and property of the spirit of evil; and this they maintained could best be effected by renouncing and withdrawing from the world, by mortifying and torturing the body, and by restraining, and if possible annihilating, those natural desires and affections which act as clogs and hindrances to the soarings of the spirit. It was a natural and inevitable result of this system-a system which was in existence centuries before the introduction of Christianity-that all those who aspired to superior sanctity should withdraw from the world to live as anchorites and hermits, and should renounce the delights of marriage, and should starve and torture their bodies with an ingenious variety of torments, in order to withdraw them from the power of the evil principle and bring them under the influence of the spirit of good. And accordingly we find that self-tormenting world-renouncing fanatics were numerous among the oriental nations at the time of the appearance of Christianity, and it was probably from their example, and not from any Scripture warrant, that Rome borrowed her monastic system and the opinions upon which it is founded -that a solitary and contemplative life is more meritorious than a career of active usefulness; that celibacy is holier than marriage; and that the salvation of the soul may be worked out by the self-inflicted tortures of the body.

The subject which we have now been considering is treated at considerable length, and with great learning, in the first part of the highly interesting and instructive volume which we have placed at the head of our remarks. The author has long been familiar with this and kindred topics, and in discussing them displays a thorough knowledge of the subject, much skill in arranging his materials, and a clear and picturesque style which makes it both easy and pleasant to follow him. We translate from him the following curious account of the way in which a purely pagan superstition connected with the healing art was adopted into the Christian Chuch. He has just narrated, on the authority of Sozomen and other ancient historians, how the Emperor Constantine erected on the shores of the Bosphorus, the site of ancient heathen temples, two churches to the Archangel Michael, and how the pilgrimages which the pagans used formerly to make in search of health to the temples of Esculapius, Isis, and Serapis, were gradually transferred to the shrine of St. Michael, and he thus continues the subject: "But what took place in the Michaelions of the Bosphorus is not the only instance of the kind which the history of that epoch affords us. We find in the worship of St. Comus and St. Damien, a similar instance of the Christian transformation of the same practices and the same

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superstitions. According to the legend, Comus and Damien had suffered martyrdom at Eges, in Celicia, under the reign of Diocletian. But that city was famous for the worship of Esculapius. He was there honoured under the surname of Soter, or saviour, and of Iatros, or physician. The devotion to the St. Comus and St. Damien being spread abroad throughout Greece, although their history was not known, as has happened to so many other confessors, the two martyrs had a church at Byzantium, in the quarter of the Blachernal. One night they appeared to the Emperor Justinian, who was suffering from a severe malady, and healed him. We there recall to mind the miraculous apparitions of the same kind which Comus and Damien made in Celicia, in the church built in their honour on the site of the Temple of Esculapius. Justinian, out of gratitude for their assistance, replaced the modest sanctuary which the Patriarch Bochio raised in their honour under the reign of Theodosius II., by a magnificent church. The news of the Emperor's cure having spread abroad, tended to make the devotion to the two saints still more fervent; henceforth they were invoked against sickness. This circumstance naturally gave rise to a belief that Comus and Damien were acquainted with medicine, and at a later date, in the legends of which they were the theme, they were given out as having exercised the medical profession during their lives. Soon physicians and surgeons took them for their patrons. A crowd of cures were imputed to their intercession, and to the touching of their pretended relics. Thenceforth the two martyrs often appeared in dreams to the sick, in order to reveal to them the remedies which they should adopt; similar miracles were also attributed in great number to St. Cyr and St. John, who had taken, in Egypt, the place of Serapis. Cures were related as performed by them, with circumstances almost identical with those which had been performed in the temple of the god."

In the second part of his work, in the chapter in which he gives an epitome of the employment of dreams and visions as a means of divination in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, M. Maury narrates the following curious particulars regarding the stigmata of our Lord's passion, which were believed to have been miraculously impressed on the body of St. Francis of Assissi during an ecstatic vision. "The joy which the miracle caused was especially great among the Franciscans. It was the triumph of their order. That prodigy afforded a brilliant proof of the infinite love of Jesus Christ for their founder, since He had selected him to present on earth a visible image of His divinity. There were, then, for the future, two passions for the mendicant monks that of Jesus

:

Christ and that of St. Francis. Father Lanfranc, a Superior of Cordeliers, at Reim, caused the following inscription to be placed over the entrance to his convent: Deo-homini et beato Francisco, utrique crucifiro (To the God-man and to St. Francis, both crucified.') The Franciscans affected so completely to confound the two crucifixions, that many among them maintained that the wounds of their founder were so similar to those of Christ, that the Virgin herself could not distinguish them. Just as we see in ancient times the secondary gods placed by a fashionable devotion above the principal god, St. Francis, for a good many of those who followed his rule, became equal, and even superior, to Jesus Christ. In 1486, a certain Cordelier, named Jean Marchand, still surpassing what had been related of the miracles of the Saint and of the circumstances which had attended his reception of the stigmata, maintained at Besançon the following propositions: St. Francis had taken the place left vacant by Lucifer since his fall; for the chief of the rebel angels having been cast down from heaven as a chastisement of his pride, the creature who had shown the greatest humility ought to be the natural inheritor of his sovereignty. St. Francis resembled Jesus Christ in forty ways: he was a second Christ and a second Son of God; his conception had been predicted by an angel to his mother, and, like the Saviour, he had been born in a stable between an ox and an ass. The pains which the Saint felt on receiving the stigmata equalled those which Jesus had suffered on the cross. Singularly extending the brief instant when the solitary had been in communion of sufferings with his Divine Master, Jean Marchand maintained that the anguish of the founder of his order had lasted a whole day, and that it had terminated at the same hour when the Godman had rendered up His spirit. Jesus had in person charged himself with the task of inflicting on His servant the five wounds, and, according to the Cordelier, that second passion had been accompanied with the same prodigies as the first. The rock was rent at the moment when the Saint had received the wound in his side; and, a second Jesus Christ, he had descended into hell, or, to speak more exactly, into purgatory, in order to deliver those whom he found there with the dress of his order, a visit which he renews every year, on the anniversary of his feast-day."

