Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople from 428 A. D., refused to call Mary "the mother of God," on the ground that she could be the mother of the human nature only, which the divine Logos used as its organ. Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, did all in his power to stir up the minds of the people against Nestorius; the consequence was that, both at Rome and at Alexandria, Nestorius was accused of heresy. The dispute grew more bitter, and Theodosius II. thought it necessary to convoke an Œcumenical Council at Ephesus in 431. On this, as on former occasions, the affirmative party overruled the negative. The person of Mary began to rise in the new empyrean. The paradoxical name of "Mother of God" pleased the popular piety. Nestorius was condemned, and died in exile.

The shrine of many an old hero was filled by the statue of some imaginary saint.

In many parts of Italy are to be seen pictures of the "Holy Family," of extreme antiquity, the grounds of them often of gold.

These pictures represent the mother with a child on her knee, and a little boy standing close by her side; the Lamb is generally seen in the picture. They are inscribed "Deo Soli," and are simply ancient representations of Isis and Horus. The Lamb is "The Lamb that taketh away the sins of the world," which, as we have already seen, was believed on in the Pagan world centuries before the time of Christ Jesus.[399:1] Some half-pagan Christian went so far as to forge a book, which he attributed to Christ Jesus himself, which was for the purpose of showing that he—Christ Jesus—was in no way against these heathen gods.[399:2]

The Icelanders were induced to embrace Christianity, with its legends and miracles, and sainted divinities, as the Christian monks were ready to substitute for Thor, their warrior-god, Michael, the warrior-angel; for Freyja, their goddess, the Virgin Mary; and for the god Vila, a St. Valentine—probably manufactured for the occasion.

"The statues of Jupiter, Apollo, Mercury, Orpheus, did duty for The Christ.[399:3] The Thames River god officiates at the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. Peter holds the keys of Janus.[399:4] Moses wears the horns of Jove. Ceres, Cybele, Demeter assume new names, as 'Queen of Heaven,' 'Star of the Sea,' 'Maria Illuminatrix;' Dionysius is St. Denis; Cosmos is St. Cosmo; Pluto and Proserpine resign their seats in the hall of final judgment to the Christ and his mother. The Parcæ depute one of their number, Lachesis, the disposer of lots, to set the stamp of destiny upon the deaths of Christian believers. The aura placida of the poets, the gentle breeze, is personified as Aura and Placida. The perpetua felicitas of the devotee becomes a lovely presence in the forms of St. Perpetua and St. Felicitas, guardian angels of the pious soul. No relic of Paganism was permitted to remain in its casket. The depositories were all ransacked. The shadowy hands of Egyptian priests placed the urn of holy water at the porch of the basilica, which stood ready to be converted into a temple. Priests of the most ancient faiths of Palestine, Assyria, Babylon, Thebes, Persia were permitted to erect the altar at the point where the transverse beam of the cross meets the main stem. The hands that constructed the temple in cruciform shape had long become too attenuated to cast the faintest shadow. There Devaki with the infant Crishna, Maya with the babe Buddha, Juno with the child Mars, represent Mary with Jesus in her arms. Coarse emblems are not rejected; the Assyrian dove is a tender symbol of the Holy Ghost. The rag-bags and toy boxes were explored. A bauble which the Roman schoolboy had thrown away was picked up, and called an 'agnus dei.' The musty wardrobes of forgotten hierarchies furnished costumes for the officers of the new prince. Alb and chasuble recalled the fashions of Numa's day. The cast-off purple habits and shoes of Pagan emperors beautified the august persons of Christian popes. The cardinals must be contented with the robes once worn by senators. Zoroaster bound about the monks the girdle he invented as a protection against evil spirits, and clothed them in the frocks he had found convenient for his ritual. The pope thrust out his foot to be kissed, as Caligula, Heliogabalus, and Julius Cesar had thrust out theirs. Nothing came amiss to the faith that was to discharge henceforth the offices of spiritual impression."[400:1]

The ascetic and monastic life practiced by some Christians of the present day, is of great antiquity. Among the Buddhists there are priests who are ordained, tonsured, live in monasteries, and make vows of celibacy. There are also nuns among them, whose vows and discipline are the same as the priests.[400:2]

The close resemblance between the ancient religion of Thibet and Nepaul—where the worship of a crucified God was found—and the Roman Catholic religion of the present day, is very striking. In Thibet was found the pope, or head of the religion, whom they called the "Dalai Lama;"[400:3] they use holy water, they celebrate a sacrifice with bread and wine; they give extreme unction, pray for the sick; they have monasteries, and convents for women; they chant in their services, have fasts; they worship one God in a trinity, believe in a hell, heaven, and a half-way place or purgatory; they make prayers and sacrifices for the dead, have confession, adore the cross; have chaplets, or strings of beads to count their prayers, and many other practices common to the Roman Catholic Church.[400:4]

