tholic Rome, worshippers prostrated themselves before images
of departed saints. The old Roman Pantheon, which was dedicated by Agrippa
"to Jove, _and all the gods_," was re-consecrated by Pope Boniface IV.,
about A. D. 610, "_to the blessed Virgin and all the saints_." As in the
old pagan temple, any stranger could find the god of his own country; so
in its re-consecrated state, each country could find its patron saint.
Other temples were changed and re-consecrated in the same manner. The
ancient statue of Jupiter stands now as the statue of St. Peter. The
pagans had their vestal virgins; the Papists their nuns.

Dr. Middleton, who visited Rome in 1729, says:

"Nothing, I found, concurred so much with my original intention of
conversing with the ancients; or so much helped my imagination, to find
myself wandering about in old heathen Rome, as to observe and attend to
their religious worship; all whose ceremonies appear plainly to have been
copied from the rituals of primitive Paganism: as if handed down by an
uninterrupted succession from the priests of old, to the priests of new
Rome, whilst each of them readily explained, and called to mind some
passages of a classic author, where the same ceremony was described, as
transacted in the same form and manner, and in the same place where I now
saw it executed before my eyes."--_Dowl. Hist. of Rom._, p. 114.

Says Mr. Lord:

"After a struggle of more than four centuries, the ecclesiastics of all
the hierarchies in the empire were united in one vast organization, with
the pontiff as their supreme legislative and judicial head, and a single
ecclesiastical government was established over the whole Roman church,
after the model of the civil government of the ancient empire under
Constantine and his successors. It is, accordingly, denominated by
Catholics themselves a monarchy. 'All Catholic doctors agree in this, that
the ecclesiastical government committed to men by God is a
monarchy.'--_Bellarmini de Rom. Pont._, lib. i., c. v. Bellarmine devotes
his first book 'of the Pontiff' to prove that such is and ought to be its
government. 'If the monarchical is the best form of government, as we have
shown, and it is certain that the church of God instituted by Christ its
head, who is supremely wise, ought to be governed in the best manner, who
can deny that its rule ought to be monarchical?'--_Ib._, i., c. ix., p.
527.

"The canonists are accustomed, accordingly, to denominate