It really seems too bad to strip Rome of all her symbols at once; but justice must be done to the despoiled hierophants. Long before the sign of the Cross was adopted as a Christian symbol, it was employed as a secret sign of recognition among neophytes and adepts. Says Levi: “The sign of the Cross adopted by the Christians does not belong exclusively to them. It is kabalistic, and represents the oppositions and quaternary equilibrium of the elements. We see by the occult verse of the _Pater_, to which we have called attention in another work, that there were originally two ways of making it, or, at least, two very different formulas to express its meaning--one reserved for priests and initiates; the other given to neophytes and the profane. Thus, for example, the _initiate_, carrying his hand to his forehead, said: _To thee_; then he added, _belong_; and continued, while carrying his hand to the breast--_the kingdom_; then, to the left shoulder--_justice_; to the right shoulder--_and mercy_. Then he joined the two hands, adding: _throughout the generating cycles: ‘Tibi sunt Malchut, et Geburah et Chassed per Æonas’_--a sign of the Cross, _absolutely_ and magnificently kabalistic, which the profanations of Gnosticism made the militant and official Church completely _lose_.”[124] How fantastical, therefore, is the assertion of Father Ventura, that, while Augustine was a Manichean, a philosopher, ignorant of and refusing to humble himself before the sublimity of the “grand Christian revelation,” he knew nothing, understood naught of God, man, or universe; “... he remained poor, small, obscure, sterile, and wrote nothing, did nothing really grand or useful.” But, hardly had he become a Christian “... when his reasoning powers and intellect, enlightened at the _luminary of faith_, elevated him to the most sublime heights of philosophy and theology.” And his other proposition that Augustine’s genius, as a consequence, “developed itself in all its grandeur and prodigious fecundity ... his intellect radiated with that immense splendor which, reflecting itself in his immortal writings, has never ceased for one moment during fourteen centuries to illuminate the Church and the world!”[125]