Respecting ecclesiastical symbolism, we have to observe that with regard to the subjects figured upon these liturgical embroideries, we may see at a glance, that the one untiring wish, both of the designer and of those who had to wear those vestments, was to set before the people’s eyes and to bring as often as possible to their mind the divinity of Christ, strongly and unmistakably, along with the grand doctrine of the Atonement. Whether it be cope, or chasuble, or reredos, or altar-frontal such a teaching is put forth upon it. Beginning with the divinity of our Saviour’s manhood, sometimes we have shown us how, with such lowly reverence, Gabriel spoke his message to the Blessed Virgin Mary with the mystic three-flowered lily standing up between them; or the Nativity with the shepherds or the wise men kneeling in adoration to acknowledge the divinity of our Lord even as a child just born; then some event in His life, His passion, His scourging at the pillar, the bearing of His cross, His being crowned with thorns, always His crucifixion, often above that, His upraised person like a king enthroned and crowning her of whom He had taken flesh; while everywhere about the vestment are represented apostles, martyrs, and saints all nimbed with glory, and among them, winged seraphim standing upon wheels, signifying that heaven is now thrown open to fallen but redeemed man, who, by the atonement wrought for him by our Divine Redeemer, is made to become the fellow-companion of angels and cherubim. To this same end, the black vestments worn at the services for the dead were, according to the old English rite, marked; the chasubles on the back with a green cross upon a red ground, the copes with a red orphrey at their sides, to remind those present that while they mourned their departed friend, they must believe that his soul could never enter heaven unless made clean and regenerated by the atoning blood shed for it on the cross. At his dubbing, “unto a knight is given a sword, which is made in the semblance of the cross, for to signify how our Lord God vanquished in the cross the death of human lineage, to the which he was judged for the sin of our first father Adam.” This we are told in the “Order of Chivalry,” translated by Caxton.[439] While stretched wounded and dying on the battle-field, some friendly hand would stick a sword into the ground before the expiring knight, that as in its handle he beheld this symbol of the cross, he might forgive him who had struck him down, as he hoped forgiveness for himself, through the atonement paid for him on the cross at Calvary. [439] Typographical Antiquities, ed. Dibdin, t. i. p. 234.