with, the priest gave a certificate to the parents of the regenerated infant; it was thenceforth duly recognized as a legitimate member of the family and of society, and the day was spent in feasting and hilarity.

Fac-simile of a Pagan Certificate of Nundination.

I certify you, that in this case all is well done, and according unto due order, concerning the nundination of this child, who, being born in original sin, and in the wrath of God, is now, by the laver of regeneration in baptism, received into the number of the children of God, and heirs of the right of life.

Arcan. Probabilium.

Copy of the form of a Christian
Certificate of Baptism.

I certify you, that in this case all is well done, and according unto due order, concerning the baptizing of this child, who, being born in original sin, and in the wrath of God, is now, by the laver of regeneration in baptism, received into the number of the children of God, and heirs of everlasting life.-Church of England Baptismal Service.

The old stories and impostures of the ancient Paganism, and the new versions of them, as adopted and sanctified by the faith of Christian believers, may be compared by juxta-position,

thus

PAGAN.

Cicero, concerning the origin of divination, relates

That a man being at plough in a certain field of Etruria, and happening to strike his plough somewhat deeper than ordinary, there started up before him, out of the furrow, a Deity, whom they called Tages. The ploughman, terrified by so strange an apparition, made such an outcry, that he alarmed all his neighbours, and in a short time drew the whole country around him; to whom The God, in the hearing of them all, explained the whole art and mystery of divination which all their writers and records affirmed to be the genuine origin of that

*

CHRISTIAN.

The whole collegiate church of regular canons, concerning the origin of St. Mary of Impruneta,* relate

When the inhabitants of Impruneta had resolved to build a church to the Virgin, and were digging the foundations of it with great zeal, on a spot marked out to them by heaven, one of the labourers happened to strike his pickaxe against something under ground, from which there issued presently a complaining voice or groan.— The workmen being greatly amazed, put a stop to work for a while; but having recovered their spirits, after some pause they ventured to Impruneta, a small town six miles from Florence.

their

SO

discipline for which the old Tuscans were afterwards famous.-Cic. de Divin. 2. 23. Cicero, however, subjoins, that to attempt to confute such stories would be as silly as to. believe them.

open the place from which the voice came, and found the miraculous image. This is delivered by their writers, not grounded, as they say, on vulgar fame, but on public records and histories, confirmed by a perpetual series of miracles Middleton's Pref. Disc. to Letter from Rome.

Our modern Iconoclasts* will be ready to cry out, that the asserters of these popish stories were no Christians: not seeing the dilemma they rush on, in subjecting themselves to the utterly unanswerable challenge. Who then were Christians? Let them strike from their list, if they please, all the writers, whose faith and credibility has been pawned and forfeited on stories,-than which the best are than this—no better; let them join the laugh against their Eusebius, for taking owls for angels; their St. Augustin, for preaching the gospel to a whole nation of men and women that had no heads; their Origen, for being a priest of the goddess Cybele and of Jesus Christ at the same time; their Tertullian, for believing the resurrection of Christ, because it was impossible; their Gregory for writing letters to the Devil, yes! and their great Protestant reformer Martin Luther, for seriously believing, that the Devil ran away with children out of their cradles and put his own imps in their places. And then produce all the testimonies they shall have left, of the existence of a religion that was not essentially and absolutely pagan, at any time before the period of their pretended reformation. The only difference was, that Jupiter was turned into Jehovah, Apollo into Jesus Christ, Venus's pigeon into the Holy Ghost, Diana into the Virgin Mary, a new nomenclature was given to the old materia theologica: the demigods were turned into saints; the exploits of the one were represented as the miracles of the other; the pagan temples became Christian churches; and so ridiculously accommodating were the converters of the world to the prejudices of their pagan ancestors and neighbours, that we find, that for the express and avowed purposes of accommodating matters that the change might be the less offensive, and the old superstition as little shocked as possible, they generally observed some resemblance of quality and character in the saint whom they substituted * Image breakers.

to the old deity. "If in converting the profane worship of the Gentiles to the pure and sacred worship of the church, the 'faithful were wont to follow some rule and proportion, they have certainly hit upon it here, (at ROME) in dedicating to the Virgin Mary, the temple formerly sacred to the Bona Dea, or Good Goddess."* In a place formerly sacred to Apollo, there now stands the Church of Saint Apollinaris, built there, as they tell us, in order that the profane name of that Deity might be converted into the glorious name of this martyr.

Where there anciently stood the temple of Mars, they have erected a Church to Saint Martina, with this inscription,

Mars hence expelled; Martina martyr'd maid
Claims now the worship which to him was paid.†

It is certain that in the earlier ages of Christianity, the Christians often made free with the sepulchral stones of heathen monuments, which being ready cut to their hands, they converted to their own use, and turning downwards the side on which the old epitaph was engraved, used either to inscribe a new one on the other side, or leave it perhaps without any inscription at all. This has frequently been the occasion of ascribing martyrdom and saintship to persons and names of mere Pagans.

