their glorified state. Christians were now but seldom called upon to address their prayers to God; the usual mode being to pray only to some saint for his intercession. With this worship of the saints were joined many of the customs of the heathen. Men chose their patron saints, and dedicated churches to their worship. The heathen, whom the Christians used to reproach with worshipping dead men, found now ample opportunity of retort.

"Throughout the fourth century there was no peculiar preference of the Virgin Mary above other saints. The church went as yet no further than to maintain the doctrine of her perpetual virginity, to which the monastic notions of the time naturally led. The opinion that she had ever borne other children than Jesus was declared to be heresy; as for instance by Epiphanius, in the case of the Avidxoμapiavitaι in Arabia, A. D. 367, by Jerome in the case of Helvidius at Rome, A. D. 383, and by the Macedonian bishops in the case of Bonosus, bishop of Sardica, A. D. 391, while it was shown in what way she gave birth to our Saviour without ceasing to be a virgin. Neither did the teachers of the church in the fourth century scruple to attribute to her faults; and Epiphanius includes certain women in his catalogue of heretics, for their extravagant adoration of the Virgin. The Nestorian controversy first led men to set her above all other saints as the mother of God, Deotóxos.

Though it was the general belief that the angels watched over men and brought their prayers to God, it was thought unallowable to worship them, because of the passages Col. ii. 18; Rev. xix. 10; xxii. 8, 9. Ambrose is the first who seems to recommend such a worship; and after his time we find many marks of adoration paid them; though much fewer than to the saints."

§ 8. RECAPITULATION.- -CEMETERIES, CATACOMBS.

FLEURY has concisely stated the ceremonials of the last offices to the dead, which statement is added as a brief recapitulation.

"The Christians buried their dead after the manner of the Jews. They first washed, then embalmed them; employing (saith Tertullian) more perfumes and aromatic gums in this use than the heathens did in their sacrifices. They wrapped them up in fine linen or silk, and sometimes put them on rich habits. They laid them forth for the space of three days, during which time they constantly attended the dead body, and passed those days in watching and praying by it. Then they carried it to the grave, accompa

nying the corpse with torches and flambeaus, with singing of psalms and hymns to the praise of God, and in testimony of their hope of the resurrection. They made prayers also on their behalf; offered the sacrifice, and made their agape or love-feast for the poor, distributing likewise other alms among them. At the end of the year they made a fresh commemoration for them, and so from year to year, besides the standing commemoration for the dead always joined with the sacrifice.

"The church had officers appointed on purpose for the burying of their dead, who were called gravemakers or labourers, and who are sometimes reckoned among the clergy. The priests and bishops themselves looked upon the employment as an honour; and St. Eutychian, the pope, who was himself a martyr, is reported to have interred with his own hands the bodies of three hundred and fortytwo martyrs. There were often, together with the body, put into the sepulchre several other things, either as marks of honour to the deceased or to preserve his memory, as the badges of his dignity, the instruments of his martyrdom, vials or sponges filled with his blood, the acts of his martyrdom, an epitaph on him, or at least his name, medals, leaves of laurel or some other evergreen, some crosses, and the gospel. They used to lay the body on its back, the face turned to the east. The heathens, to preserve the memory of their dead, built stately sepulchres over them, either by the sides of the great roads or in the open fields. The Christians, on the contrary, removed their dead out of sight, either after the common way of interment or laying them in vaults under ground; such as were the tombs or catacombs near Rome.

"These catacombs were places under ground, cut out of quarries of soft and brittle stone, or hollowed out of the beds of sand; thus contrived by the Christians for their burying-places. There are winding stairs leading down to them, and long walks or streets which have on each side of them, cut into the earth, two or three rows of deep niches, in which the bodies are placed at first; for now the greatest part of them are taken away. At certain distances from each other are spacious chambers, vaulted over and solid as the rest, having also niches cut in them like those of the walks. The greatest part of these chambers are painted with divers histories of the Old and New Testaments, as their churches also were wont to be. And in some of these cemeteries there are subterranean churches. In many of them there have been found marble coffins, adorned with figures of bas-relief, representing the

same histories as the paintings do. These were the sepulchres of the most considerable persons; every one of these cemeteries is like a city under ground, and some of them two or three stories deep. In them the Christians found a place of retreat during the persecutions; there they kept the relics of the martyrs; there they met and celebrated the holy offices; nay, and there some of them constantly resided, as is written of many of the popes. The book called Roma Subterranea is a description of these ancient cemeteries. They remained, the greatest part of them, for a long time unknown, the entrance into them having been stopped up; and it was but about the end of the sixteenth century that they were discovered. These cemeteries are sometimes called the councils of the martyrs, their bodies being there assembled together, or arenarea, from the sandy soil where they were generally placed. In Africa they were also called area.

