In the distribution of bread and wine at this high festival, [the feast of Raymi] the orthodox Spaniards who first came into the country saw a striking resemblance to the Christian communion; as in the practice of confession and penance, which, in a most irregular form indeed, seems to have been used by the Peruvians, they discerned a coincidence with another of the sacraments of the Church. The good fathers were fond of tracing such coincidences, which they considered as the contrivance of Satan, who thus endeavored to delude his victims by counterfeiting the blessed rites of Christianity. Others, in a different vein, imagined that they saw in such analogies the evidence that some of the primitive teachers of the gospel, perhaps an apostle himself, had paid a visit to these distant regions and scattered over them the seeds of religious truth. But it seems hardly necessary to invoke the Prince of Darkness, or the intervention of the blessed saints to account for coincidences which have existed in countries far removed from the light of Christianity, and in ages, indeed, when its light had not yet risen on the world. It is much more reasonable to refer such casual points of resemblance to the general constitution of man and the necessities of his moral nature. [19] Of which I think De Roo very justly remarks: "The Christian mysteries admitted by the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans could hardly find their origin in man's constitution; nor are religious practices, like baptism, fasting, celibacy, and a cloistered life, to be considered as necessities of man's moral, yet corrupt nature. More reasonable and better historical causes should be found to account for the presence of Christian faith and Christian rites in ancient America." [20] H. H. Bancroft also concedes the existence of rites among native Americans analogous to those existing among Jews and Christians, but regards them as mere coincidences. He says: Many rites and ceremonies were found to exist among the civilized nations of America that were very similar to certain others observed by the Jews and Christians in the old world. The innumerable speculators on the origin of the aboriginal inhabitants of the new world, or at least on the origin of their civilization, have not neglected to bring forward these coincidences--there is no good reason to suppose them anything else--in support of their various theories. [21] On which De Roo remarks: "Coincidences, so many, so striking, in faith, in morals, and liturgy! Coincidences, indeed, little short of wonders!"