began to send out the reliques of her own Martyrs into all parts, setting the first example to other cities.  This practice therefore began in Egypt some years before the death of Athanasius.  It began when the miracle-working bones of John the Baptist were carried into Egypt, and hid in the wall of a Church, that they might be profitable to future generations.  It was restrained in the reign of Julian the Apostate:  and then it spred from Egypt into all the Empire, Alexandria being the Metropolis of the whole world, according to Chrysostom, for propagating this sort of devotion, and Antioch and other cities soon following her example.

In propagating these superstitions, the ring-leaders were the Monks, and Antony was at the head of them:  for in the end of the life of Antony, Athanasius relates that these were his dying words to his disciples who then attended him. Do you take care, said Antony, to adhere to Christ_ in the first place, and then to the Saints, that after death they may receive you as friends and acquaintance into the everlasting tabernacles, Think upon these things, perceive these things; and if you have any regard to me, remember me as a father_.  This being delivered in charge to the Monks by Antony at his death, A.C. 356, could not but inflame their whole body with devotion towards the Saints, as the ready way to be received, by them into the eternal Tabernacles after death.  Hence came that noise about the miracles, done by the reliques of the Saints in the time of Constantius:  hence came the dispersion of the miracle-working reliques into all the Empire; Alexandria setting the example, and being renowned, for it above all other cities.  Hence it came to pass in the days of Julian, A.C. 362, that Athanasius by a prophetic spirit, as Ruffinus tells us, hid the bones of John the Baptist from the Heathens, not in the ground to be forgotten, but in the hollow wall of a Church before proper witnesses, that they might be profitable to future generations.  Hence also came the invocation of the Saints for doing such miracles, and for assisting men in their devotions, and mediating with God.  For Athanasius, even from his youth, looked upon the dead Saints and Martyrs as mediators of our prayers:  in his Epistle to Marcellinus, written in the days of Constantine the great, he saith that the words of the Psalms are not to be transposed or any wise changed, but to be recited and sung without any artifice, as they are written, that the holy men who delivered them, knowing them to be their own words, may pray with us; or rather, that the Holy Ghost who spake in the holy men, seeing his own words with which he inspired them, may join with them in assisting us.