means. In one of his homilies the venerable doctor speaks of the cruelty of the mistresses to their female servants as disgraceful to the houses of Christians. In another place he rails against the extravagance of their dress; in another of their equipages, and the number of eunuchs that they retained. A modern writer says, "Every decorous arrangement was enforced, and truths were told, and rebukes administered, such as no modern audience could endure. Females were placed apart generally on an elevation or gallery above the men, in the intention of preserving a more entire separation; but it was applied to the purposes of a more prominent display. In fact the behaviour of both sexes in divine worship was most disgraceful." Chrysostom, speaking of the assemblies in the church, says, "Here are the tumults and confusion of an inn, the laughter and hubbub of the bath and agora:" the dress of the women was most indecent, and Chrysostom declares his belief that no place was more available for assignations. Yet the people were as fond of a popular teacher then as they are now; and if by any circumstance Chrysostom did not preach, the people were sulky, and made such noises and screams that no other preacher could proceed. It was owing to this state of faith and morals amongst those who had been admitted into the Church that made it

needful to dismiss so large a portion of the people before the mysteries of the Faith could be celebrated in the Sacrament, as is found in all the ancient liturgies. A convincing proof that something more than the Rationalists will now allow was transacted, for if nothing were done or said but what related to eating bread and drinking wine, there would have been no necessity for any such exclusion. Reverence, like all other religious feelings, is a habit; a child educated in the midst of observances for which he is taught to entertain respect will assuredly be reverential in his demeanour; but it would be very difficult to train new converts to venerate forms of which they did not know the meaning; and in these days it is still more difficult to teach Dissenters to be reverential, how much soever they may be convinced in their understandings of the propriety of so being.

The superstition of the people did not arise from popery and popish priests, as illiterate Protestants falsely assert, but from the Laity having brought in their heathen rites with them. For example, when a child was to be christened, the parents lighted a number of lamps, and affixed a name to each; that which was attached to the lamp that burned the longest was given to the child, because it was presumed to promise longevity. Charms, amulets, fascinations of all kinds, were

in use as preservatives from evil, in lieu of which Chrysostom in vain urged the efficacy of the cross. Instead of the Sacrament being consumed at the time, it was constantly carried home as a charm. Children were entrusted to heathen servants, who taught them all kinds of wicked poetry. Scarcely any of the laity knew the existence of the greater part of the Scriptures. Most of the best teachers of the arts and sciences were pagans, who taught the boys to despise Christianity.

The clergy, with all their power, effected no change for the better in the domestic habits of the people. But at length the secular arm undertook to reform private education, and private morals, and the Emperor Theodosius formed a code as minute in its interference as that which Calvin subsequently adopted in Geneva and Scotland, and as the clergy, after the example of the emperor, adopted in the west. Still many superstitions, many absurdities, found in the lives of the saints, and many doctrines currently believed about purgatory, heaven, mediation of saints, &c., are to be traced, not to the clergy, but to the people; which were inveighed against and resisted for a long time, though at last received and turned to the pecuniary advantage of the priests.

So soon as Christianity was adopted by the sovereigns the people became nominal converts by

thousands. It is plain, from the histories of these transactions in each country, that there was not a sufficient number of well-instructed clergy to teach the multitude that joined the Church. Hence all sorts of expedients were resorted to: scenic representations, or mysteries as they were called, a Christian direction given to heathen superstitions and practices, and a deluge of improper things were thus brought in which have never been thoroughly eradicated. The attempt to sanctify them has failed, and they have been like the fly in the ointment, they have profaned the Church whilst the Church has not purified them.

Thus Christianity as well as every form of Heathenism has its Mythology. The Apostles and saints are the demigods, and the holy women the deesses of the Roman priests. They worship the Blessed Virgin as the Queen of Heaven, though such worship is denounced totidem verbis by the prophet Jeremiah (xliv.), offering to her the holy bread which ought to be offered to God alone, and to the whole body of martyrs as mediators. In order to have some colour for denying the charge of idolatry they have invented a distinction of two kinds of worship: but all writers, heathen and Christian, in past ages have been equally clear in their assertion that the worship of many mediators is idolatry as much as the worship of many gods: the heathen denied that

they did so, admitting that in such case they would be idolaters; so that if the modern Romish doctrine concerning prayer to the saints be true, it follows that there never were such persons as idolaters in the world; and that all that the Prophets in the Old Testament, the Apostles in the New, and the Fathers of the Church have said against them, have been calumnious libels against men who were worshippers of the One True and only God.

Many rites were of a mixed character, true and proper in the Christian Church, and which were in use in the heathen temples; not that they were invented by the heathen, but copied originally from the Temple service, yet introduced into the Christian Church, not direct from the Jewish, but from heathen temples. The true interpretation of them, therefore, has never been known in the Church, because, though right in themselves, they came in through a polluted channel. Others again, particularly the use of vestments in the Christian Church, were first adopted by necessity, then preserved from decency and propriety, and ultimately defended by arguments which are wholly untenable. For example, the Albe: it is an exact representation of the white garment down to the feet in which our Lord is described in the Apocalypse: it is the white garment ordered by God to be used by the Jewish priests: followed, from imitation, by all