During the fourth century there was a growth of superstitions and corruptions in the Church. Great numbers of converts came into it, bringing their old heathen notions with them, and not well knowing what they might expect, but with an eager desire to find as much to interest them in the worship and life of Christians as they had found in the ceremonies and shows of their former religion. And in order that such converts might not be altogether disappointed, the Christian teachers of the age allowed a number of things which soon began to have very bad effects; thus, as we are told in the preface to our own Prayer-book, St. Augustine complained that in his time (which was about the year 400) ceremonies "were grown to such a number that the estate of Christian people was in worse case concerning that matter than were the Jews." Among the corruptions which were now growing, although they did not come to a head until afterwards, one was an excess of reverence for saints, which led to the practices of making addresses to them, and of paying superstitious honours to their dead bodies. Another corruption was the improper use of paintings or images, which even in St. Augustine's time had gone so far that, as he owns with sorrow, many of the ignorant were "worshippers of pictures." Another was the fashion of going on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in which Constantine's mother, Helena, set an example which was soon followed by thousands, who not only fancied that the sight of the places hallowed by the great events of Scripture would kindle or heighten their devotion, but that prayers would be especially pleasing to God if they were offered up in such places. And thus great numbers flocked to Palestine from all quarters, and even from Britain, among other countries; and on their return they carried back with them water from the Jordan, earth from the Redeemer's sepulchre, or what they believed to be chips of the true cross, which was supposed to have been found during Helena's visit to Jerusalem. The mischiefs of this fashion soon showed themselves. St. Basil's brother, Gregory of Nyssa, wrote a little book expressly for the purpose of persuading people not to go on pilgrimage. He said that he himself had been neither better nor worse for a visit which he had paid to the Holy Land; but that such a pilgrimage might even be dangerous for others, because the inhabitants of the country were so vicious that there was more likelihood of getting harm from them than good from the sight of the holy places. "We should rather try," he said, "to go out of the body than to drag it about from place to place." Another very learned man of the same time, St. Jerome, although he had taken up his own abode at Bethlehem, saw so much of the evils which arose from pilgrimages that he gave very earnest warnings against them. "It is no praise," he says, "to have been at Jerusalem, but to have lived religiously at Jerusalem. The sight of the places where our Lord died and rose again are profitable to those who bear their own cross and daily rise again with Him. But for those who say, 'The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord' (Jerem. vii. 4), let them hear the Apostle's words, 'Ye are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you' (1 Cor. iii. 16). The court of heaven is open to approach from Jerusalem and from Britain alike; 'for the kingdom of God is within you'" (St. Luke xvii. 21).
There were, indeed, some persons who rose up to oppose the errors of which I have been speaking. But unhappily they mixed up the truths which they wished to teach with so many errors of their own, and they carried on their opposition so unwisely, that, instead of doing good, they did harm, by setting people against such truth as they taught on account of the error which was joined with it, and of the wrong way which they took of teaching it. By such opposition the growth of superstition was not checked, but advanced and strengthened.
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