of Christmas, our Lady Day, and
many other festivals with Christian names. It had been their principle
from the first to admit any gods who had become popular, and thus were
added in rapid succession the numberless gods and goddesses of the
heathen mythology. At length Jesus of Nazareth was added to their
pantheon. These pontiffs, on perceiving that Christianity, patronised
by the Emperor, was likely to gain the day, saw that to maintain their
power they must themselves pretend to belong to the new faith. This
they did, and one of their number soon managed to get himself chosen the
Bishop of Rome, while the other pontiffs by an easy transition formed
the College of Cardinals. The title of Pontifex Maximus, being held by
the Emperor, was not assumed by the bishop of Rome till the Emperor
Gratian in 376 refused any longer to be addressed by that title. Having
banished some of the grosser practices of idolatry, they introduced the
remainder under different names, so that the pagans might readily
conform to the new worship. The apostles took the place of the various
gods, and the martyrs those of the inferior divinities; above them all
was raised Astarte, who, now named Mary the Mother of God and Queen of
Heaven, became the chief object of adoration. In truth, the established
worship at Rome remained as truly idolatrous as it had ever been, while
the great aim of the pontiffs was to increase their power, amass wealth,
and strengthen their position. From that period they acted, as might
have been expected, in direct opposition to all the principles of
Christianity. Bloody struggles often took place between rivals aiming
at the pontificate, while they endeavoured to destroy all those who
refused to obey them. It was not till a somewhat later period, when the
head pontiff set up a claim of superiority above all other bishops,
that, to strengthen it, it was asserted that he was in direct apostolic
succession from the apostle Peter, the pontiff who first made it being
ignorant, probably, that the Christian Church at Rome was founded
exclusively by Paul, and that the apostle Peter never was at Rome, he
having been all his life employed in founding churches in the East. `By
their fruits ye shall know them;' and we have only to reflect on the
lives of the popes, many of them monsters of atrocity, and the fearful
acts of persecution which they encouraged and authorised, to be
convinced that paganism, the invention of Satan