contemplation, to the holy realities of the mysteries.”[657] Once again I must point out that the elements—the conceptions which he has added to the primitive practices—are identical with those in the mysteries. The tendency which he represented grew: the Eucharistic sacrifice came in the East to be celebrated behind closed doors: the breaking of bread from house to house was changed into so awful a mystery that none but the hierophant himself might see it. The idea of prayer and thought as offerings was preserved by the Neo-Platonists. There are two minor points which, though interesting, are less certain and also less important. (_a_) It seems likely that the use of δίπτυχα—tablets commemorating benefactors or departed saints—was a continuation of a similar usage of the religious associations.[658] (_b_) The blaze of lights at mysteries may have suggested the use of lights at the Lord’s Supper.[659] It seems fair to infer that, since there were great changes in the ritual of the sacraments, and since the new elements of these changes were identical with elements that already existed in cognate and largely diffused forms of worship, the one should be due to the other. This inference is strengthened when we find that the Christian communities which were nearest in form and spirit to the Hellenic culture, were the first in which these elements appear, and also those in which they assumed the strongest form. Such were the Valentinians, of whom Tertullian expressly speaks in this connection.[660] We read of Simon Magus that he taught that baptism had so supreme an efficacy as to give by itself eternal life to all who were baptized. The λουτρὸν ζωῆς was expanded to its full extent, and it was even thought that to the water of baptism was added a fire which came from heaven upon all who entered into it. Some even introduced a second baptism.[661] So also the Marcosians and some Valentinian schools believed in a baptism that was an absolute sundering of the baptized from the corruptible world and an emancipation into a perfect and eternal life. Similarly, some other schools added to the simple initiation rites of a less noble and more sensuous order.[662] It was but the old belief in the effect of the mysteries thrown into a Christian form. So also another Gnostic school is said to have not only treated the truths of Christianity as sacred, but also to have felt about them what the initiated were supposed to feel about the mysteries—“I swear by Him who is above all, by the Good One, to keep these mysteries and to reveal them to no one;” and after that oath each seemed to feel the power of God to be upon him, as it were the pass-word of entrance into the highest mysteries.[663] As soon as the oath had been taken, he sees what no eye has seen, and hears what no ear has heard, and drinks of the living water—which is their baptism, as they think, a spring of water springing up within them to everlasting life.