sed and administered, the Asiatic deities could not be
domesticated and subjected to regulation; the Oriental orgies and
strange rites broke in upon the organised State worship; the new ideas
and practices came backed by a profound and fervid spiritualism.
Nevertheless the Roman policy of bringing religion under
authoritative control was more or less successful even in the Asiatic
provinces of the empire; the privileges of the temples were
restricted; the priesthoods were placed under the general
superintendence of the proconsular officials; and Roman divinities
gradually found their way into the Asiatic pantheon.

But we all know that the religion of the Roman empire was falling into
multitudinous confusion when Christianity arose--an austere exclusive
faith, with its army of saints, ascetics, and unflinching martyrs,
proclaiming worship to be due to one God only, and sternly refusing to
acknowledge the divinity of the emperor. Against such a faith an
incoherent disorderly polytheism could make no better stand than
tribal levies against a disciplined army. The new religion struck
directly at the sacrifices that symbolised imperial unity; the passive
resistance of Christians was necessarily treated as rebellion, the
State made implacable war upon them. Yet the spiritual and moral
forces won the victory, and Christianity established itself throughout
the empire. Universal religion, following upon universal civil
dominion, completed the levelling of local and national distinctions.
The Churches rapidly grew into authority superior to the State within
their own jurisdiction; they called in the temporal government to
enforce theological decisions and to put down heresies; they founded a
powerful hierarchy. The earlier Roman constitution had made religion
an instrument of administration. When one religion became universal,
the churches enlisted the civil ruler into the service of orthodoxy;
they converted the State into an instrument for enforcing religion.
The pagan empire had issued edicts against Christianity and had
suppressed Christian assemblies as tainted with disaffection; the
Christian emperors enacted laws against the rites and worships of
paganism, and closed temples. It was by the supreme authority of
Constantine that, for the first time in the religious history of the
world, uniformity of belief was defined by a creed, and sanctioned by
the ruler's assent.

Then came, in Western Europe, the time when the empir