After the sepulchres of Saints and Martyrs were thus converted into places
of worship like the heathen temples, and the Churches into sepulchres, and
a certain sort of sanctity attributed to the dead bodies of the Saints and
Martyrs buried in them, and annual festivals were kept to them, with
sacrifices offered to God in their name; the next step towards the
invocation of Saints, was the attributing to their dead bodies, bones and
other reliques, a power of working miracles, by means of the separate
souls, who were supposed to know what we do or say, and to be able to do us
good or hurt, and to work those miracles. This was the very notion the
heathens had of the separate souls of their antient Kings and Heroes, whom
they worshiped under the names of _Saturn_, _Rhea_, _Jupiter_, _Juno_,
_Mars_, _Venus_, _Bacchus_, _Ceres_, _Osiris_, _Isis_, _Apollo_, _Diana_,
and the rest of their Gods. For these Gods being male and female, husband
and wife, son and daughter, brother and sister, are thereby discovered to
be antient men and women. Now as the first step towards the invocation of
Saints was set on foot by the persecution of _Decius_, and the second by
the persecution of _Dioclesian_; so this third seems to have been owing to
the proceedings of _Constantius_ and _Julian_ the Apostate. When _Julian_
began to restore the worship of the heathen Gods, and to vilify the Saints
and Martyrs; the _Christians_ of _Syria_ and _Egypt_ seem to have made a
great noise about the miracles done by the reliques of the _Christian_
Saints and Martyrs, in opposition to the powers attributed by _Julian_ and
the heathens to their Idols.
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