Before closing our paper, we may briefly notice another recent work of much ability, in which great ingenuity and research have been brought to bear upon the subject before us. It is entitled "The Two Babylons," and is written by the Rev. Alexander Hislop, Minister of the East Free Church, Arbroath. The author points out that, so early as

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A.D. 230, Tertullian deeply lamented the tendency of many of the Christian disciples to meet paganism half way; and he shows in what a variety of instances the Church of Rome has sanctioned and adopted purely pagan beliefs and practices which have no warrant from the Bible, and are often directly opposed both to its letter and spirit. Some of these, not already touched upon, we shall now very shortly notice. Mr. Hislop affirms that there are strong reasons for believing that the Madonna, enshrined in the sanctuaries of Romanism, is the very Queen of Heaven, for the worship of whom the fierce anger of God was kindled against the Jews in the days of Jeremiah. He also points out that the mass is a ceremony of pagan origin. In ancient times the altars of the Assyrian and Cyprian Venus were carefully kept from blood, an "unbloody sacrifice was offered to them by their worshippers, and the Assyrian Venus bore at Babylon the name of "Mulitta," or "Mediatrix." The wafer in the sacrifice of the mass was first used by the women of Arabia, and on its introduction all true Christians at once perceived its real character and its pagan origin. Those who adopted it were at first treated as heretics, and branded with the name of Collyridians, from the Greek word for the "cake," which they employed. But Rome soon perceived that this heresy might be turned to good account; and therefore, though condemned by the sound portion of the Church, the practice of offering and eating this unbloody sacrifice was encouraged by the Papacy, until, throughout the wide limits of the Romish communion, it had superseded the simple and precious Sacrament of the Supper, as instituted by our Lord himself.

Like the mass, extreme unction is stated by Mr. Hislop to be of pagan origin. In the pagan rites, unction played a very important part. Those who came to consult the oracle of Trophonius were rubbed with oil over the whole body, a process which probably tended to excite the imagination and produce the desired vision, as stimulating drugs might in this way easily be introduced into the system. Apollonius and his companions, before being admitted into the mysteries of the Indian sages, were rubbed over with an oil so powerful that they felt as if bathed with fire. This was professedly an unction, in the name of the " Lord of Heaven," to fit and prepare them for being admitted, in vision, into his awful presence. The very same reason that suggested such an unction before initiation, while still on this side the tomb, would naturally plead still more powerfully for a special unction, when the individual was about to be called, not in vision, but in reality, to face the mystery of mysteries-his personal introduction into the unseen and eternal world. Thus the

pagan rite was gradually developed into the Popish ceremony of extreme unction-a ceremony entirely unknown among Christians until corruption had made great advances in the Church. Bishop Gibson (Preservative against Popery) says that it was not known for 1,000 years after Christ.

Mr. Hislop tells us that in every religious system, except that of the Bible, the doctrine of purgatory and prayers for the dead will be found to occupy a place. It formed a part of the religious system of Egypt; in Greece it was inculcated by Plato in the Phædrus, and by several other famous philosophers; in pagan Rome also, the same doctrine was taught, and Virgil describes the torments of purgatory in the Sixth Book of the Aeneid. In heathen, as in Roman Catholic countries, prayers for the dead formed a great source of wealth to the priesthood, who well knew how to take advantage of the sensitive tenderness of relations for the happiness of the beloved dead. In India, Egypt, Tartary, Greece, and Rome, various competent observers have borne testimony to the costliness of these posthumous devotions, which appear to have been as burdensome to the relatives, and as lucrative for the priesthood, in ancient as in modern times. In the pagan purgatory, as depicted by Virgil, fire, water, and winds are represented as combining to purge away the stains of sin; in the Papal purgatory fire alone is always represented as the grand means of purgation.

We have already pointed out how completely the adoration of the relics of saints and martyrs is a practice borrowed from paganism, and we refer those who would wish to examine the subject more minutely to the pages of Mr. Hislop, where they will find it thoroughly investigated. We proceed to notice his observations with regard to the pagan origin of the rosary and the sign of the cross. The rosary was commonly employed by the Brahmins, and is mentioned in the sacred books of the Hindus. It was also used in Asiatic Greece and in pagan Rome; and Sir John F. Davis thus describes its appearance and use in China: "From the Tartar religion of the Lamas, the rosary of 108 beads has become a part of the ceremonial dress attached to the nine grades of official rank. It consists of a necklace of stones and coral, nearly as large as a pigeon's egg, descending to the waist, and distinguished by various beads, according to the quality of the wearer. There is a small rosary of beads of inferior size, with which the bonzes count their prayers and ejaculations, exactly as in the Romish ritual. Every one is familiar with the importance of the sign and image of the cross in the Romish system; how it is adored with the homage due only