In the mysteries, the Hierophant taught the doctrine that our nature had been corrupted by a first sin. The sixth book of the poem Eneida is nothing but a brilliant exposition of this doctrine; and perhaps antiquity offers nothing that proves more the power of tradition on the human mind, than the passage in which the poet, following Eneas in the abode of the dead, describes in magnificent verses the dismal spectacle which first strikes his gaze. If there is any thing in the world that wakes up in our mind the idea of innocence, assuredly it is a child who has been unable neither to know nor to commit sin; and the supposition that he is subject to punishment and to suffering, is a thought which our soul abhors. However, Virgil, in the 6th book, verses 426, and 429, places the children dead when yet nursing, at the entry of the sad kingdoms, where he represents them in a state of pain, weeping and moaning--vagitus ingens. Why those tears, those cries of sufferings? Which faults do those children, to whom their mothers had not smiled, expiate? (Virgil, Ecloga 4, verse 62.) What has inspired the poet with this surprising fiction? On what does it rest? Whence does it originate, if not from the ancient belief that man was born in sin? Therefore, the doctrine of original sin was generally believed by the Pagans. We stated, at the commencement of this chapter, that the Roman Catholic writers are unanimous in the opinion that it was the belief of a large number of Pagans, that man had fallen from a higher state of existence. However, a small number only of the same writers are of the opinion that the Jews believed in the doctrine of original sin; and they find no other proof of the assertion than the ceremony of circumcision, which, as is familiar to all, was a mere legal and national observance, and had not the virtue of remitting sin. In the first centuries of the Christian era, baptism was considered as a mere ceremony for initiating catechumens to the Christian profession. It was only towards the end of the third century, that the belief of the transmission of Adam's sin to all his descendants was introduced in the Church of Rome, which already considered herself the mistress of the other churches. Soon afterwards the dogma that baptism had the virtue of remitting original sin was established. As proof of these two facts, we have the testimony of more than twenty-three Christian sects of the first centuries, which did not admit the dogma of original sin; and did not believe that baptism had the virtue of remitting sin. We quote a few of those sects: the Simonians, the Nicolaïtes, the Valentinians, the Basilidians, the Carpocratians, the Ophites, the Sethians, the Pelagians, all the Gnostic sects, etc.