"They had of old a religious ambition of being buried near to the bodies of the martyrs; and this is that which at last brought so many graves and tombs into the churches; for it was of a long time. observed not to bury the dead but without the walls of cities. The veneration they had for relics, and their distinct belief of the resurrection, wore out that aversion among the Christians which the ancients, even the Israelites themselves, had for dead bodies and graves."

We wait with great interest for a splendid work, already announced, on these catacombs, in which is to be given a complete copy of all the epitaphs and inscriptions, together with coloured plates of the sculpture and paintings of these secret chambers of the sainted dead.

CHAPTER XXVI.

OF THE FESTIVALS OF THE CHURCH.

§ 1. PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

SACRED seasons are an institution, not of Christ and his apostles, but of the church. No authority for their observance is derived from the canon of the New Testament; neither do they belong to the apostolical age of the church. The churches established by the apostles, in imitation of our Lord and his disciples, observed the times and seasons of the Jews; but it was particularly the office of the apostle of the Gentiles to admonish the infant church that such observances are not an essential part of religion. He resisted all attempts to impose the yoke of Mosaic ceremonies on Gentile converts. From Jewish converts he removed the oppressive and useless burden of their festivals, and discountenanced the observance of their sacred days.

But in common with the other apostles, this minister of the Gentiles sanctioned the observance of the first day of the week, instead of the seventh, as the Christian Sabbath. This, in obedience to the great command of the Decalogue, was consecrated as holy time; and is in reality the only sacred season of the Christian church. All other times and seasons are carnal ordinances, having no Divine authority. The Christian Sabbath, therefore, ought to have the first, the last, the only place in the calendar of the church. Such is its place in the sacred canon. There it stands apart, separate, distinct from all other days, as holy unto the Lord; and there it should stand fast for ever, in the mild majesty with which Heaven has invested the solemn day. It has no affinity or connection with the innumerable holy days, fasts, and festivals, movable and immovable, with which pious usage and papal superstition has crowded the calendar of the church, and by which this sacred day of the Lord was overlaid and lost for many centuries, until brought forth to light and again restored to its original sanctity by the Puritans of the sixteenth century.

§ 2. OF THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH.

THE primitive church observed both the Jewish and the Christian Sabbath. The Jewish converts considered the abrogation of the ceremonial law to relate only to their exemption from its burdensome rites; and continued religiously to observe the Sabbath as holy. Converts from paganism, on the contrary, contemplated Christianity as a dispensation altogether new, and the religion of the Jews as totally abrogated. The resurrection of Christ was to them a fixed point, the beginning of this new dispensation, the new passover from bondage to freedom, from death to life. This great event they refused to commemorate on the same day which the Jews observed for another end, and for this purpose they selected the first day of the week. The import of the Christian Sabbath they accounted more significant and important than that of the Jewish. The one commemorated the completion of the work of creation; the other, the beginning of a nobler work by the great Creator himself, who was light and life to all.

'Twas great to speak the world from naught,
'Twas greater to redeem.

The early Christian converts, whether pagan or Jewish, seem not to have been conscious when or where or how the ancient economy was abrogated, and the gospel dispensation introduced. But, in process of time, the one was gradually discontinued and fulfilled in the other. The observance of the Lord's day as the first day of the week was at first introduced as a separate institution. Both this and the Jewish Sabbath were kept for some time; then the Christian began to take precedence of the Jewish Sabbath; finally, the latter passed wholly over into the former, which now took the place of the ancient Sabbath of the Israelites. But their Sabbath, the last day of the week, was strictly kept in connection with that of the first day, for a long time after the overthrow of the temple and its worship. Down even to the fifth century the observance of the Jewish Sabbath was continued in the Christian church, but with a rigour and solemnity gradually diminishing until it was wholly discontinued.

No historical record, sacred or profane, has informed us of the first celebration of the Lord's day, the first day of the week, as the Christian Sabbath. It doubtless was very early; probably from the first communication of the Holy Spirit on the day of