A most important distinctly Pagan doctrine was connected with this idea of clerical sanctity. I have already referred to the belief of the early Church that the body and blood of Christ were really present in the elements of the Eucharist. It is quite clear from the language of St. Paul that this belief in the real presence was not a belief that the elements were actually changed into Christ’s body and blood.[104] By the faith of the communicant the sacrament was accomplished, and without faith it had no existence. The Eucharist was evidently then regarded as a constantly recurring sacrament of the once offered sacrifice of Christ’s death, which it commemorated and declared until he came again. That this was an exceedingly delicate doctrine which could be easily misinterpreted is obvious. It naturally developed into a grosser form when Paganism, with its leaning towards idolatry, became paramount in the Church. The elements were then formally consecrated, and were regarded as the actual flesh and blood of Christ. As his body, they were laid on the altar and made an object of worship. This, of course, was simple idolatry. United with the dogma of the Incarnation, it enabled the Christian to adore God as visibly present in a material shape. The doctrine was connected with the exaltation of the clergy, as the power of consecration was confined to them. Thus the sacrament of the Eucharist became the sacrifice of the mass. The elements being actually changed into his flesh and blood, Christ was again made a victim; his sacrificial death was repeated as often as the ceremony; and so the Jewish dogma of the Atonement was linked with ideas utterly antagonistic to Judaism.[105] The deification of the Virgin Mary was another wholly Pagan development of Christianity. Female divinities were common in Pagan polytheism, and female saints replaced them in Christian Paganism. After Christ, as man, had been made the God of Christianity, this tendency to give both sexes divine representatives produced the exaltation of the Virgin as his female correlative. She became the goddess of Christianity, the real third person of the Trinity, as Feuerbach calls her.[106] As mother and wife of God, she satisfied the human instincts of Pagan religion; and so the Church ultimately put all heavenly power into her hands. The asceticism of later Christianity at the same time created the dogma of her perpetual virginity. At last, as a divine being, she was encircled with an atmosphere of miraculous privilege even from before her birth.