palms and crowns for their famous martyrdom, and yet presently addeth:
"We offer sacrifices always for them, when we celebrate the passions and days of the martyrs with an anniversary commemoration."
Thirdly, by that which we read in the author of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, set out under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite: for where the party deceased is described by him to have departed out of this life,
"replenished with divine joy, as now not fearing any change to worse,"
being come unto the end of all his labours, and to have been both privately acknowledged by his friends, and publicly pronounced by the ministers of the Church, to be a happy man, and to be verily admitted into the
"society of the saints that have been from the beginning of the world;"
yet doth he declare, that the Bishop made prayer for him, (upon what ground, we shall afterward hear,) that
"God would forgive him all the sins that he had committed through human infirmity, and bring him into the light and the land of the living, into the bosoms of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, into the place from whence pain and sorrow and sighing flieth."
Fourthly, by the funeral ordinances of the Church related by St. Chrysostom, which were appointed to admonish the living that the parties deceased were in a state of joy, and not of grief:
"For tell me," saith he, "what do the bright lamps mean? do we not accompany them therewith as champions? What mean the hymns?" "Consider what thou dost sing at that time. Return, my soul, unto thy rest; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. And again: I will fear no evil, because thou art with me. Again: Thou art my refuge from the affliction that compasseth me. Consider what these Psalms mean."
Fifthly, by the forms of prayers that are found in the ancient liturgies. As in that of the Churches of Assyria attributed unto St. Basil:
"Be mindful, O Lord, of them which are dead, and are departed out of this life," and of the orthodox Bishops, which from Peter and James the Apostles until this day, have clearly professed the right word of faith; and namely, of Ignatius, Dionysius, Julius, and the rest of the saints of worthy memory. "Be mindful, O Lord, of them also which have stood unto blood for religion, and by righteousness and holiness have fed thy holy flock."
