Ddzx, do you have a reference to Clement of Alexandria, being forced to acknowledge the sanctity of Buddha?
I found this reference to to the adoption of many pre-Christian era practices by unChristian Christendom.
“The worshippers of Buddha in Burma, Siam, and the Chinese Empire . . . have their relics and their images, the objects of supreme veneration; their temples costing fabulous sums of money; their saints canonized by ecclesiastical authority; their priests with shaven heads, vowing chastity, poverty and obedience; their wax candles burning night and day; their penances and self-inflicted tortures; their endless traditions, and hair-splitting moral distinctions; and even their confessional. They have also their Lent, when for four or five weeks all the people are supposed to live on vegetables and fruits; their acts of merit, repetition of prayers, fasting, offerings to the images, celibacy, voluntary poverty, enforced devotions, and munificent gifts to temples, monasteries and idols. Even the rosary, a string of beads used in saying prayers, and supposed by Papists to be a device specially revealed to St. Dominic, is part of the sacred machinery of the devout Buddhist.”—Popery, by Van Dyke.
Certainly Christendom has dipped deep into paganism for her religious lore, though it bears the name “Christian”. Contrary to some religious belief, it is no more possible to sanctify demonism by adopting it into orthodox Christian Churches than it was for Israel to whitewash Baal worship. (2 Cor. 6:14-17)
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