to the One Supreme Being.  This may possibly be denied by the authorized expounders of the doctrine of the Church of Rome; but it is nevertheless certain that it is the view taken by the uneducated classes, with whom the saints are much more present and definite deities than even the Almighty Himself.  It is worth noting, that during the dancing mania of 1418, not God, or Christ, or the Virgin Mary, but St. Vitus, was prayed to by the populace to stop the epidemic that was afterwards known by his name.[1] There was a temple to St. Michael on Mount St. Angelo, and Augustine thought it necessary to declare that angel-worshippers were heretics.[2] Even Protestantism, though a much younger growth than Catholicism, shows a slight tendency towards polytheism.  The saints are, of course, quite out of the question, and angels are as far as possible relegated from the citadel of asserted belief into the vaguer regions of poetical sentimentality; but—­although again unadmitted by the orthodox of the sect—­the popular conception of Christ is, and, until the masses are more educated in theological niceties than they are at present, necessarily must be, as of a Supreme Being totally distinct from God the Father.  This applies in a less degree to the third Person in the Trinity; less, because His individuality is less clear.  George Eliot has, with her usual penetration, noted this fact in “Silas Marner,” where, in Mrs. Winthrop’s simple theological system, the Trinity is always referred to as “Them.”

[Footnote 1:  Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages, p. 85.]

[Footnote 2:  Bullinger, p. 348.  Parker Society.]

17.  The posthumous history of Francis of Assisi affords a striking illustration of this strange tendency towards polytheism.  This extraordinary man received no little reverence and adulation during his lifetime; but it was not until after his death that the process of deification commenced.  It was then discovered that the stigmata were not the only points of resemblance between the departed saint and the Divine Master he professed to follow; that his birth had been foretold by the prophets; that, like Christ, he underwent transfiguration; and that he had worked miracles during his life.  The climax of the apotheosis was reached in 1486, when a monk, preaching at Paris, seriously maintained that St. Francis was in very truth a second Christ, the second Son of God; and that after his death he descended into purgatory, and liberated all the spirits confined there who had the good fortune to be arrayed in the Franciscan garb.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Maury, Histoire de la Magie, p. 354.]