“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 [pg 140] 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 olivæ,
Lustravitque viros”
—Æneid, lib. vi. 229—
says, “Hence was derived the custom of the holy church to provide purifying or holy water at the entrance of their churches.”[88] The same custom was observed in the Pagan temples, at the entrance of which there was a vase containing the holy or lustral water, for the people to sprinkle themselves with, just as is now done at the entrance of the Roman Catholic churches. The author of “Hierurgia” mentions, as quoted above, that Pope Alexander I. authorised, in the beginning of the second century, the use of holy water; and yet Justin Martyr, who wrote about that time, says “that it was invented by demons, in imitation of the true baptism signified by the prophets, that their votaries might also have their pretended purification by water.”[89] And the Emperor Julian, in order to vex the Christians, [pg 141] caused the victuals in the markets to be sprinkled with holy water, with the intention of either starving them or compelling them to eat what they considered as impure.[90]
To these evidences of the abomination in which the primitive Christians held the Pagan rite of sprinkling with holy water, I may add the following anecdote, characteristic of the intensity of this feeling:—
When Julian the Apostate was one day going to sacrifice in the temple of Fortune, accompanied by the usual train of the emperors, the Pagan priests, standing on both sides of the temple gate, sprinkled those who were entering it with the lustral or holy water in order to purify them according to the rites of their worship. A Christian tribune, or superior officer of the imperial guards (scutarii), who, being on duty, preceded the monarch, received some drops of this holy water on his chlamys or coat, which made him so indignant, that, notwithstanding the presence of the emperor, he struck the priest who had thus sprinkled him, exclaiming that he did not purify but pollute him. Julian ordered the arrest of the officer who had thus insulted the rites of his religion, giving him the choice either to sacrifice to the gods or to leave the army. The bold Christian chose the latter, but was soon restored to his rank on [pg 142] account of his great military talents, and raised, after the death of Julian and the short reign of Jovian, to the imperial throne as Valentinian I.[91]
This monarch was, however, by no means a bigot; on the contrary, we have the unsuspected testimony of the contemporary Pagan writer Ammianus Marcellinus that he maintained a strict impartiality between the Christians and Pagans, and did not trouble any one on account of his religion. He even regulated and confirmed, by a law in 391, the privileges of the Pagan clergy in a more favourable manner than had been done by many of his predecessors; and yet this monarch, who treated his Pagan subjects with such an extreme liberality, committed, when a private individual, an act of violence against their worship which exposed him to considerable danger. This, I think, is a strong proof of the horror which the Christians felt for a rite which constitutes now an indispensable part of the service in the Western as well as in the Eastern churches, and is most profusely used by them.