HKB
can there be any thing more heathenish than the custom of burning lights before images or relics, which is nothing else than sacrifices which the Pagans offered to their idols?
I have described above, p. 74, the manner in which St Jerome defended the use of lights in the churches against Vigilantius. This defence of St Jerome is adduced by our author in a rather extraordinary manner.
“It happens not unfrequently that those very calumnies which have been propagated, and the attacks which were so furiously directed by the enemies of our holy faith in ancient times, against certain practices of discipline then followed by the church, are the most triumphant testimonies which can be adduced at the present day, both to establish the venerable origin of such observances, and to warrant a continuation of them. In the present instance, the remark is strikingly observable; for the strictures which Vigilantius passed in the fourth age, on the use of lights in churches, as well as on the shrines of the martyrs, and the energetic refutation of St Jerome of the charge of superstition preferred against such a pious usage by that apostate, may be noticed as an irrefragable argument, in the nineteenth century, to establish the remote antiquity of this religious custom. After mentioning as a fact of public notoriety, and in a manner which defied contradiction, that the Christians, at the time when he was actually writing, which was about the year 376,(94) were accustomed to illumine their churches during mid-day with a profusion of wax tapers, Vigilantius proceeds to turn such a devotion into ridicule. But he met with a learned and victorious opponent, who, while he vindicated this practice of the church against the objection of her enemy, took occasion to assign those reasons which induced her to adopt it. That holy father observes:—‘Throughout all the churches of the East, whenever the Gospel is to be recited, they bring forth lights, though it be at noon-day; not certainly to shine among darkness, but to manifest some sign of joy, that under the type of corporeal light may be indicated that light of which we read in the Psalms, “Thy word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path.” ’ ”—(Hierurgia, p. 298.)
Now, I would observe to the learned doctor, that St Jerome, in answering Vigilantius, maintained, as I have shown above, p. 74, that it was calumny to say that the Christians burnt candles in the daylight, and that it was done only by some people, whose zeal was without knowledge. Consequently, the church which has adopted this practice shows, according to the authority of that “holy and learned father,” that her zeal is without knowledge. With regard to the argument in support of the abovementioned practices given by St Jerome, and reproduced by our author, that the Eastern churches make use of lights, I admit that it is unanswerable, because it is an undoubted fact that the Græco-Russian Church makes an immense consumption of wax candles, chiefly burnt before the images, and it remains for me only to congratulate the advocates of this practice on the support which they derive from such an imperative authority as that of the Græco-Russian Church.
It remains for me now only to say a few words about the incense, which forms a constituent part of the service of the Roman Catholic and Græco-Russian Churches, as much as the holy water and lights, and which is defended by the author of “Hierurgia” in the following manner. After having described the use of incense in the Jewish temples, he says—