to the members of
the priesthood, but observed amongst the people, for each individual to
wash his hands before he presumed to pray, is a well-attested fact. The
church adopted this as well as several other Jewish ceremonies, which she
engrafted on her ritual; and St Paul apparently borrows from such ablution
the metaphor which he employs while thus admonishing his disciple
Timothy:--'I will that men pray in every place, lifting up pure hands.'--(1
Timothy ii. 8.) That in the early ages the faithful used to wash their
hands at the threshold of the church before they entered, is expressly
mentioned by a number of writers."

As to the use of holy water being of apostolic origin, he says:--

"The introduction of holy or blessed water must be referred to the times
of the apostles. That it was the custom, in the very first ages of the
church, not only to deposit vessels of water at the entrance of those
places where the Christians assembled for the celebration of divine
worship, but also to have vases containing water mingled with salt, both
of which had been separated from common use, and blessed by the prayers
and invocations of the priest, is certain. A particular mention of it is
made in the constitution of the apostles; and the pontiff Alexander, the
first of that name, but the sixth in succession from St Peter, whose chair
he mounted in the year 109, issued a decree by which the use of holy water
was permitted to the faithful in their houses."--(_Hierurgia_, pp.
461-463.)

It is rather a strange thing for Christians to imitate the religious rites
of the Jews, whose ceremonial law,--"which stood only in meats and drinks,
and divers _washings_, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the
time of reformation" (Heb. ix. 10),--was abolished by the New Testament.
However, if this is to be done, why is not the holy water adopted by the
Roman Catholic Church prepared in the same manner, and used for the same
object, as the Jewish _water of separation_, described in Numbers xix.,
but, on the contrary, composed in the same manner, and employed for the
same purpose, as the _lustral_ water of the Pagans? The fact is, that it
has been borrowed from the Pagan worship and not from the Jewish
ceremonial law, the truth of which is honestly acknowledged by the Jesuit
La Cerda, who, in a note on the following passage of Virgil,--

"Idem ter socios pura circumtulit unda,
Spargens rore levi, et ramo felicis olivae,
L