let your hand form the sign of the Cross. – Ep. xviii. ad Eustach. T. iv. p. 46.—“Keep the door of your heart shut: frequently make on your forehead the sign of the Cross, that the exterminator of Egypt may have no hold upon you.”— Ep.ad Demetriadem, T. i. p. 64, Paris, 1643.-The same advice he often repeats.
CENT. V.
ST. AUGUSTIN, L. C.-“What is the sign with which all are acquainted, but the Cross of Christ? which sign, if it be not applied to the foreheads of believers, to the water with which they are regenerated, to the chrism with which they are anointed, and to the holy bread with which they are nourished, no rite is duly performed.” Tract. cxviii. in Joan. Pars 2. T. iii. p. 801.—“It is not without cause, that Christ would have his sign impressed on our foreheads, as the seat of shame, that the Christian should not blush at the indignities offered to his Master.” Enar. iv. in Ps. xxx. T. iv. p. 165.—“ The Cross is now honoured; and from the places of punishment has passed to the foreheads of Kings.” Serm. ii. in Psal. xxxvi. Ibid. p. 267.
St. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA, G. C. The Emperor Julian is introduced, saying; “ You Christians adore the wood of the Cross; you make the signs of it on your foreheads; you engrave it on the porches of your houses.”—St. Cyril answers : “We hold nothing in more estimation than to mark this sign on our foreheads and on our houses. For the Saviour of mankind, despising ignominy, suffered on the Cross, to deaden the force of natural corruption; to free man from the snares of death; to overturn the tyranny of sin; to still the raging law of the flesh in our members, and to make us his adorers in spirit-of all these favours the wood of the Cross excites the remembrance, and presses upon us this
