The church even sought to promote the spread of Christianity by the adoption of certain pagan rites and ceremonies. No more remarkable and interesting example of this is to be found than in the annals of our own country. In the year of our Lord 601, in a letter "sent to the Abbot Mellitus, then going into Britain," Pope Gregory wrote as follows:—
"I have, upon mature deliberation on the affairs of the English, determined ... that the temples of the idols of that nation ought not to be destroyed; but let the idols that are in them be destroyed, let holy water be made and sprinkled in the said temples, let altars be erected, and relics placed. For if those temples be well built, it is requisite that they be converted from the worship of devils to the service of the true God; that the nation, seeing that the temples are not destroyed, may remove error from their hearts, and knowing and adoring the true God, may the more familiarly resort to the places to which they have been accustomed. And because they have been used to slaughter many oxen in the sacrifices to devils, some solemnity must be exchanged for these on this account, as that on the day of dedication, or the nativities of the holy martyrs whose relics are there deposited, they may build themselves huts of the boughs of trees about those churches which have been turned to that use from temples, and no more offer beasts to the devil, but kill cattle to the praise of God in their eating, and return thanks to the Giver of all things for their sustenance; to the end that, whilst some gratifications are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily consent to the inward consolations of the grace of God."[27]
In A.D. 726, Pope Gregory II expressed his approval of image-worship, and because the Greek emperor refused to accede to this form of idolatry, he caused the tribute paid to him by Rome to be suspended, and even went to the extent of excommunicating him; and in 789, the second Nicene council re-established and confirmed the adoration of images.
Examples of the influence of these doctrines in the Roman and other churches may be multiplied.
The censers and lustration vessels of the priesthood are copied from the sacrificial vessels which were used in the pagan temples; the woollen fillet was transformed into the priest's amice; and the lituus, or curved staff of the soothsayer, became the crozier of the bishop.
The sacred fountains of antiquity were perpetuated in a Christian form by dedication to a saint. Examples of this are afforded by the wells of St. Elian, in Denbighshire; St. Winifred, in Flintshire, &c.
In no respect, however, has the Romish church so closely followed the example of pagan nations, and borrowed from mythology, as in the deification of men, and the adoption of tutelary divinities.
As the mythology of ancient Rome and Greece had its gods who presided over countries, cities, towns, and the numerous actions and duties of man in his civil and religious life, to each of whom worship was offered and altars erected, so also the Romish church encouraged the belief in guardian saints, and in this respect its calendar rivals the Pantheon.
As fully did this church adopt the principle of the deification (canonization) of men—one of the most prominent of the characteristics of idolatry.
Thus the Romish calendar contains guardian saints of countries: St. George is the tutelary saint of England; St. Andrew, of Scotland; St. Patrick, of Ireland; St. Denis, of France; and St. Peter, of Flanders. Austria possesses two guardian saints, St. Colman and St. Leopold; Germany has three, St. Martin, St. Boniface, and St. George Cataphrastus; and so on of all the countries of Europe.