Hilary had previously (§ 27) asserted that ‘the Apostle has taught us to communicate with the tombs of the saints.’ This is an allusion to Rom. xii. 13, with the strange reading ‘tombs’ for ‘necessities’ (μνείαις for χρείαις), which has, in fact, considerable authority in the mss. of the New Testament and in the Latin Christian writers. How far this reading may have been the cause, how far the effect, of the custom of celebrating the Eucharist at the tombs of Martyrs, it is impossible to say. The custom was by this time more than a century old, and one of its purposes was to maintain the sense of unity with the saints of the past. Constantius, by denying their doctrine, had made himself their enemy.