THE ARREST OF ENQUIRY 



ruling minds of the Church, in whom, stripped of all 

 the verbiage about them as semi-inspired successors 

 of the apostles, there was deep-seated superstition. 

 Paganism might, in its turn, be suppressed by Imperial 

 edict, but it had too much in common with the later 

 forms of Christianity not to survive in fact, however 

 changed in name. 



It may be taken as a truism that in the cere- 

 monies of the higher religions there are no inventions, 

 only survivals. This fact sent thinkers like Hobbes, 

 and dealers in literary antiquities of the type of 

 Burton, Bishop Newton, and, notables! of all, Con- 

 yers Middleton, on the search after parallels, which 

 have received astonishing confirmation in our day. 

 Burton sees the mimicry of the ' arch-deceiver in 

 the strange sacraments, the priests, and the 

 sacrifices/ as the Romanist missionaries to Tibet 

 saw the same diabolical parody of their rites in 

 Buddhist temples. But Hobbes, with his never- 

 failing sagacity, recognises the continuity of ideas : 

 ' mutato nomine tantum ; Venus and Cupid (Hobbes 

 might have added Isis and Horus) appearing as " the 

 Virgin Mary and her Sonne," and the 'A7ro0eW*9 of 

 the Heathen surviving in the Canonisation of Saints. 

 The carrying of the Popes "by Switzers under a 

 Canopie " is a " Relique of the Divine Honours given 

 to Caesar " ; the carriage of Images in Procession " a 

 Relique of the Greeks and Romans." . . . "The Heathen 

 had also their AquaLustralis, that is to say, //<?#/ Water. 

 The Church of Rome imitates them also in their Holy 

 Dayes. They had their Bacchanalia, and we have our 

 Wakes answering to them ; They their Saturnalia, 

 and we our Carnevalls and Shrove-tuesdays liberty of 



