Many of the identifications brought forward by some of the late writers are very far-fetched, and mutually contradictory. To these but little weight can be attributed. It is a significant fact that none of the writers who endeavour to find parallels between the two systems can discover an equivalent among the Jewish vestments for the chasuble. Now, if for each of the Christian vestments there existed a corresponding vestment among those of the Jews, it would be singular that the most important of the former should be unrepresented among the latter. The maniple, too, has no equivalent (this, however, is more intelligible, since that ornament was certainly a later introduction); while the amice is the only vestment that even the most ingenious can produce to represent the ephod, though the similarity between the two is of the slightest. There is another important point which the advocates of a Mosaic origin for Christian vestments overlook. The early Christians certainly did borrow many details of their worship from the Jews who lived around them, and from whose religion many of them had been converted; but these details were taken not from the antiquated ritual of the temple worship, but from the synagogue worship, to which they had been accustomed. Now, the vestments which we have described above were appointed for the tabernacle worship and the temple worship, its direct successor, whereas no vestments were at any time or by any authority appointed for use in the synagogue worship;[6] and hence the Christian vesture cannot be said to 'come directly' from the Jewish. We have discussed the theory of a Levitical origin on purely _a priori_ grounds, making only the slightest allusion to the vestments themselves as we find them in primitive times. In considering the second view, to which it is now time to turn, we shall adopt a different course. We shall first collect the main facts which can be discovered or deduced respecting vestments in the earliest centuries of Christianity, from the beginning till the rupture of the East and the West, and then discuss in detail the vestments as we find them in the succeeding period, which in all ecclesiastical matters was a period of transition, comparing each in turn with its hypothetical prototype among the civil costume of the Romans. The remainder of the present and the whole of the succeeding chapter will be devoted to this investigation. The materials available for an inquiry into the vestment usage of the early Church are twofold: the incidental statements of contemporary authors, and the more direct information obtained from a study of contemporary paintings and sculpture. We shall now discuss the results which follow from an examination of these sources.