an-God?
Had it no essential sacredness, no _noli-me-tangere_ quality of shining
away the gambler's covetous glance, of withering his rude and venturous
hand, or of poisoning, like some Nessus' shirt, the lewd ruffian who
might soon thereafter wear it? Not in the least. This woven web, to
which a corrupted state of feeling on religion would have raised
cathedrals as its palaces, with singing men and singing women, and
singing eunuchs too, to celebrate its virtues; this coarse cloth of some
poor weaver's, working down by the sea of Galilee or in some lane of
Zion, was still to remain, and be a mere unglorified, economical, useful
garment. Far from testifying to its own internal mightiness, it probably
was soon sold by the fortunate Roman die-thrower to a second-hand shop
of the Jewish metropolis; and so descended from beggar to beggar till it
was clean worn out. We never hear that, however easy of access so
inestimable relic might then have been considered, any one of the
numerous disciples, in the fervour of their earliest zeal, threw away
one thought for its redemption. Is it not strange that no St. Helena was
at hand to conserve such a desirable invention? Why is there no St.
Vestment to keep in countenance a St. Sepulchre and a St. Cross? The
poor cloth, in primitive times, really was despised. We know well enough
what happened afterwards about handkerchiefs imbued with miraculous
properties from holy Paul's body for the nonce: but this is an inferior
question, and the matter was temporary; the superior case is proved, and
besides the rule _omne majus continet in se minus_ there are differences
quite intelligible between the cases, whereabout our time would be less
profitably employed than in passing on and leaving them unquestioned.
Suffice it to say, that "God worked those special miracles," and not the
unconscious "handkerchiefs or aprons." "Te Deum laudamus!" is
Protestantism's cry; "Sudaria laudemus!" would swell the Papal choirs.

Let such considerations as these then are in sample serve to show how
evidently one might prove from anterior circumstances, (and the canon of
Scripture is an anterior circumstance,) the probability of the rise and
progress of the Roman heresies. And if any one should ask, how was such
a system more likely to arise under a Gentile rather than a Jewish
theocracy? why was a St. Paul, or a St. Peter, or a St. Dunstan, or a
St. Gengulphus, more previously expectable than a St. Abraham, a St