The Pagans believed that certain ceremonies, and their medals representing the gods, had an expiatory virtue: so the Church of Rome holds that genuflexions, the Agnus Dei, the beads, the medals of the saints, and of the virgin Mary, have an expiatory virtue. The Pagans believed that certain prayers remitted certain sins and their punishment; so the Church of Rome believes that Novenas, indulgences, the recitation of the first chapter of the Gospel of John, etc., remit venial sins, and their punishment. The Pagans went in pilgrimage to chapels, where the prayers of the priests, they thought, had an expiatory virtue greater than in other temples; this practice and this belief have been preserved even by the Mahomedans. Now there are at the door of the Mosque of Ali, at Mesched-Aly, dervishes, who, for money, expiate with their prayers the sins of the pilgrims: so the Church of Rome believes that the expiatory virtue of the prayers made by priests, in certain chapels of saints and of Mary, where multitudes of pilgrims resort, is greater than that of the prayers made in other temples. In China, the invocation of Omyto is sufficient to remit the punishment of the greatest crimes. It is on account of it that the followers of the sect of Fo repeat oftentimes, every day, the words, O-myto-Fo! The Indians believed, and still believe, that when a man expires in pronouncing the name of God, and in holding, at the same time, the tail of a cow, he immediately ascends to Paradise. The Bramas never failed, and even do not now, to read every morning the mysterious legend of Gosgendre-Mootsjam; because it is a dogma of the Indian religion that any one who reads this legend every morning, obtains the forgiveness of the punishment of all his sins; so the Church of Rome holds that any one who recites the Angelus when the bell rings, in the morning, at noon, and at sun down, or recites the acts of faith, of hope, and of charity, obtains the remittance of the punishment of several of his venial sins; and, also, that any one who regularly recites the prayers of Saint Brigitte, or who, when he dies, recites with great devotion the prayer Memorare o piissima, etc., will go to Paradise.