_has_ been, an organ of political movement, I will go on to
review rapidly those four constituents of a religion, as they are
realized in Christianity, for the purpose of contrasting them with
the false shadows, or even blank negations, of these constituents
in pagan idolatries.

First, then, as to the CULTUS, or form of the national worship:--In
our Christian ritual I recognise these separate acts; viz. A, an
act of Praise; B, an act of Thanksgiving; C, an act of Confession;
D, an act of Prayer. In A, we commemorate with adoration the
_general_ perfections of the Deity. There, all of us have an
equal interest. In B, we commemorate with thankfulness those special
qualities of the Deity, or those special manifestations of them,
by which we, the individual worshippers, have recently benefited.
In C, by upright confession, we deprecate. In D, we pray, or ask
for the things which we need. Now, in the _cultus_ of the
ancient pagans, B and C (the second act and the third) were wanting
altogether. No thanksgiving ever ascended, on his own account,
from the lips of an individual; and the state thanksgiving for a
triumph of the national armies, was but a mode of ostentatiously
publishing the news. As to C, it is scarcely necessary to say
that this was wanting, when I mention that penitential feelings
were unknown amongst the ancients, and had no name; for
_pœnitentia_[Footnote: In Greek, there is a word for
repentance, but not until it had been rebaptized into a Christian
use. _Metanoia_, however, is not that word: it is grossly
to defeat the profound meaning of the New Testament, if John the
Baptist is translated as though summoning the world to _repentance_;
it was not _that_ to which he summoned them.] means _regret_,
not _penitence_; and _me pœnitet hujus facti_, means, 'I