Hic agnus mundum restaurat sanguine lapsum, Mortuus et vivus idem sum, pastor et agnus. “This Lamb restores the lost world with his blood. Dead and living, I am but one; I am at once the Shepherd and the Lamb.” Paulinus beautifully says: “The same Lamb and Shepherd rules us in the world who from wolves has made us lambs. He is now the Shepherd of those sheep for whom he was once the victim Lamb.”--_Epis._ iii, _ad Florent_. [396] Isa. liii, 7. [397] John i, 19. [398] Rev. v, 6. [399] _Ibid._, v, 12. [400] “And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the Mount Sion.”--Rev. xiv, 1. [401] Paulinus thus describes a mosaic of this subject at Fondi, (_Epis._ xii, _ad Severum_:) Petram superstat, ipse petra ecclesiæ, Ex qua sonori quatuor fontes meant, Evangelistæ, viva Christi flumina. “Standing upon a rock is He who is himself the Rock of the church, and from this go forth four voiceful streams, evangelists, the living rivers of Christ.” The _Agnus Dei_ is still often seen on altar cloths and tombstones. [402] Et quia celsa (crux) quasi judex de rupe superstat, Bis geminæ pecudis discors agnis genus hædi Circumstant solium; lævos avertitur hædos Pastor et emeritos dextra complectitur agnos. --_Epis._ xii, _ad Sulpic. Sever._ [403] A. D. 234. De Rossi, _Inscript. Christ._, No. 6. (See Fig. 52.) Of course, there may have been many earlier whose precise date we cannot determine. [404] In later art, indeed, the figure sometimes occurs on baptismal fonts, in mosaics, and in architecture, but probably as a mere ornament, without any religious meaning. In Byzantine art it is unknown except as a natural representation, for example, of fish swimming in the water, or, in frescoes of the last judgment, as restoring human limbs which they had devoured, illustrative of the passage, “And the sea gave up the dead which were in it.”--Rev. xx, 13. [405] Piscis nomen, secundum appellationem Græcam, in uno nomine per singulas literas turbam sanctorum nominum continet ‘ΙΧΘΥΣ,’ quod est Latinè, Jesus Christus, Dei Filius, Salvator.--Optat., _Cont. Parmen._, lib. iii. [406] _Orat. Const. ad Coet. Sanct._, § 18. [407] _De Civ. Dei_, xviii, 23. [408] _Pædag._, lib. iii, cap. ii. The symbol also occurs in a Christian Catacomb at Alexandria, and at Cyrene, in Upper Egypt. [409] The Jewish Christians of that city would be already familiar with this mode of coining significant titles, which is illustrated in the name of their national heroes, the Maccabees, said to be made up of the initial letters, מָכָבִּי, of their battle cry, מִי־כָמֹכָה בָאֵלֹהים יְהֹוָה--“Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods?”