grace remains indivisible; and that small and tiny particle is equal in power with the Martyr that hath never been dispersed about. For the grace which thrives distributes the gifts, measuring the bounty according to the faith

of comers.

"Yet not even this persuades you to celebrate their God, but ye laugh and mock at the honour which is paid them by all, and consider it a pollution to approach their tombs. But though all men made a jest of them, yet at least the Greeks could not decently complain, to whom belonged libations and expiations, and heroes and demi-gods and deified men. To Hercules, though a man, and compelled to serve Eurystheus, they built temples, and constructed altars, and offered sacrifices in honour, and allotted feasts; and that, not Spartans

1 According to Dr. E. D. Clarke, Travels, vol. i. p. 352.

only and Athenians, but the whole of Greece and the greater part of Europe."

Then, after going through the history of many heathen deities, and referring to the doctrine of the philosophers about great men, and to the monuments of kings and emperors, all of which at once are witnesses and are inferior, to the greatness of the Martyrs, he continues: "To their temples we come, not once or twice a year or five times, but often do we hold celebrations; often, nay daily, do we present hymns to their Lord. And the sound in health ask for its preservation, and those who struggle with any disease for a release from their sufferings; the childless for children, the barren to become mothers, and those who enjoy the blessing for its safe-keeping. Those too who are setting out for a foreign land beg that they may be their fellow-travellers and guides of the journey; those who have come safe back acknowledge the grace, not coming to them as to gods, but beseeching them as divine men, and asking their intercession. And that they obtain what they ask in faith, their dedications openly witness, in token of their care. For some bring likenesses of eyes, others of feet, others of hands; some of gold, others of silver; and their Lord accepts even the small and cheap, measuring the gift by the offerer's ability... Philosophers and Orators are consigned to oblivion, and kings and captains are not known even by name to the many; but the names of the Martyrs are better known to all than the names of those dearest to them. they make a point of giving them to their children, with a view of gaining for them thereby safety and protection.... Nay, of the so-called gods, so utterly have the sacred places been destroyed, that not even their outline remains, nor the shape of their altars is known to men of this generation, while their materials have been devoted to the shrines of the Martyrs. For the Lord has introduced His own dead in

And

the place of your gods; of the one He hath made a riddance, on the other He hath conferred their honours. For the Pandian festival, the Diasia, and the Dionysia, and your other feasts, we have the celebrations of Peter, of Paul, of Thomas, of Sergius, of Marcellus, of Leontius, of Panteleëmon, of Antony, of Maurice, and of the other Martyrs; and for that ancient procession, and indecency of work and word, are held modest festivities, without intemperance, or revel, or laughter, but with divine hymns, and attendance on holy discourses and prayers, adorned with laudable tears." This was the view of the "Evidences of Christianity" which a Bishop of the fifth century offered for the conversion of unbelievers.

The introduction of Images was still later, and met with more opposition in the West than in the East. It is grounded on the same great principle which I am illustrating; and as I have given extracts from Theodoret for the developments of the fourth and fifth centuries, so will I now cite St. John Damascene in defence of the further developments of the eighth.1

"As to the passages you adduce," he says to his opponents, "they abominate not the worship paid to our Images, but that of the Greeks, who made them gods. It needs not therefore, because of the absurd use of the Greeks, to abolish our use which is so pious. Enchanters and wizards adjure, so does the Church its Catechumens; but they invoke devils, and she invokes God against devils. Greeks dedicate images to devils, and call them gods; but we to True God Incarnate, and to God's servants and friends, who drive away the troops of devils." Again, "As the holy Fathers overthrew the temples and shrines of the devils, and raised in their places shrines in the names of Saints and we worship them, so also they overthrew the images of the devils, and 1 De Imag. 1. 24.

363 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, man'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 transelemented 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."1 Once more, "If because of the Law thou dost forbid Images, you will soon have to sabbatise 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."

It is quite consistent with the tenor of these remarks to observe, or to allow, that real superstitions have sometimes obtained in parts of the Church from its intercourse with the heathen; or have even been admitted, or all but admitted, though commonly strenuously resisted, by its authorities, in consequence of the resemblance which exists between the heathen rites and certain portions of its ritual. As philosophy has at times corrupted its divines, so has paganism corrupted its 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 usages 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."2 And in like manner it certainly is possible that the consciousness of the sanctifying power in Christianity may have acted as a temptation to sins, Hom. xii. in Cor. 1, Oxf. Tr.

2 Fleury, Hist. xx. 11, Oxf. Tr.