The pagan vulgar worshipped all sorts of deified mortals, and each had his favourite, to whom he prayed ten times for once to the Omnipotent.Our vulgar worship canonized mortals, and each has his favourite, to whom he prays ten times for once to God.Call you that invention? Invention is confined to the East.Among the ancient vulgar only the mariners were monotheists; they worshipped Venus; called her 'Stella maris,' and 'Regina caelorum.' Among our vulgar only the mariners are monotheists; they worship the Virgin Mary, and call her the 'Star of the Sea,' and the 'Queen of Heaven.' Call you theirs a new religion? An old doubtlet with a new button.Our vulgar make images, and adore them, which is absurd; for adoration is the homage due from a creature to its creator; now here man is the creator; so the statues ought to worship him, and would, if they had brains enough to justify a rat in worshipping them.But even this abuse, though childish enough to be modern, is ancient.The pagan vulgar in these parts made their images, then knelt before them, adorned them with flowers, offered incense to them, lighted tapers before them, carried them in procession, and made pilgrimages to them just to the smallest tittle as we their imitators do."Jerome here broke in impatiently, and reminded him that the images the most revered in Christendom were made by no mortal hand, but had dropped from heaven.
"Ay," cried Colonna, "such are the tutelary images of most great Italian towns.I have examined nineteen of them, and made drafts of them.If they came from the sky, our worst sculptors are our angels.But my mind is easy on that score.Ungainly statue or villainous daub fell never yet from heaven to smuggle the bread out of capable workmen's mouths.All this is Pagan, and arose thus.The Trojans had Oriental imaginations, and feigned that their Palladium, a wooden statue three cubits long, fell down from heaven.The Greeks took this fib home among the spoils of Troy, and soon it rained statues on all the Grecian cities, and their Latin apes.And one of these Palladia gave St.Paul trouble at Ephesus; 'twas a statue of Diana that fell down from Jupiter:
credat qui credere possit."
"What, would you cast your profane doubts on that picture of our blessed Lady, which scarce a century agone hung lustrous in the air over this very city, and was taken down by the Pope and bestowed in St.Peter's Church?""I have no profane doubts on the matter, Jerome.This is the story of Numa's shield, revived by theologians with an itch for fiction, but no talent that way; not being orientals.The 'ancile' or sacred shield of Numa hung lustrous in the air over this very city, till that pious prince took it down and hung it in the temple of Jupiter.Be just, swallow both stories or neither.The 'Bocca della Verita' passes for a statue of the Virgin, and convicted a woman of perjury the other day; it is in reality an image of the goddess Rhea, and the modern figment is one of its ancient traditions; swallow both or neither.
'Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Mavi.'
"But indeed we owe all our Palladiuncula, and all our speaking, nodding, winking, sweating, bleeding statues, to these poor abused heathens; the Athenian statues all sweated before the battle of Chaeronea, so did the Roman statues during Tully's consulship, viz., the statue of Victory at Capua, of Mars at Rome, and of Apollo outside the gates.The Palladium itself was brought to Italy by Aeneas, and after keeping quiet three centuries, made an observation in Vesta's Temple: a trivial one, I fear, since it hath not survived; Juno's statue at Veii assented with a nod to go to Rome.Antony's statue on Mount Alban bled from every vein in its marble before the fight of Actium.Others cured diseases: as that of Pelichus, derided by Lucian; for the wiser among the heathen believed in sweating marble, weeping wood, and bleeding brass - as I do.Of all our marks and dents made in stone by soft substances, this saint's knee, and that saint's finger, and t'other's head, the original is heathen.Thus the footprints of Hercules were shown on a rock in Scythia.Castor and Pollux fighting on white horses for Rome against the Latians, left the prints of their hoofs on a rock at Regillum.A temple was built to them on the spot, and the marks were to be seen in Tully's day.
You may see, near Venice, a great stone cut nearly in half by St.
George's sword.This he ne'er had done but for the old Roman who cut the whetstone in two with his razor.
'Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Mavi.'
"Kissing of images, and the Pope's toe, is Eastern Pagani**.The Egyptians had it of the Assyrians, the Greeks of the Egyptians, the Romans of the Greeks, and we of the Romans, whose Pontifex Maximus had his toe kissed under the Empire.The Druids kissed the High Priest's toe a thousand years B.C.The Mussulmans, who, like you, profess to abhor Heathenism, kiss the stone of the Caaba: a Pagan practice.
"The Priests of Baal kissed their idols so.
"Tully tells us of a fair image of Hercules at Agrigentum, whose chin was worn by kissing.The lower parts of the statue we call Peter are Jupiter.The toe is sore worn, but not all by Christian mouths.The heathen vulgar laid their lips there first, for many a year, and ours have but followed them, as monkeys their masters.
And that is why, down with the poor heathen!
Pereant qui ante nos nostra fecerint.
"Our infant baptism is Persian, with the font and the signing of the child's brow.Our throwing three handfuls of earth on the coffin, and saying dust to dust, is Egyptian.
"Our incense is Oriental, Roman, Pagan; and the early Fathers of the Church regarded it with superstitious horror, and died for refusing to handle it.Our Holy water is Pagan, and all its uses.