iter Ammianus
Marcellinus that he maintained a strict impartiality between the
Christians and Pagans, and did not trouble any one on account of his
religion. He even regulated and confirmed, by a law in 391, the privileges
of the Pagan clergy in a more favourable manner than had been done by many
of his predecessors; and yet this monarch, who treated his Pagan subjects
with such an extreme liberality, committed, when a private individual, an
act of violence against their worship which exposed him to considerable
danger. This, I think, is a strong proof of the horror which the
Christians felt for a rite which constitutes now an indispensable part of
the service in the Western as well as in the Eastern churches, and is most
profusely used by them.

With regard to the candles and lamps, which form a no less important and
indispensable part of the worship adopted by the above-mentioned churches,
the author of "Hierurgia" defends their use in the following manner:--

After having described the candlesticks employed in the Jewish temple, he
says:--"But without referring to the ceremonial of the Jewish temple, we
have an authority for the employment of light in the functions of religion
presented to us in the Apocalypse. In the first chapter of that mystic
book, St John particularly mentions the golden candlesticks which he
beheld in his prophetic vision in the isle of Patmos. By commentators on
the sacred Scripture, it is generally supposed that the Evangelist, in his
book of the Apocalypse, adopted the imagery with which he represents his
mystic revelations from the ceremonial observed in his days by the church
for offering up the mass, or eucharistic sacrifice of the Lamb of God,
Christ Jesus.

"That the use of lights was adopted by the church, especially at the
celebration of the sacred mysteries, as early as the times of the
apostles, may likewise, with much probability, be inferred from that
passage in their Acts which records the preaching and miracles of St Paul
at Troas:--'And on the first day of the week, when we were assembled to
break bread, Paul discoursed with them, being to depart on the morrow, and
he continued his speech until midnight. And there were a great number of
lamps in the upper chamber where we were assembled.'--(Acts xx. 7, 8.) That
the many lamps, so particularly noticed in this passage, were not
suspended merely for the purpose of illuminating, during the night-time,
this upper chamber, in which