A Treatise on Relics

by Jean Calvin

With regard to the candles and lamps, which form a no less important and indispensable part of the worship adopted by the above-mentioned churches, the author of “Hierurgia” defends their use in the following manner:—

After having described the candlesticks employed in the Jewish temple, he says:—“But without referring [pg 143] to the ceremonial of the Jewish temple, we have an authority for the employment of light in the functions of religion presented to us in the Apocalypse. In the first chapter of that mystic book, St John particularly mentions the golden candlesticks which he beheld in his prophetic vision in the isle of Patmos. By commentators on the sacred Scripture, it is generally supposed that the Evangelist, in his book of the Apocalypse, adopted the imagery with which he represents his mystic revelations from the ceremonial observed in his days by the church for offering up the mass, or eucharistic sacrifice of the Lamb of God, Christ Jesus.

“That the use of lights was adopted by the church, especially at the celebration of the sacred mysteries, as early as the times of the apostles, may likewise, with much probability, be inferred from that passage in their Acts which records the preaching and miracles of St Paul at Troas:—‘And on the first day of the week, when we were assembled to break bread, Paul discoursed with them, being to depart on the morrow, and he continued his speech until midnight. And there were a great number of lamps in the upper chamber where we were assembled.’—(Acts xx. 7, 8.) That the many lamps, so particularly noticed in this passage, were not suspended merely for the purpose of illuminating, during the night-time, this upper chamber, in which the faithful had assembled on the first day of the week to break bread, but also to increase [pg 144] the solemnity of that function and betoken a spiritual joy, may be lawfully inferred from every thing we know about the manners of the ancient Jews, from whom the church borrowed the use of lights in celebrating her various rites and festivals.”—(Hierurgia, p. 372.)

It is really difficult seriously to answer such extraordinary suppositions as that the seven candlesticks, expressly mentioned as types of the seven churches, should be an allusion to the physical lights used in the worship of those churches, and not to the moral and spiritual light which they were spreading amongst Jews and Gentiles. Such an explanation appears to me nothing better than that tendency to materialise the most abstract and spiritual ideas to which I have alluded above, p. [126]. With regard to the passage in the Acts xx. 7, 8, which says that there were a great number of lamps in the upper chamber where St Paul was preaching, I think that this circumstance might have been considered as a religious rite if the apostle had been preaching at noon; but as it is expressly said that he did it at night, nothing can be more simple than the lighting of the upper chamber with lamps. It was also very natural that there should be many of them, because as St Paul was undoubtedly often referring to the Scriptures, his hearers, or at least many of them, being either real Jews or Hellenists, must have been continually looking to copies of the Bible in order to verify his quotation. [pg 145] It was, therefore, necessary to have the room well lighted, and consequently to employ many lamps. It is, indeed, curious to see to what far-fetched suppositions a writer of so much learning and ingenuity as Dr Rock is obliged to recur, in order to defend a purely Pagan rite which has been adopted by his church, giving the simplest and clearest things a non-natural sense, similar to that which some Romanising clergymen have been giving to the precepts of a church which they were betraying whilst in her service and pay.

The same author maintains that lights were employed from primitive times at divine service, saying:—

“The custom of employing lights, in the earlier ages of the church, during the celebration of the eucharist; and other religious offices, is authenticated by those venerable records of primitive discipline which are usually denominated Apostolic Canons.”—(Hierurgia, p. 393.)

Now, what is the authenticity of these canons? The author himself gives us the best answer to it, saying:—

“Though these canons be apocryphal, and by consequence not genuine, inasmuch as they were neither committed to writing by the apostles themselves, nor penned by St Clement, to whom some authors have attributed them; still, however, this does not prevent them from being true and authentic, since they [pg 146] embody the traditions descended from the apostles and the apostolic fathers, and bear a faithful testimony that the discipline which prevailed during the first and second centuries was established by the apostles.”—(P. 394.)

I shall not enter into a discussion about the value of evidence furnished by a work which is acknowledged to be apocryphal, and not to have been written by those to whom its defenders had ascribed its authorship;[92] but I shall only remark, that one of the most eminent fathers of the church, the learned Lactantius, who flourished in the fourth century, and consequently long after the time when the Apostolic Canons are supposed to have been composed, takes a very different view from them in regard to this practice, because he positively says, in attacking the use of lights by the Pagans, they light up candles to God as if he lived in the dark, and do they not deserve to pass for madmen who offer lamps to the Author and Giver of light?[93] And is it probable that he could approve of a practice in the Christian church which he condemns in the Pagan?

And, indeed, can there be any thing more heathenish than the custom of burning lights before images or relics, which is nothing else [pg 147] than sacrifices which the Pagans offered to their idols?