On the night of the 19-20th[400] the procession of purified mystics, carrying with them the image of Iacchos, left Athens for Eleusis, and after that we have no evidence of the exact order of the various rites of initiation. The exact order is indeed of little importance. Instead we have recorded what is of immeasurably more importance, the precise formularies in which the mystics avowed the rites in which they had taken part, rites which we are bound to suppose constituted the primitive ceremony of initiation. Before these are examined it is necessary to state definitely what already has been implied, i.e. the fact that at the mysteries there was an offering of first-fruits; the mysteries were in fact the _Thargelia_ of Eleusis. An inscription[401] of the 5th century B.C. found at Eleusis is our best evidence. ‘Let the Hierophant and the Torch-bearer command that at the mysteries the Hellenes should offer first-fruits of their crops in accordance with ancestral usage.... To those who do these things there shall be many good things, both good and abundant crops, whoever of them do not injure the Athenians, nor the city of Athens, nor the two goddesses.’ The order of precedence is amusing and characteristic. Here we have indeed a commandment with promise. The ‘token’ or formulary by which the mystic made confession is preserved for us by Clement[402] as follows: ‘_I fasted, I drank the kykeon, I took from the chest, (having tasted?) I put back into the basket and from the basket into the chest_.’ The statement involves, in the main, two acts besides the preliminary fast, i.e. the drinking of the kykeon and the handling of certain unnamed _sacra_. It is significant of the whole attitude of Greek religion that the confession is not a confession of dogma or even faith, but an avowal of ritual acts performed. This is the measure of the gulf between ancient and modern. The Greeks in their greater wisdom saw that uniformity in ritual was desirable and possible; they left a man practically free in the only sphere where freedom is of real importance, i.e. in the matter of thought. So long as you fasted, drank the _kykeon_, handled the _sacra_, no one asked what were your opinions or your sentiments in the performance of those acts; you were left to find in every sacrament the only thing you could find—what you brought. Our own creed is mainly a _Credo_, an utterance of dogma, formulated by the few for the many, but it has traces of the more ancient conception of _Confiteor_, the avowal of ritual acts performed. _Credo in unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam_ is immediately followed by _Confiteor unum baptismum_, though the instinct of dogma surges up again in the final words _in remissionem peccatorum_.