The resemblance between Buddhism and Christianity has been remarked by many travelers in the eastern countries. Sir John Francis Davis, in his "History of China," speaking of Buddhism in that country, says:

Père Premere, a Jesuit missionary to China, was driven to conclude that the devil had practiced a trick to perplex his friends, the Jesuits. To others, however, it is not so difficult to account for these things as it seemed for the good Father. Sir John continues his account as follows:

The five principal precepts, or rather interdicts, addressed to the Buddhist priests are:

• 1. Do not kill.
• 2. Do not steal.
• 3. Do not marry.
• 4. Speak not falsely.
• 5. Drink no wine.

Poo-ta-la is the name of a monastery, described in Lord Macartney's mission, and is an extensive establishment, which was found in Manchow-Tartary, beyond the great wall. This building offered shelter to no less than eight hundred Chinese Buddhist priests.[401:1]

The Rev. Mr. Gutzlaff, in his "Journal of Voyages along the coast of China," tells us that he found the Buddhist "Monasteries, nuns, and friars very numerous;" and adds that: "their priests are generally very ignorant."[401:2]

This reminds us of the fact that, for centuries during the "dark ages" of Christianity, Christian bishops and prelates, the teachers, spiritual pastors and masters, were mostly marksmen, that is, they supplied, by the sign of the cross, their inability to write their own name.[402:1] Many of the bishops in the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, it is said, could not write their names. Ignorance was not considered a disqualification for ordination. A cloud of ignorance overspread the whole face of the Church, hardly broken by a few glimmering lights, who owe almost the whole of their distinction to the surrounding darkness.[402:2]

One of the principal objects of curiosity to the Europeans who first went to China, was a large monastery at Canton. This monastery, which was dedicated to Fo, or Buddha, and which is on a very large scale, is situated upon the southern side of the river. There are extensive grounds surrounding the building, planted with trees, in the center of which is a broad pavement of granite, which is kept very clean. An English gentleman, Mr. Bennett, entered this establishment, which he fully describes. He says that after walking along this granite pavement, they entered a temple, where the priesthood happened to be assembled, worshiping. They were arranged in rows, chanting, striking gongs, &c. These priests, with their shaven crowns, and arrayed in the yellow robes of the religion, appeared to go through the mummery with devotion. As soon as the mummery had ceased, the priests all flocked out of the temple, adjourned to their respective rooms, divested themselves of their official robes, and the images—among which were evidently representations of Shin-moo, the "Holy Mother," and "Queen of Heaven," and "The Three Pure Ones,"—were left to themselves, with lamps burning before them.

To expiate sin, offerings made to these priests are—according to the Buddhist idea—sufficient. To facilitate the release of some unfortunate from purgatory, they said masses. Their prayers are counted by means of a rosary, and they live in a state of celibacy.

Mr. Gutzlaff, in describing a temple dedicated to Buddha, situated on the island of Poo-ta-la, says:

The Buddhists in India have similar institutions. The French missionary, M. L'Abbé Huc, says of them:

In the words of Viscount Amberly, we can say that, "Monasticism, in countries where Buddhism reigns supreme, is a vast and powerful institution."

The Essenes, of whom we shall speak more fully anon, were an order of ascetics, dwelling in monasteries. Among the order of Pythagoras, which was very similar to the Essenes, there was an order of nuns.[403:2] The ancient Druids admitted females into their sacred order, and initiated them into the mysteries of their religion.[403:3] The priestesses of the Saxon Frigga devoted themselves to perpetual virginity.[403:4] The vestal virgins[403:5] were bound by a solemn vow to preserve their chastity for a space of thirty years.[403:6]

The Egyptian priests of Isis were obliged to observe perpetual chastity.[403:7] They were also tonsured like the Buddhist priests.[403:8] The Assyrian, Arabian, Persian and Egyptian priests wore white surplices,[403:9] and so did the ancient Druids. The Corinthian Aphrodite had her Hierodoulio, the pure Gerairai ministered to the goddess of the Parthenon, the altar of the Latin Vesta was tended by her chosen virgins, and the Romish "Queen of Heaven" has her nuns.

When the Spaniards had established themselves in Mexico and Peru, they were astonished to find, among other things which closely resembled their religion, monastic institutions on a large scale.

