The invocation of saints probably sprang from the superstitious reverence paid to the martyrs after the age of persecution had passed. _Miserere nostrarum precum_, “Pitying, hear our prayer,” sings Prudentius at the close of the fourth century in his hymn to St. Vincent. VT DAMASI PRECIBVS FAVEAS PRECOR INCLYTA MARTYR--“Illustrious martyr, I beseech thee to aid my prayers,” writes Damasus about the same period in his epitaph on St. Agnes; and in an epitaph on his sister Irene he exclaims, NOSTRI REMINISCERE VIRGO VT TVA PER DOMINVM PRAESTET MIHI FACVLA LVMEN--“Remember me, O virgin, that by God’s help your torch may give me light.” Thus was developed in course of time a vast celestial hierarchy endowed with the attributes of Deity,[731] usurping the intercessory office of Christ, and rivalling the polytheism of paganism. The primitive Fathers repudiated the worship of any saint or angel, or the intervention of any mediator with God but Christ. “We worship the Son of God,” write the elders of Smyrna, “but the martyrs we only love.”[732] “We sacrifice not to martyrs,” says Augustine, “but to the one God, both theirs and ours;”[733] “nor is our religion,” he 449 indignantly adds, “the worship of dead men.”[734] “It is the devil who has introduced this homage of angels,” says Chrysostom;[735] and the Council of Laodicea, (A. D. 361,) forbade their invocation as idolatrous and a forsaking of Christ.[736] We now turn from these polemical subjects to the consideration of the doctrines, common to Christendom, of the trinity of the Godhead and the divinity of Jesus Christ. We know from ecclesiastical history that numerous heresies sprang up in the early centuries with reference to these august themes; but no evidence accuses the church in the Catacombs of departure from the primitive and orthodox faith in these important respects. Frequently, indeed, the belief in these cardinal doctrines is so strongly asserted as to suggest, that it is in designed and vigorous protest against the contemporary heretical notions.