“But if it be a just ground for retaining a practice in the _Christian_ church, because it was enjoined to the _Jews_, what will our Catholic say for those usages which were actually prohibited to the _Jews_, and never practised by any but by the _heathens and papists_? All the _Egyptian priests_, as Herodotus informs us, _had their heads shaved, and kept continually bald_.(97) Thus the Emperor _Commodus_, that he might be admitted into that order, _got himself shaved, and carried the god Anubis in procession_. And it was on this account, most probably, that the _Jewish priests_ were commanded _not to shave their heads, nor to make any baldness upon them_.—(Lev. xxi. 5; Ezek. xliv. 20). Yet this _Pagan rasure_, or _tonsure_, as they choose to call it, on the crown of the head, has long been the distinguishing mark of the _Romish priesthood_. It was on the same account, we may imagine, that the _Jewish priests were forbidden to make any cuttings in their flesh_ (Lev. xix. 28, xxi. 5), since _that was likewise the common_ practice of certain _priests and devotees among the heathens_, in order to acquire the fame of a more exalted sanctity. Yet the same discipline, as I have shown in my _Letter_,(98) is constantly practised at _Rome_ in some of their solemn seasons and processions, in imitation of these _Pagan enthusiasts_, as if they searched the Scriptures to learn, not so much what was enjoined by true religion, as what had been useful at any time in a false one, to delude the multitude, and support an imposture.”—(_Middleton’s Miscellaneous Works_, vol. v., p. 11, _et seq._) The same author justly observes, that “under the _Pagan emperors_ the use of _incense_ for any purpose of religion was thought so contrary to the obligations of _Christianity_, that in their persecutions, the very method of _trying and converting a Christian was by requiring him only to throw the least grain of it into the censer or on the altar_.” “Under the _Christian emperors_, on the other hand, it was looked upon as a _rite_ so peculiarly _heathenish_, that the very _places or houses_ where it could be proved to have been done, were, by a law of Theodosius, confiscated to the government.”(99)—(_Ibid._, p. 95.) I shall conclude this essay by a short sketch of the superstitious practices prevailing in the Græco-Russian Church, which will be the subject of my next and last chapter. Chapter VIII. Image-Worship And Other Superstitious Practices Of The Graeco-Russian Church.