Certain pronouncements to the contrary, which, if accepted, are calculated to weaken the force of these arguments, and to modify our views on the general question of orientation, must not be withheld. For example, Walcott asserts that orientation has never been a law of the Church, and that it has probably an Eastern origin. He also points out that, in Rome, the entrance to a Christian place of worship was frequently at the East, and that the priest at the altar faced the people[509]. The Romano-British church discovered at Silchester (see p. 23 _supra_) must be noted as an instance of this kind of ground plan. This “basilica,” as proved by the foundations, had a Western apse, and presumably, therefore, a Western altar, the entrance being towards the East. Fergusson, in his _Illustrated Handbook of Architecture_, affirms that orientation is wholly a peculiarity of Northern or Gothic races, and that the Italians never knew or practised the custom; it is found only where the inhabitants of an Italian district had been largely superseded by Gothic peoples[510]. Professor Baldwin Brown, again, asserts that “the Church of early times generally, and the Church of Rome throughout,” were indifferent to the practice of orientation. A fourth writer, whose opinion carries great weight, Professor E. B. Tylor, deals with Jewish influence, and concludes that it was scarcely effective in establishing the principle of orientation in the course of European history. He is rather of opinion that the rise of the Christian custom is sufficiently accounted for by Asiatic sun-worshippers, such as the Persians. The rite of orientation, he considers, was unknown to primitive Christianity, and was developed within its first four centuries[511]. Let us examine these statements. That orientation has never been a law of the Church may be literally true. I can find no such obligation recorded in works like Sir R. Phillimore’s _Ecclesiastical Law_. Yet Dr Rock refers to an authority, “one deeply read in liturgical lore,”--Bellotte, who pronounced him guilty of mortal sin who wilfully built a church which was not directed towards the East[512]. Again, Mgr Barbier de Montault, while regretting that the canonists no longer make orientation rigorously compulsory, observes that the rule, all the same, remains prescribed in the rubric of the Missal (“_qui n’en reste pas moins inscrite dans la rubrique du Missel_”)[513]. Above this, the evidence already adduced shows that the rule has had a very general acceptation in England since the Saxon period at least.