Sermon x. of Gregory the Divine on Baptism :‘Again my Jesus! and again a mystery: a mystery not deceptive nor unbecoming, nor of heathenish error and drunkenness: for so I name what they call venerable: and I think every rational person agrees with me: but a mystery high and divine, and communicative of the brightness which is above. For the holy day of the Lights to which we are now come, and which it is vouchsafed to us to celebrate to-day,’ &c. The gloss: ‘The Divine calls the festival a “mystery,” not once only, but many times, out of affection; just as in the opposite case, when persons or things are hated, one does not willingly even mention it at all. This mystery, he says, is not deceitful, false, or pernicious, as were the deceitful and false, or rather, one should say, the shameful and impure festivals of the heathen. Rather it is a mystery sublime and passionless, and a channel of illumination from above, &c. It is the time of regeneration : we are born from on high: we put off the first Adam; we put on the new. We shall not remain what we are, but we shall be what we have become. Birth comes to men from men, but the new birth is from God. Therefore, putting off the birth after the flesh, darkened by corruption, we are born again from on high, from heaven. For it is a heavenly thing to rise again by the Holy Ghost: and hereby we also fill up what was wanting in our former birth.

‘The Greek or heathen mysteries were all rites and mysteries of devils, an invention of darkness, with both ideas and acts of evil device, aided by deception and fables,’ &c.