His famous reference to the Sun-God Mithras reads as follows:-- "The devil in the mystic rites of his idols competes even with the essential portions of the sacraments of God. He, like God, baptizes some, that is, his own believing and faithful followers, and promises the putting away of sins by baptism; and if I remember rightly Mithras there signs his soldiers upon their foreheads, celebrates the oblation of bread, introduces a representation of the resurrection, and places the crown beyond the sword."[22] Elsewhere Tertullian writes:-- "If any of you think we render superstitious adoration to the cross, in that adoration he is sharer with us . . You worship _victories_, for in your trophies the cross is the heart of the trophy. The camp religion of the Romans is all through a worship of the standards . . . I praise your zeal: you would not worship crosses unclothed and unadorned."[23] In another of Tertullian's works we read:-- "As for him who affirms that we are the priesthood of a cross, we shall claim him as a co-religionist . . . Every piece of timber which is fixed in the ground in an erect position is part of a cross, and indeed the greater part of its mass. But an entire cross is attributed to us . . . . The truth however is that _your_ religion is _all_ cross . . . You are ashamed, I suppose, to worship unadorned and simple crosses."[24] In the _Instructions of Commodianus_ we read "The first law was in the tree, and so, too, was the second."[25] Cyprian contends that "By the sign of the cross, also, Amalek was conquered by Moses."[26] Elsewhere Cyprian tells us that "In this sign of the cross is salvation for all people who are marked on their foreheads"; quoting as proof of this, from the Apocalypse, "They had his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads," and "Blessed are they that do his commandments that they may have power over the Tree of Life."[27] Methodius tells us that "He overcame, as has been said, the powers that enslaved us by the figure of the cross; and shadowed forth man, who had been oppressed by corruption as by a tyrant power, to be free with unfettered hands. For the cross, if you wish to define it, is the confirmation of victory."[28] Passing on to Origen, we find in one of his works the noteworthy passage:--