[Footnote 50: Discourse of Churches, Folio Edn., p. 333.]
So also with respect to the great division into nave and sanctuary by a screen of some sort: concerning which the passages that might be cited from ancient writers would be innumerable. We shall only give one quoted by Father Thiers from a Poem of S. Gregory of Nazianzum, in which the _balustrade_ or rood-screen is said to be 'between two worlds, the one immovable, the other changeful; the one of gods (or heaven) the other of mortals (or earth); that is to say between the choir and the nave, between the clergy and the laity.'
We have attempted to prove then that the earliest Christian churches were designed, or described, symbolically: by showing that there was a reason for their shape, whether oblong, cruciform, or circular; for their main division into choir and nave, and their subdivision for the penitents: for their orientation; and even to some extent for their minor internal arrangements: and that some type or pattern of a church was universally recognised. [Footnote 51]
[Footnote 51: Much stress is laid by some on the acknowledged Bascilican origin of churches as an argument against the principle here contended for. But we find a great authority on the Antiquities of Christian Rome deciding differently: 'There seems to be in the building of churches, as in the mosaics, and other works of art of the old Christian times in Rome one constant type in which the art of building could show little freedom or variety.-- _Beschreibung der Stadt Rom. Basiliken._vol, i, p. 430.]
It would require more reading than we can boast of to give a catena of writers who have asserted the symbolism of churches. But if the point has been in any way proved for the first four centuries, enough will have been done: since from that period we can trace from existing edifices the gradual relinquishment of the peculiar Basilican plan, and general adoption of the Latin Cross, or oblong, in the West, while the East consistently retained the Greek Cross. We observe it stated [Footnote 52] that Mr. E. Sharpe, in a paper read before the Cambridge Camden Society, described the gradual _typical_ additions' to the Basilican ground plan. Indeed symbolism, to any extent, once made known, must have become a rule and precedent to later church architects.