(c) The imperishable Divine nature is infused by mechanical means. Sacraments and the like have a magical or miraculous potency. The Homeric hymn to Demeter insists only on _ritual_ purity as the condition of salvation, and we hear that people trusted to the mystic baptism to wash out all their previous sins. Similarly the baptism of blood, the _taurobolium_, was supposed to secure eternal happiness, at any rate if death occurred within twenty years after the ceremony; when that interval had elapsed, it was common to renew the rite. (We find on inscriptions such phrases as "arcanis perfusionibus in æternum renatus.") So mechanical was the operation of the Mysteries supposed to be, that rites were performed for the dead (Plat. _Rep._ 364. St. Paul seems to refer to a similar custom in 1 Cor. xv. 29), and infants were appointed "priests," and thoroughly initiated, that they might be clean from their "original sin." Among the Gnostics, a favourite phrase was that initiation releases men "from the fetters of fate and necessity"; the gods of the intelligible world ([Greek: theoi noêtoi]) with whom we hold communion in the Mysteries being above "fate." (d) Salvation consists of moral regeneration. The efficacy of initiation without moral reformation naturally appeared doubtful to serious thinkers. Diogenes is reported to have asked, "What say you? Will Patæcion the thief be happier in the next world than Epaminondas, because he has been initiated?" And Philo says, "It often happens that good men are not initiated, but that robbers, and murderers, and lewd women are, if they pay money to the initiators and hierophants." Ovid protests against the immoral doctrine of mechanical purgation with more than his usual earnestness (_Fasti_, ii. 35):-- "Omne nefas omnemque mali purgamina causam Credebant nostri tollere posse senes. Græcia principium moris fuit; ilia nocentes Impia lustratos ponere facta putat. A! nimium faciles, qui tristia crimina cædis Fluminea tolli posse putetis aqua!" Such passages show that abuses existed, but also that it was felt to be a scandal if the initiated person failed to exhibit any moral improvement. These different conceptions of the office of the Mysteries cannot, as I have said, be separated historically. They all reappear in the history of the Christian sacraments. The main features of the Mystery-system which passed into Catholicism are the notions of secrecy, of symbolism, of mystical brotherhood, of sacramental grace, and, above all, of the three stages in the spiritual life, ascetic purification, illumination, and [Greek: epopteia] as the crown.