Speaking of the difficulty which the Church experienced in keeping "Paganism out of her pale," he adverts to "the _hazard which attended on the development_ of the Catholic ritual,--such as the honors publicly assigned to saints and martyrs, the formal veneration of their relics, and the usages and observances which followed." And he asks: "What was to hinder the rise of a sort of refined Pantheism, and the overthrow of Dogmatism _pari passu_ with the multiplication of heavenly intercessors and patrons?
If what is called in reproach 'Saint-worship' resembled the Polytheism which it supplanted, or was a corruption, how did Dogmatism survive?
Dogmatism is a religious profession of its own reality as contrasted with other systems; but Polytheists are liberals, and hold that one religion is as good as another.

Yet the theological system was developing and strengthening, as well as the monastic rule, all the while the ritual was assimilating itself, as Protestants say, to the Paganism of former ages."[96] It seems to be admitted in these words, that, in the _past_ history of the Church, the development of the Catholic ritual _was_ attended with some danger of infection from Paganism or Pantheism; and there may be equal reason to fear that, in the _future_ history of the Church, still working on the principle of development, that danger may be very considerably aggravated by the general prevalence of theories utterly inconsistent with the faith of primitive times.

What the Church has already done in the exercise of her developing power may be only a specimen of what she may hereafter accomplish.

She has already developed Christianity into a system which bears a striking resemblance to Polytheism; she may yet develop it more fully, so as to bring it into accordance with philosophical Pantheism; or, retaining both forms,--for they are not necessarily exclusive of each other,--she may use the first in dealing with the ignorant, and reserve the second as a sort of esoteric doctrine for minds of higher culture.

Nor let it be said that we are either unjust or uncharitable towards the Romish Church, in suggesting the possibility of some such development; for what she has already done, and what she still claims the power of doing, afford very sufficient ground for our remarks.