THE ARREST OF INQUIRY. <5 r 



Middleton examined the matter on the spot, and 

 in his celebrated Letter from Rome gives numerous 

 examples of "an exact CONFORMITY between POPERY 

 and PAGANISM." Since few read his book now-a- 

 days, some of these may be cited, because their pres- 

 ence goes far to explain why the conglomerate re- 

 ligion which Christianity had become was proof 

 against ideas spurned alike by pagans and ecclesias- 

 tics. Visiting the place for classical study, and " not 

 to notice the fopperies and ridiculous ceremonies of 

 the present Religion," Middleton soon found himself 

 " still in old Heathen Rome," with its rituals of primi- 

 tive Paganism, as if handed down by an uninter- 

 rupted succession from the priests of old to the 

 priests of new Rome. The " smoak of the incense " 

 in the churches transports him to the temple of the 

 Paphian Venus described by Virgil (^neid, I, 420); 

 the surpliced boy waiting on the priest with the thuri- 

 ble reminds him of sculptures on ancient bas-reliefs 

 representing heathen sacrifice, with a white-clad at- 

 tendant on a priest holding a little chest or box in 

 his hand. The use of holy water suggests numer- 

 ous parallels. At the entrance to Pagan temples 

 stood vases of holy liquid, a mixture of salt and 

 common water; and, on bas-reliefs, the aspergillum 

 or brush for the ceremony of sprinkling is carved. 

 In the annual festival of the benediction of horses, 

 when the animals were sent to the convent of St. 

 Anthony to be sprinkled (Middleton had his own 

 horses thus blest " for about eighteenpence of our 