THE PANTHEON.

The noblest HEATHEN TEMPLE now remaining in the world, is the Pantheon or Rotunda, which, as the inscription over the portico informs us, having been impiously dedicated of old by Agrippa to Jove and all the Gods, was piously reconsecrated by Pope Boniface the Fourth, to the Mother of God and all the Saints.

* Si nel rivoltare il profuno culto de gentili nel sacro e vero, osservarono i fedeli qualche proportione, qui la ritrovarono assai conveniente nel dedicare a Maria virgine un tempio, ch'era della Bona Dea.Rom. Med. Gior. 2. Rion di Rissa, 10.

+ The inscription of course is in Latin, and this it isMartyrii gestans virgo Martina coronam Ejecto hinc Martis numina Templa tenet.

The inscription is

PANTHEON, &c.

AB AGRIPPA AUGUSTI GENERO

IMPIE JOVI, CÆTERISQUE MENDACIBUS DIIS
A BONIFACIO IIII. PONTIFICE

DEIPARE ET S. S. CHRISTI MARTYRIBUS PIE

DICATUM,
&c.

Inscriptions in Pagan Temples.* Inscriptions in Christian Churches.*

Aringhus, in his account of subterraneous Rome, acknowledges this conformity between the Pagan and Christian forms 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, who found it necessary, he says, in the conversion of the Gentiles, to dissemble and winkt at many things, and yield to the times; and not to use force against customs which the people were so obstinately fond of, nor to think of extirpating at once every thing that had the appearance of profane, but to supersede in some measure the operation of the sacred laws, till these converts

* 1. Mercurio et Minervæ, Diis

Tutelarib.

2. Dii qui huic templo præsident.

8. Numini Mercurii, pollenti, potenti,

66

invicto.

4. Diis Deabus que cum Jove.

Gruter's Inscriptions..

* 1. Marie et Francisce, Tutelares

mei.

2. Divo Eustorgio, qui huic templo præsidet.

3. Numini Divi Georgii, pollenti, potenti, invicto.

4. Divis præstitibus juvantibus, Georgio Stephanoque, cum Deo Opt. Max. Boldoniuss Epigraphs.

+" And the times of this ignorance God winked at.."--Acts xvii, 30.

convinced by degrees, and informed of the whole truth, by the suggestions of the Holy Spirit, should be content to submit in earnest to the yoke of Christ.*

The reader will do himself the justice of collating this admission with the same accommodating policy of St. Gregory, adduced in our Chapter of Admissions, p. 48.

SAINTS AND MARTYRS THAT NEVER EXISTED.

The last of ten thousand features of resemblance between Paganism and Christianity, which might be adduced to establish their absolute identity, which we shall care to notice, is the striking coincidence that the Christian personages, like the Pagan deities, were frequently created by errors of language, mistakes of noun substantives for proper names, ignorance of the sense of abbreviated words, substitution of one letter for another, &c. &c. so that words which had only stood for a picture, a cloak, a high-road, a ship, a tree, &c. in their original use, were passed over in another language as names of gods, heroes, saints, and martyrs, when no such persons had ever existed. Thus have we a Christian church erected to Saint Amphibolus, another to Saint VIAR-Christian prayers addressed to the holy martyr Saint Veronica; and Chrestus adored as a god, by the ignorance that was not aware that Amphibolus was Greek for a cloak;

Viar. abbreviated Latin for a perfectus Viarum, or overseer of the highways;

Vera Icon, half Latin and half Greek for true image; and Chrestust the Greek in Roman letters for any good and useful man or thing.

* Ac maximi subinde pontifices quam plurima prima quidem facie dissimulanda duxere, optimum scilicet rati tempori deferendum esse; suadebant quippe sibi, haud ullam adversus gentilitios ritus vim, utpote qui mordicus a fidelibus retinebantur, adhibendam esse; neque ullatenus enitendum, ut quicquid profanos saperet mores, omnino tolleretur, quinimo quam maxima utendum lenitate, sacrarumque legum ex parte intermittendum imperium arbitrabantur.-Tom. 1, lib. 1, c. 21.

†This mistake originates in what is called the "Iotacism, which consists in pronouncing the like. The modern Greeks give them both the sound of the Italian I or English E. This prevailed much in Egypt, and hence is frequently seen to take place in the Alexandrine MSS. Hence also XoLotos and Xonotos have been confounded; and Suetonius has written, "Judæos impulsore CHRESTO assiduè tumultuantes Româ expulit.”—Elsley's Annotations on the Gospels, vol. 1, p. xxz.

But surely this will read quite as well if taken exactly the other way. It was as easy for the Christian-evidence manufacturers to change E into I, as for Suetonius to have changed I into E.