Dr Rock, with a manifest anxiety to reconcile the diversity of practice in Rome, submitted, as an explanation, that isolated basilicas (= Christian churches) grew up over narrow, lonely pagan grottos, or the graves of martyrs, or sprang out of the halls of patrician converts[517]. That many of the anomalous alinements may be thus accounted for is probable, but too much must not be made of this method of harmonizing contradictions. Other writers, like Fergusson, have urged that the church was a basilica, or court of justice adapted to Christian worship. The word “basilica,” by the way, is said not to have been used by writers or architects of Byzantine times[518]--a significant detail, if correct (cf. p. 151 _supra_). For it is contended that there is, in Rome, no well-authenticated instance of the conversion of any pagan forensic basilica into a Christian church, though there are abundant examples of pagan temples which became Christian sanctuaries[519]. The actual secular basilicas would generally be still required, and still employed, century after century, for the transaction of legal business; the heathen temples, now useless for their original purpose, would be adapted and consecrated by the teachers of the new faith. The Christians most likely copied the basilican type of building for their meeting-places because it offered the simplest and most economical plan of accommodating an immense body of worshippers[520]. An attempt has been made to evolve order out of chaos by supposing that, during the early days of the Church, in some parts of the Empire, the priest stood on the Western side of the altar, namely, the side remote from the people, and that, during the celebrations, he looked towards the East, over the heads of the worshippers. The body of the church thus lay to the East of the sanctuary, and the altar was interposed between priest and congregation. At a later date, for some unassigned reason, the priest changed his position with respect to the altar, and stood with his back to the people, hence the ground-plan of the building was modified, so that the main entrance was fixed at the West, and the sanctuary at the East[521]. Thus the Eastward position of the priest was the essential feature, not the position of the altar in the church.