For,
that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in
the mystic rites of one who is being initiated you either know or can
learn." Tertullian also says (2) that "the devil by the mysteries of
his idols imitates even the main part of the divine mysteries."...
"He baptizes his worshippers in water and makes them believe that
this purifies them from their crimes."... "Mithra sets his mark on the
forehead of his soldiers; he celebrates the oblation of bread; he offers
an image of the resurrection, and presents at once the crown and the
sword; he limits his chief priest to a single marriage; he even has his
virgins and ascetics." (3) Cortez, too, it will be remembered complained
that the Devil had positively taught to the Mexicans the same things
which God had taught to Christendom.

(1) I Apol. c. 66.

(2) De Praescriptione Hereticorum, c. 40; De Bapt. c. 3; De
Corona, c. 15.

(3) For reference to both these examples see J. M. Robertson's
Pagan Christs, pp. 321, 322.

Justin Martyr again, in the Dialogue with Trypho says that the Birth in
the Stable was the prototype (!) of the birth of Mithra in the Cave of
Zoroastrianism; and boasts that Christ was born when the Sun takes its
birth in the Augean Stable, (1) coming as a second Hercules to cleanse
a foul world; and St. Augustine says "we hold this (Christmas) day holy,
not like the pagans because of the birth of the Sun, but because of the
birth of him who made it." There are plenty of other instances in the
Early Fathers of their indignant ascription of these similarities to the
work of devils; but we need not dwell over them. There is no need for
US to be indignant. On the contrary we can now see that these
animadversions of the Christian writers are the evidence of how and to
what extent in the spread of Christianity over the world it had become
fused with the Pagan cults previously existing.

(1) The Zodiacal sign of Capricornus, iii.

It was not till the year A.D. 530 or so--five centuries after the
supposed birth of Christ--that a Scythian Monk, Dionysius Exiguus, an
abbot and astronomer of Rome, was commissioned to fix the day and the
year of that birth. A nice problem, considering the historical science
of the period! For year he assigned the date which we now adopt, (2) and
for day and month he adopted the 25th December--a date which had been
in popular use since about 350 B.C., and the very date, within a day or
two, of the su