The Christian catechumens were called _initiates_ only when they were
baptised.
It is undoubted that in these mysteries one was washed of one's faults
only by the oath to be virtuous; that is so true that the hierophant in
all the Greek mysteries, in sending away the assembly, pronounced these
two Egyptian words--"_Koth_, _ompheth_, watch, be pure"; which is a
proof at once that the mysteries came originally from Egypt, and that
they were invented only to make men better.
The sages in all times did what they could, therefore, to inspire
virtue, and not to reduce human frailty to despair; but also there are
crimes so horrible that no mystery accorded expiation for them. Nero,
for all that he was emperor, could not get himself initiated into the
mysteries of Ceres. Constantine, on the Report of Zosimus, could not
obtain pardon for his crimes: he was stained with the blood of his wife,
his son and all his kindred. It was in the interest of the human race
that such great transgressions should remain without expiation, in order
that absolution should not invite their committal, and that universal
horror might sometimes stop the villains.
The Roman Catholics have expiations which are called "penitences."
By the laws of the barbarians who destroyed the Roman Empire, crimes
were expiated with money. That was called _compounding_, _componat cum
decem, viginti, triginta solidis_.
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