Associated with the Romish practice of praying for the dead is that of praying to them. For this there is still less authority in the testimony of the Catacombs than for the former. There are, indeed, indications that this custom was not unknown, but they are very rare and exceptional. In all the dated inscriptions of the first six centuries, thirteen hundred and seventy four in number, there is only one invocation of the departed. It is that of the year 380, already given, in which from the heart of an orphaned and ignorant[729] girl, in the hour of her bitter sorrow and bereavement, is wrung the cry, PRO HVNC VNVM ORA SVBOLEM—“O pray for this, thine only child.” The few undated inscriptions of a similar character are probably of as late, or it may be of a much later, date than this; and the invocation is almost invariably uttered by some relative of the deceased, as if prompted by natural affection rather than by religious feeling. Thus we have such examples as the following: PETE PRO FILIIS TVIS—“Pray for thy children; "PETE ET ROGA PRO FRATRES ET SOBOLES TVOS, (sic)—“Entreat and pray for your brothers
and children;” ORA PRO PARENTIBVS TVIS—“Pray for thy parents;” VIBAS IN PACE ET PETE PRO NOBIS—“May you live in peace and pray for us;” VIBAS IN DEO ET ROGA—“May you live in God and pray;” IN ORATIONIBVS TVIS ROGES PRO NOBIS QVIA SCIMVS TE IN ☧—“In your prayers, pray for us, for we know you (to be) in Christ.” ΔΙΟΝΥϹΙΟϹ ΝΗΠΙΟϹ ΑΚΑΚΟϹ ΕΝΘΑΔΕ ΚΕΙΤΕ ΜΕΤΑ ΤΩΝ ΑΓΙΩΝ ΜΝΗϹΚΕϹΘΕ ΔΕ ΚΑΙ ΗΜΩΝ ΕΝ ΤΑΙϹ ΑΓΙΑΙϹ ΥΜΩΝ ΠΡΕΥΧΑϹ ΚΑΙ ΤΟΥ ΓΛΥΨΑΤΟϹ ΚΑΙ ΓΡΑΨΑΝΤΟϹ—“Dionysius a spotless infant, lies here with the saints. O remember us also in thy holy prayers; aye, and the sculptor and writer as well.” The last clause is in smaller characters as if an afterthought.[730]
These few examples among eleven thousand inscriptions, of which the greater number are of post-Constantinian date, are a slight foundation for the vast Roman system of the invocation of saints. “If this doctrine,” says Bishop Kip, “so much in unison with many of the deepest feelings of our nature, had been held by the primitive church, we should have found it written broadly and clearly every-where through these epitaphs. Its proof would not be left to half a dozen inscriptions among thousands which plainly declare the reverse.” How different from these lowly crypts is a modern Romish sepulchral chapel, with its ceaseless appeals by
the dead for the prayers of the living, and by the living for the prayers of the dead; with its ever-recurring Orate pro anima, and Maria sanctissima, ora pro nobis. We search in vain through all the corridors of those ancient sanctuaries of the Christian faith for a single example of these now universal Romish formulæ.
The invocation of saints probably sprang from the superstitious reverence paid to the martyrs after the age of persecution had passed. Miserere nostrarum precum, “Pitying, hear our prayer,” sings Prudentius at the close of the fourth century in his hymn to St. Vincent. VT DAMASI PRECIBVS FAVEAS PRECOR INCLYTA MARTYR—“Illustrious martyr, I beseech thee to aid my prayers,” writes Damasus about the same period in his epitaph on St. Agnes; and in an epitaph on his sister Irene he exclaims, NOSTRI REMINISCERE VIRGO VT TVA PER DOMINVM PRAESTET MIHI FACVLA LVMEN—“Remember me, O virgin, that by God’s help your torch may give me light.”
Thus was developed in course of time a vast celestial hierarchy endowed with the attributes of Deity,[731] usurping the intercessory office of Christ, and rivalling the polytheism of paganism. The primitive Fathers repudiated the worship of any saint or angel, or the intervention of any mediator with God but Christ. “We worship the Son of God,” write the elders of Smyrna, “but the martyrs we only love.”[732] “We sacrifice not to martyrs,” says Augustine, “but to the one God, both
theirs and ours;”[733] “nor is our religion,” he indignantly adds, “the worship of dead men.”[734] “It is the devil who has introduced this homage of angels,” says Chrysostom;[735] and the Council of Laodicea, (A. D. 361,) forbade their invocation as idolatrous and a forsaking of Christ.[736]
We now turn from these polemical subjects to the consideration of the doctrines, common to Christendom, of the trinity of the Godhead and the divinity of Jesus Christ. We know from ecclesiastical history that numerous heresies sprang up in the early centuries with reference to these august themes; but no evidence accuses the church in the Catacombs of departure from the primitive and orthodox faith in these important respects. Frequently, indeed, the belief in these cardinal doctrines is so strongly asserted as to suggest, that it is in designed and vigorous protest against the contemporary heretical notions.
The doctrine of the essential divinity of the Son of God is repeatedly and strikingly affirmed. Not only are the symbolical letters Alpha and Omega often associated with the sacred monogram, in allusion to the sublime passage in the Revelation descriptive of the eternity of
Christ, but his name and Messianic title are variously combined with that of the Deity so as to indicate their identity. Thus we have the expressions ΖΗϹΗϹ ΙΝ DEO ΧΡΙϹΤΟ, (sic)—ΕΝ ΤΗΕΩ ΚΥΡΕΙΩ ΧΕΙϹΤΩ, (sic)—VIBAS IN CHRISTO DEO—IN DOMINO IESV—“May you live in God Christ—in God, the Lord Christ—in Christ God—in the Lord Jesus.” Or the divine attributes are still more strongly expressed as follows: ΔΕΟΥϹ ΧΡΙϹΤΟΥϹ ΟΜΝΙΠΟΤΕϹ, (sic)—“God Christ Almighty;” DEO SANC XRO VN LVC, (sic)—“God, holy Christ, only light;” DEO SANC ☧ VNI, (sic)—“To Christ, the one holy God.” We have seen the impression in the plaster of a grave whereby some orthodox believer, probably in protest against the Arian heresy, has “set to his seal” that “Christ is God.” [Fig. 119], page 386.[737]