offered. The rite of bloody sacrifice is, therefore, the record of the Fall stamped by the hand of God on the forehead of the human race at its first starting in the state of guilt. The death of a vicarious victim was the embodiment of the doctrine that man had forfeited his life by disobedience to God his Creator, and that he should be restored by the effusion of the blood of an innocent victim. The fact of the concentration of these four acts of prayer about the rite of bloody sacrifice, through all Gentilism, as well as in Judaism, has no end of significance. This conclusion was drawn by St. Augustine,[92] who says: "Were I to speak at length of the true sacrifice, I should prove that it was due to no one but the one true God; and this the one true Priest, the Mediator of God and men, offered to Him. It was requisite that the figures promissive of this sacrifice should be celebrated in animal victims, as a commendation of that flesh and blood which were to be, through which single victim might take place the remission of sins contracted of flesh and blood, which shall not possess the kingdom of God, because that self-same substance of the body shall be changed into a heavenly quality. This was signified by the fire in the sacrifice, which seemed to absorb death into victory. Now such sacrifices were duly celebrated in that people whose kingdom and whose priesthood were both a prophecy of the King and Priest who was to come, that He might rule, and that He might consecrate the faithful in all nations, and introduce them to the kingdom of heaven, the sanctuary of the angels, and eternal life. Now this being the true sacrifice, as the Hebrews celebrated religious predictions of it, so the Pagans celebrated sacrilegious imitations; for in the Apostle's words, what the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to devils and not to God. For an ancient thing is that immolation of blood, carrying an announcement of the future, testifying from the beginning of the human race the Passion of the Mediator that was to be, for Abel is the first in sacred writ recorded to have offered this."