In 1852 Mr. MacFarlane published a small volume giving a popular account of the Catacombs, making no reference, however, to their doctrinal teachings. “I have,” he says, “carefully avoided controversy.” The Rev. J. W. Burgon’s “Letters from Rome” contain some valuable chapters on this subject. The Rev. J. Spencer Northcote, D.D., a Roman Catholic clergyman, published in 1857 a compendious “Account of the Burial-places of the Early Christians in Rome,” compiled chiefly from Padre Marchi, whose strongly Romanist views he fully adopted. In conjunction with the Rev. W. R. Brownlow, M.A., he published in 1869 the results of De Rossi’s labours in a condensed 162 form, with reduced copies of many of his plates. With the same reserve as in the case of his former volume, this is a valuable contribution to the literature of this subject.[288] More recently the Rev. W. B. Marriott, B.D., has written a work entitled “The Testimony of the Catacombs,” consisting of three monographs illustrating the development of the _cultus_ of Mary, the gradual encroachments of the papal see, as indicated in Christian art, and a critical analysis of the celebrated Autun inscription. In America, the Right Rev. Wm. Ingraham Kip, D.D., published in 1853 a little book of a popular character, giving an account of the Catacombs, chiefly from Maitland, MacFarlane, and Aringhi. The authorities on which it is based, however, have since been superseded, and some of the views which they held disproved by recent discovery. The only remaining work to be mentioned as illustrating this subject is an admirable volume on Christian epigraphy[289] by the Rev. John McCaul, LL.D. The learned author’s expansions, interpretations, and emendations of the frequently elliptical, obscure, and ungrammatical inscriptions of the Catacombs and other early Christian cemeteries, and the reconstruction from a few mutilated fragments of important 163 historic evidence, seem to the uninitiated more a sort of divination than a process of reasoning.[290] [257] The Catacomb of St. Priscilla. [258] Ipsamet urbs obstupuit, cum abditas in suis suburbiis se novit habere civitatis Christianorum colonias.--_Ann. Eccl._, ann. 130. It is singular that in the very year of their rediscovery Onophrius Pavinius, an Augustinian friar, published an account of the Christian cemeteries entirely from the ancient documents of the church. Only three of them were then accessible, those of Sebastian, Lawrence, and Valentine. [259] Grecised into Joannes Macarius. [260] Paris, 1856. [261] _Essay on the Literary Character._ Eng. ed., p. 144. [262] _Roma Sotteranea, opera postuma di Antonio Bosio composta disposta ed accresciuta da Giovanni di Severano, Sacerdote della Congregazione dell’Oratorio._ Roma, 1632. MacFarlane and Kip are in error as to the period of Bosio’s labours, antedating them about thirty years.