1.  The high-priest of the Pagan religions was called Pontifex Maximus, and he claimed spiritual and temporal authority over the affairs of men.  The Pope of Rome possesses the same title and makes the same claims, and he is clad in the same attire as the Pagan Pontiff.

2.  The heathen were accustomed to wear scapulars, medals, and images to shield them from the common ills and dangers of life.  Romanists wear the same and for the same purpose.

3.  The Pagans, by an official process called deification, frequently exalted men who had lived among them to a position worthy of special honor and worship.  Papists, by a similar process called canonisation, raise their former men of prominence to the dignity of saints and then offer up prayers to them.

The foregoing practises are derived from Paganism; also from Judaism or Paganism came their practise of burning incense in public worship, the use of holy water, burning wax candles in the daytime, and votive gifts and offerings.  Other heathen principles are: 

4.  Adoration of idols and images, a practise expressly forbidden by the Mosaic law and unsanctioned by primitive Christianity;

5.  Road gods and saints (in Catholic countries);

6.  Processions of worshipers and self-whippers (especially in Catholic countries);

7.  Religious orders of monks and nuns.  One who has read of the vestal virgins of old will recognize at once where monkery originated.

In the city of Rome there still stands an old heathen temple built by Marcus Agrippa and dedicated in the year B.C. 27 to all the gods.  In the year A.D. 610 it was reconsecrated by Pope Boniface IV. to “the blessed Virgin and all the saints.”  From that time until the present day Romanists in the same temple have prostrated themselves before the very same images and have devoutly emplored them by the same forms of prayer and for the very same purposes as did the heathen of old.  The only difference is, that instead of calling this idol Jupiter, they call it Paul; instead of denominating that one Venus, they call it Mary, etc.  Well has Bowling said:  “The scholar, familiar as he is with the classic descriptions of ancient mythology, when he directs his attention to the ceremonies of Papal worship, can not avoid recognizing their close resemblance, if not their absolute identity.  The temples of Jupiter, Diana, Venus or Apollo, their ‘altars smoking with incense,’ their boys in sacred habits, holding the incense box, and attending upon the priests, their holy water at the entrance of the temples, with their aspergilla, or sprinkling-brushes, their thuribula, or vessels of incense, their ever-burning lamps before the statues of their deities, are irresistibly brought before his mind, whenever he visits a Roman Catholic place of worship, and witnesses precisely the same things.”  History of Romanism, pp. 109, 110.