"The days being accomplished that she (Mary) should be delivered . . . she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and _laid him in a manger_, there being no room for him in the _inn_."[154:2] If these accounts were contained in these Gospels in the time of Eusebius, the first ecclesiastical historian, who flourished during the Council of Nice (A. D. 327), it is very strange that, in speaking of the birth of Jesus, he should have omitted even mentioning them, and should have given an altogether different version. He tells us that Jesus was neither born in a _house_, nor in a _stable_, but in a _cave_, and that at the time of Constantine a magnificent temple was erected on the spot, so that the Christians might worship in the place where their Saviour's feet had stood.[154:3] In the apocryphal Gospel called "_Protevangelion_," attributed to James, the brother of Jesus, we are informed that Mary and her husband, being away from their home in Nazareth, and when within three miles of Bethlehem, to which city they were going, Mary said to Joseph: "Take me down from the ass, for that which is in me presses to come forth." Joseph, replying, said: "Whither shall I take thee, _for the place is desert_?" Then said Mary again to Joseph: "Take me down, for that which is within me mightily presses me." Joseph then took her down from off the ass, and he found there a _cave_ and put her into it. Joseph then left Mary in the cave, and started toward Bethlehem for a midwife, whom he found and brought back with him. When they neared the spot a bright cloud overshadowed the cave. "But on a sudden the cloud became _a great light in the cave_, so their eyes could not bear it. But the light gradually decreased, until the infant appeared and sucked the breast of his mother."[155:1] Tertullian (A. D. 200), Jerome (A. D. 375) and other Fathers of the Church, also state that Jesus was born in a _cave_, and that the _heathen_ celebrated, in their day, the birth and _Mysteries_ of their Lord and Saviour Adonis in this very cave near Bethlehem.[155:2] Canon Farrar says: "That the actual place of Christ's birth was a _cave_, is a very ancient tradition, and this cave used to be shown as the scene of the event even so early as the time of Justin Martyr (A. D. 150)."[155:3] Mr. King says: "The place _yet_ shown as the scene of their (the Magi's) adoration at Bethlehem is a _cave_."[155:4] The Christian ceremonies in the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem are celebrated to this day in a _cave_,[155:5] and are undoubtedly nearly the same as were celebrated, _in the same place_, in honor of _Adonis_, in the time of Tertullian and Jerome; and as are yet celebrated in Rome every Christmas-day, _very early in the morning_.