ng them,
exclaimed that the Devil had invented an imitation of Christianity in
order to deceive and ruin men. As with baptism, the imitation is older
than the original!

"The rites and institutions, by which the Greeks, Romans, and other
nations, had formerly testified their religious veneration for
fictitious deities, were now adopted, with some slight alterations, by
Christian bishops, and employed in the service of the true God. [This is
the way a Christian writer accounts for the resemblance his candour
forces him to confess; we should put it, that Christianity, growing out
of Paganism, naturally preserved many of its customs.].... Hence it
happened that in these times the religion of the Greeks and Romans
differed very little in its external appearance from that of the
Christians. They had both a most pompous and splendid ritual. Gorgeous
robes, mitres, tiaras, wax-tapers, crosiers, processions, lustrations,
images, gold and silver vases, and many such circumstances of pageantry,
were equally to be seen in the heathen temples and the Christian
churches" (Mosheim's "Eccles. Hist.," fourth century, p. 105). Says
Dulaure: "These two Fathers [Justin and Tertullian] are in no fashion
embarrassed by this astonishing resemblance; they both say that the
devil, knowing beforehand of the establishment of Christianity, and of
the ceremonies of this religion, inspired the Pagans to do the same, so
as to rival God and injure Christian worship" ("Histoire Abregee de
Differens Cultes," t. i., p. 522; ed. 1825).

The idea of _angels and devils_ has also spread from the far East; the
Jews learned it from the Babylonians, and from the Jews and the
Egyptians it passed into Christianity. The Persian theology had seven
angels of the highest order, who ever surrounded Ormuzd, the good
creator; and from this the Jews derived the seven archangels always
before the Lord, and the Christians the "seven spirits of God" (Rev.
iii. 1), and the "seven angels which stood before God" (Ibid, viii. 2).
The Persians had four angels--one at each corner of the world;
Revelation has "four angels standing on the four corners of the earth"
(vii. 1). The Persians employed them as Mediators with the Supreme; the
majority of Christians now do the same, and all Christians did so in
earlier times. Origen, Tertullian, Chrysostom, and other Fathers, speak
of angels as ruling the earth, the planets, etc. Michael is the angel of
the Sun, as was Hercules, and he