offered. Hence Christians, by the holy oblation, and partici. pation of the body and blood of Christ, celebrate the remembrance of that Sacrifice. But the Manicheans understand not what they should believe, or what observe in this Sacrifice of the Christians.” Contra Faustum, Lib. xx, c. xviii. T. viii. p. 345.—Then, to the objection of his adversary, that the Catholics had substituted the martyrs in the place of the Idols of the Gentiles, he replies: “The Christian people celebrate the memories of the Martyrs with a religious solemnity, in order to excite themselves to an imitation of their constancy, to be united to their merits, and to be aided by their prayers: but to no Martyr, to the God alon of Martyrs, in memory of them, do we raise altars. For what Prelate, assisting at the altar where the bodies of the Martyrs lie, was ever heard to say: To thee Peter; to thee Paul; or to thee Cyprian do we make this offering ? To God alone, who crowned these Martyrs, is Sacrifice offered.-We frequently sacrifice to God in the Churches of the Martyrs, by that rite, according to which, as the Scriptures of the New Testament declare, he commanded Sacrifice to be offered to him. This pertains to that worship which the Greeks call Latria, and which can be offered to God alone.” Ibid. c. xxi. p. 347-8.—“It cannot be doubted, that, by the prayers of the holy Church, and by the salutary Sacrifice, and by alms, which are given for the repose of their souls, the dead are helped; so that God may treat them more mercifully than their sins deserved. This the whole Church observes, which it received from the tradition of the Fathers, to pray for those who died in the communion of the body and blood of Christ, when, in their turn, they are commemo-