The Rev. Father Acosta, in his "Natural and Moral History of the Indies," says:

In Mexico, within the circuit of the great temple, there were two monasteries, one for virgins, the other for men, which they called religious. These men lived poorly and chastely, and did the office of Levites.[404:2]

The Rev. Father concludes by saying:

The religious orders of the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians are described at length in Lord Kingsborough's "Mexican Antiquities," and by most every writer on ancient Mexico. Differing in minor details, the grand features of self-consecration are everywhere the same, whether we look to the saintly Rishis of ancient India, to the wearers of the yellow robe in China or Ceylon, to the Essenes among the Jews, to the devotees of Vitziliputzli in pagan Mexico, or to the monks and nuns of Christian times in Africa, in Asia, and in Europe. Throughout the various creeds of these distant lands there runs the same unconquerable impulse, producing the same remarkable effects.

The "Sacred Heart," was a great mystery with the ancients.

Horus, the Egyptian virgin-born Saviour, was represented carrying the sacred heart outside on his breast. Vishnu, the Mediator and Preserver of the Hindoos, was also represented in that manner. So was it with Bel of Babylon.[405:1] In like manner, Christ Jesus, the Christian Saviour, is represented at the present day.

The amulets or charms which the Roman Christians wear, to drive away diseases, and to protect them from harm, are other relics of paganism. The ancient pagans wore these charms for the same purpose. The name of their favorite god was generally inscribed upon them, and we learn by a quotation from Chrysostom that the Christians at Antioch used to bind brass coins of Alexander the Great about their heads, to keep off or drive away diseases.[405:2] The Christians also used amulets with the name or monogram of the god Serapis engraved thereon, which show that it made no difference whether the god was their own or that of another. Even the charm which is worn by the Christians at the present day, has none other than the monogram of Bacchus engraved thereon, i. e., I. H. S.[405:3]

The ancient Roman children carried around their necks a small ornament in the form of a heart, called Bulla. This was imitated by the early Christians. Upon their ancient monuments in the Vatican, the heart is very common, and it may be seen in numbers of old pictures. After some time it was succeeded by the Agnus Dei, which, like the ancient Bulla, was supposed to avert dangers from the children and the wearers of them. Cardinal Baronius (an eminent Roman Catholic ecclesiastical historian, born at Sora, in Naples, A. D. 1538) says, that those who have been baptized carry pendent from their neck an Agnus Dei, in imitation of a devotion of the Pagans, who hung to the neck of their children little bottles in the form of a heart, which served as preservatives against charms and enchantments. Says Mr. Cox:

All of these are emblems of either the Linga or Yoni.

The use of amulets was carried to the most extravagant excess in ancient Egypt, and their Sacred Book of the Dead, even in its earliest form, shows the importance attached to such things.[406:1]

We can say with M. Renan that:

Baptismal fonts were used by the pagans, as well as the little cisterns which are to be seen at the entrance of Catholic churches. In the temple of Apollo, at Delphi, there were two of these; one of silver, and the other of gold.[406:3]

Temples always faced the east, to receive the rays of the rising sun. They contained an outer court for the public, and an inner sanctuary for the priests, called the "Adytum." Near the entrance was a large vessel, of stone or brass, filled with water, made holy by plunging into it a burning torch from the altar. All who were admitted to the sacrifices were sprinkled with this water, and none but the unpolluted were allowed to pass beyond it. In the center of the building stood the statue of the god, on a pedestal raised above the altar and enclosed by a railing. On festival occasions, the people brought laurel, olive, or ivy, to decorate the pillars and walls. Before they entered they always washed their hands, as a type of purification from sin.[406:4] A story is told of a man who was struck dead by a thunderbolt because he omitted this ceremony when entering a temple of Jupiter. Sometimes they crawled up the steps on their knees, and bowing their heads to the ground, kissed the threshold. Always when they passed one of these sacred edifices they kissed their right hand to it, in token of veneration.

In all the temples of Vishnu, Crishna, Rama, Durga, and Kali, in India, there are to be seen idols before which lights and incense are burned. Moreover, the idols of these gods are constantly decorated with flowers and costly ornaments, especially on festive occasions.[406:5] The ancient Egyptian worship had a great splendor of ritual. There was a morning service, a kind of mass, celebrated by a priest, shorn and beardless; there were sprinklings of holy water, &c., &c.[406:6] All of this kind of worship was finally adopted by the Christians.

The sublime and simple theology of the primitive Christians was gradually corrupted and degraded by the introduction of a popular mythology, which tended to restore the reign of polytheism.

