Christianity, however, made rapid progress. It numbered nobles and philosophers among its followers. It was preached among the Goths, and, in some degree, softened their ferocity. In Gaul and in Germany, far and near, churches were multiplied. Tours, Arles, Treves, Paris, Mentz, and other places, became the strongholds of its power. It occasionally invaded the palace of the Roman emperors, and exerted some influence even upon its most furious persecutors. When the monster Galerius was dying, he abated his persecution of the Christians, and asked their prayers on his behalf.

Christianity, however, in the hands of many, had lost something of its simplicity. Superstitions were ingrafted on its simple usages. Power was concentrated in the hands of metropolitan bishops. Vain speculations were indulged by some Christian philosophers. Philosophy, indeed, with all its treasures, was rapidly flowing into the bosom of the church. Plato and Philo were incorporated into the Alexandrian school, and much error was mingled with sublimest truth. In Clement and Origen, the highest speculative thought was combined with the profoundest piety; but in the end, while philosophy was exalted, piety suffered. All this, however, was inevitable, in the process of human thought. Offences must come, heresies and divisions, vain jangling, and

foolish speculation. The converts to Christianity were from all nations, of all sorts of education and temperament. Many of them were men of vigorous intellects and rooted prejudices, who, though converted to Christ, retained many of their errors and defects. Hence, in their views of the Deity, and of religion, they followed their first, or their most popular instructors. Now they were of one school of philosophy, then of another. Few, if any, had just views either of secular or of ecclesiastical government. All were accustomed to centralization and despotism. They misconceived the free, expansive genius of Christianity. Hence, as Beausobre has remarked, "An Epicurean who embraced the faith was disposed to clothe the Divinity in a human form, and to define it, like Epicurus, to be an immortal and happy animal. A Platonist, on the contrary, according to his master's views, maintained God to be incorporeal.* A Pythagorean, a follower of Empedocles, or of Heracleitus, considered the Deity as an intelligent fire or light," &c.

We may add that some of them were pantheists, and so represented the creation of all things as an emanation, and thus confounded matter

* And yet Plato himself represented "the manifested God," or the God of the outward universe, as "an animal; "— not an animal in the inferior sense, sometimes attached to the term, but a living being, with a body as well as a soul.

and mind. Temperament also combined with these influences to deepen and extend the peculiarities of the Christian converts. Hence the materialism of Hermas and Tertullian, who believed in the regenerative power of water; the spiritualism of Justin Martyr, Clement, (of Alexandria,) and Origen, with their Platonic notions and symbolic interpretations; as, also, the various errors of the Gnostics and the Manichees, who mingled the truths of Christianity with their theosophic dreams, their pleromas and æons.

The age, too, was credulous and superstitious. Freedom and independence in matters of government and discipline were almost unknown. Thousands of converts, among them many teachers and preachers, were ignorant and superstitious. Hence the multiplication of forms and ceremonies, and the vast importance attached to external acts, to chrisms and genuflections, amulets and charms.

Nevertheless, the revolution in the views and manners of the converted heathen was immense. Idol worship was abandoned, and the one true and eternal Jehovah was loved and adored. The heart was cleansed of its idolatry and lust, the life of its folly and crime. It is well known, that among the heathen, a virtuous woman was a great rarity; among the Christian females,

continence was the rule, vice the exception. Charity and chastity were the noble graces of the primitive church.

The contrast between the manners of the Christians and those of the heathen was obvious to all. The following description, in a letter of Cyprian, is by no means exaggerated. Writing to his friend Donatus, he says, "Imagine yourself raised above the earth, and looking down upon it, so as to perceive what is going on there. Behold the roads obstructed by bands of robbers; the sea beset with pirates; war every where! The very earth is wet with blood, and what is called murder, when committed by a private individual, is virtue when it is done by many; impunity being secured, not by the smallness, but by the greatness of the offence. If you turn your eyes to the cities, then you will find their very magnitude more offensive than the most wretched solitude. There gladiatorial shows are exhibited to gratify the lust, of blood. Man is slaughtered for the pleasure of man; he who best knows how to kill is the most skilful; it is a trade, an art. The crime is not only perpetrated, but it is taught. What can be more inhuman? They combat with beasts, not as criminals, but from brute fury: sons behold their father, the sister sees the brother, in the amphitheatre.

"Turn your eyes to spectacles of another kind, not less repulsive and corrupting. In the theatre, the most vicious representations, parricide and incest reproduced in all their horror. Look at the comic actor, the very schoolmaster of vice. Adultery is learned by seeing it acted! The theatre panders to vice, and breaks down the modesty of women. What an incitement to vice in the gestures of the actors, who undertake to represent the whole course of sensual indulgence! If, from this, you could look into the retirement of the closed chamber, and see what is there transacted! But your eyes would be defiled by beholding it."

Cyprian then proceeds, in deepening colors, to depict still more horrible crimes, public and private, in the forum, the baths, the theatres, the places of public concourse, to some of which we have no parallel in modern times, crimes which it is impossible for us to repeat, difficult for us to conceive. Indeed, he describes that state of society, to which St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, refers, as the most degraded and bestial.

All this, however, the early Christians renounced. Theatres, gladiatorial shows, popular amusements, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life they abandoned in their baptism. They deserted the temples of the gods, and gave themselves to the cultivation of piety