the Crucifix might have simply become the companion of the hammer of Thor, or the sun-crowned Phoebus, of the sacred ibis of Egypt, or the winged monsters of Assyria; or at best a mere substitute for them. Guided by a Divine instinct, the Church showed a wise self-restraint; and it was only as the decay of idolatry in the West removed this danger, that she allowed herself to contemplate the image of the Redeemer. From the first, nevertheless, a yearning for the help towards devotion which the eye can give was felt, although the necessity of prudence and caution confined the faithful to the use of symbolic, rather than of historic, figures. Thus even in the days of the catacombs the Vine, the Dove, the Lamb, the Good Shepherd are found, with a meaning obviously Scriptural in origin; and again the Fish, specially recommended with the above emblems by S. Clement of Alexandria as a device for seals and rings, was frequently employed, as setting forth in an anagram, by means of its name in Greek, the words Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour. These were all common forms, calculated to suggest Christian teaching to the believer, without exciting comment from the heathen. Meanwhile the simple cross was growing yearly more familiar to the people as the emblem of the Christian religion. Its earliest form seems to have been that known as the fylfot, like four Greek gammas joined at the base; a design that served, equally with the emblems just described, to suggest the sign to the Christian without offending others. But so rapid was the change that took place consequent on the conversion of Constantine, that so early as the papacy of John I. (who died in the year 400) crosses were carried in the processions of the Church.