army. It was thus not merely the emblem of Christ, but that also of the
conversion of the Emperor and of the fatal victory of the Church.

It is a remarkable fact, and one which none of the recent Romanist
authorities attempt to controvert, that the undoubted earlier inscriptions
afford no evidence of any of the peculiar doctrines of the Roman Church.
There is no reference to the doctrine of the Trinity to be found among
them; nothing is to be derived from them in support of the worship of the
Virgin; her name even is not met with on any monument of the first three
centuries; and none of the inscriptions of this period give any sign of
the prevalence of the worship of saints. There is no support of the claim
of the Roman Church to supremacy, and no reference to the claim of the
Popes to be the Vicars of Christ. As the third century advances to its
close, we find the simple and crude beginning of that change in Christian
faith which developed afterward into the broad idea of the intercessory
power of the saints. Among the earlier inscriptions prayers to God or to
Christ are sometimes met with, generally in short exclamatory expressions
concerning the dead. Thus we find at first such words as these:--

AMERIMNVS
RVFINAE COIV
GI CARISSIME
BENEMEREN
TI SPIRITVM
TVVM DEVS
REFRIGERET

Amerimnus to his dearest wife Rufina well-
deserving. May God refresh thy spirit!