The various ideas which we have just analysed—those of the repose in the grave, the repose in the infernal regions and the repose in heaven—followed parallel courses during the centuries and in part passed from antiquity to the Middle Ages. But the distinction between them is not always clear. Even in paganism they were intermingled and in the course of time they were gradually confused. In no class of beliefs is the force of tradition greater than in those which centre in death, and the Christian peoples clung tenaciously to articles of faith which Jews and pagans had shared before them. We have seen[493] that the masses did not easily give up their belief that the dead continued, in or about the tomb, a vegetating and uncertain life. Extreme importance was still attached to burial because the more or less unconscious conviction persisted that the soul’s rest depended on that of the body. The dread of ghosts was still the inspiration for some ceremonies performed over the remains of the dead. Nay, a new apprehension was added to this, namely, the fear lest the dead whose bodies were torn from the tomb should have no part in the resurrection of the flesh.[494] The formula, “_Hic requiescit_,” “Here rests—,” was transferred from pagan to Christian epigraphy, and the rest men wished to the departed was first the rest of the corpse, which was peacefully to await the Day of Judgment in its last dwelling. These were doubtless vulgar prejudices rather than dogmas recognised by orthodoxy, yet they did not remain without influence on the teaching of the doctors of the Church. For instance, Saint Ambrose[495] enlarges on the thought, probably borrowed from some philosopher, that death is good because in it the body, source of our uneasiness, our troubles and our vices, rests, calmed for ever, while the virtuous soul rises to heaven. After the travail of existence the dead rest as man rests on the Sabbath day, and this was, it was explained, the reason why the seventh day was the day of the commemoration of the departed. The idea of rest in the infernal regions has left no deep traces on the Christian faith, for which the subterranean world became the abode of the wicked. It was, however, somewhere in the bowels of the earth that the dwelling of the righteous who lived before the Redemption was commonly placed, sometimes also that of children who died unbaptised. They found there according to the Pelagians a “place of repose and salvation” outside the kingdom of heaven.[496]