On entering a church, the first part was the _Porch_, in which there were places for the catechumens (that is to say, those who were preparing for baptism); for those who were supposed to be possessed with devils, and who were under the care of the _exorcists_;[17] and for the lowest kinds of those who were undergoing penance. Beyond this porch were the _Beautiful Gates_, which opened into the _Nave_ of the church. Just within these gates were those penitents whose time of penance was nearly ended; and the rest of the nave was the place for the _faithful_--that is to say, for those who were admitted to all the privileges of Christians. At the upper end of the nave, a place called the _Choir_ was railed in for the singers; and then, last of all, came the raised part or chancel, which has been spoken of. This was called the _Sanctuary_, and was set apart for the clergy only. The women sat in church apart from the men; sometimes they were in the aisles, and sometimes in galleries. Churches generally had a court in front of them or about them, in which were the lodgings of the clergy, and a building for the administration of baptism, called the _Baptistery_. [17] Page 81. In the early times, churches were not adorned with pictures or statues; for Christians were at first afraid to have any ornaments of the kind, lest they should fall into idolatry like the heathen. No such things as images or pictures of our Lord, or of His saints, were known among them; and in their every-day life, instead of the figures of gods, with which the heathens used to adorn their houses, their furniture, their cups, and their seals, the Christians made use of emblems only. Thus, instead of pretending to make a likeness of our Lord's human form, they made a figure of a shepherd carrying a lamb on his shoulders, to signify the Good Shepherd who gave his life for his sheep (_St. John_ x. 11). Other ornaments of the same kind were--a _dove_, signifying the Holy Ghost; a _ship_, signifying the Church, the ark of salvation, sailing towards heaven; a _fish_, which was meant to remind them of their having been born again in the water, at their baptism; a musical instrument called a _lyre_, to signify Christian joy; and an _anchor_, the figure of Christian hope. About the year 300, the Council of Elvira, in Spain, made a canon forbidding pictures in church, which shows that the practice had then begun, and was growing; and also that in Spain, at least, it was thought to be dangerous (as indeed it too surely proved to be). And a hundred years later, Epiphanius, a famous bishop of Salamis, in the island of Cyprus, tore a curtain which he found hanging in a church, with a figure of our Lord, or of some saint, painted on it. He declared that such things were altogether unlawful, and desired that the curtain might be used to bury some poor man in, promising to send the church a plain one instead of it.