orated its bishop Polycarp, and valued his bones more than gold and gems, though with the express distinction: "Christ we worship as the Son of God ; the martyrs we love and honor as disciples and successors of the Lord, on account of their insur- passable love to their King and Master, as also we wish to be their companions and fellow disciples." ' Here we find this veneration as yet in its innocent simplicity. But in the Nicene age it advanced to a formal invocation of the saints as our patrons (patroni) and intercessors (interces- sores, mediatores) before the throne of grace, and degenerated into a form of refined polytheism and idolatry. The saints came into the place of the demigods, Penates and Lares, the })atrons of the domestic hearth and of the country. As once temples and altars to the heroes, so now churches and chapels ' came to be built over the graves of the martyrs, and conse- crated to their names (or more precisely to God through them). People laid in them, as they used to do in the temple of ^scu- lapius, the sick that they might be healed, and hung in them, as in the temples of the gods, sacred gifts of silver and gold. ' " Non horruisti Virginis uterum." The translation in the American Episcopal Liturgy has softened this expression thus : " Thou didst humble thyself to be born of a Virgin." "^ Natalitia, ytvebKta. ' In the Epistle of the church of Smyrna De Martyi'. Polycarpi, cap. 17 (Patres- Apost. ed. Drcssel, p. 404): Tovrov ^tiv yap vlhf oz'Ta tov ©eoD -Kpoff kvv ov fiiv ' rovs S« fj,dpTvpai, i>s /ua^Tjras koI /xifirjras tou Kvpiov ayan ufxtv a^iws, k.t.\, * Memoriffi, fxapripia. § 84. THE WORSHIP OF MAKTYES AND SAINTS. 433 Their graves were, as Cbrysostom says, more splendidly adorned and more frequently visited than the palaces of kings. Ban- quets were held there in their honor, which recall the heathen sacrificial feasts for the welfare of the manes. Their relics were preserved with scrupulous care, and believed to possess miraculous virtue. Earlier, it was the custom to pray for the martyrs (as if they were not yet perfect) and to thank God for their fellowship and their pious example. ]N^ow such iuterces- .sions for them were considered unbecoming, and their inter- cession was invoked for the living.' This invocation of the dead was accompanied with the pre- sumption that they take the deepest interest in all the fortunes of the kingdom of God on earth, and express it in pr^ers and intercessions.^ This was supposed to be warranted by some passages of Scripture, like Luke xv. 10, which speaks of the angels (not the saints) rejoicing over the conversion of a sinner, and Rev. viii. 3, 4, which represents an angel as laying the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne of God. But the New Testament expressly rebukes the wor- ship of the