As the objects of religion were gradually reduced to the standard of the imagination, the rites and ceremonies were introduced that seemed most powerfully to affect the senses of the vulgar. If, in the beginning of the fifth century, Tertullian, or Lactantius, had been suddenly raised from the dead, to assist at the festival of some popular saint or martyr, they would have gazed with astonishment and indignation on the profane spectacle, which had succeeded to the pure and spiritual worship of a Christian congregation.[407:1]

Dr. Draper, in speaking of the early Christian Church, says:

The early Christian saints, bishops, and fathers, confessedly adopted the liturgies, rites, ceremonies, and terms of heathenism; making it their boast, that the pagan religion, properly explained, really was nothing else than Christianity; that the best and wisest of its professors, in all ages, had been Christians all along; that Christianity was but a name more recently acquired to a religion which had previously existed, and had been known to the Greek philosophers, to Plato, Socrates, and Heraclitus; and that "if the writings of Cicero had been read as they ought to have been, there would have been no occasion for the Christian Scriptures."

And our Protestant, and most orthodox Christian divines, the best learned on ecclesiastical antiquity, and most entirely persuaded of the truth of the Christian religion, unable to resist or to conflict with the constraining demonstration of the data that prove the absolute sameness and identity of Paganism and Christianity, and unable to point out so much as one single idea or notion, of which they could show that it was peculiar to Christianity, or that Christianity had it, and Paganism had it not, have invented the apology of an hypothesis, that the Pagan religion was typical, and that Crishna, Buddha, Bacchus, Hercules, Adonis, Osiris, Horus, &c., were all of them types and forerunners of the true and real Saviour, Christ Jesus. Those who are satisfied with this kind of reasoning are certainly welcome to it.

That Christianity is nothing more than Paganism under a new name, has, as we said above, been admitted over and over again by the Fathers of the Church, and others. Aringhus (in his account of subterraneous Rome) acknowledges the conformity between the Pagan and Christian form of worship, and defends the admission of the ceremonies of heathenism into the service of the Church, by the authority of the wisest prelates and governors, whom, he says, found it necessary, in the conversion of the Gentiles, to dissemble, and wink at many things, and yield to the times; and not to use force against customs which the people were so obstinately fond of.[409:1]

Melito (a Christian bishop of Sardis), in an apology delivered to the Emperor Marcus Antoninus, in the year 170, claims the patronage of the emperor, for the now called Christian religion, which he calls "our philosophy," "on account of its high antiquity, as having been imported from countries lying beyond the limits of the Roman empire, in the region of his ancestor Augustus, who found its importation ominous of good fortune to his government."[409:2] This is an absolute demonstration that Christianity did not originate in Judea, which was a Roman province, but really was an exotic oriental fable, imported from India, and that Paul was doing as he claimed, viz.: preaching a God manifest in the flesh who had been "believed on in the world" centuries before his time, and a doctrine which had already been preached "unto every creature under heaven."

Baronius (an eminent Catholic ecclesiastical historian) says:

Clarke, in his "Evidences of Revealed Religion," says:

Clemens Alexandrinus says:

And St. Augustine says:

Eusebius, the great champion of Christianity, admits that that which is called the Christian religion, is neither new nor strange, but—if it be lawful to testify the truth—was known to the ancients.[410:2]

How the common people were Christianized, we gather from a remarkable passage which Mosheim, the ecclesiastical historian, has preserved for us, in the life of Gregory, surnamed "Thaumaturgus," that is, "the wonder worker." The passage is as follows:

The historian remarks that there is no sort of doubt, that by this permission, Gregory allowed the Christians to dance, sport, and feast at the tombs of the martyrs, upon their respective festivals, and to do everything which the Pagans were accustomed to do in their temples, during the feasts celebrated in honor of their gods.

The learned Christian advocate, M. Turretin, in describing the state of Christianity in the fourth century, has a well-turned rhetoricism, the point of which is, that "it was not so much the empire that was brought over to the faith, as the faith that was brought over to the empire; not the Pagans who were converted to Christianity, but Christianity that was converted to Paganism."[410:4]

Edward Gibbon says:

Faustus, writing to St. Augustine, says:

Ammonius Saccus (a Greek philosopher, founder of the Neo-platonic school) taught that:

Justin explains the thing in the following manner:

Cæcilius, in the Octavius of Minucius Felix, says:

Celsus, the Epicurean philosopher, wrote that:

This assertion is fully verified by Justin Martyr, in his apology to the Emperor Adrian, which is one of the most remarkable admissions ever made by a Christian writer. He says: