ind. It was in vain that the oppressed believer asserted the
inalienable rights of conscience and private judgment. Though his
situation might excite the pity, his arguments could never reach the
understanding, either of the philosophic or of the believing part of
the Pagan world. To their apprehensions, it was no less a matter
of surprise, that any individuals should entertain scruples against
complying with the established mode of worship, than if they had
conceived a sudden abhorrence to the manners, the dress, or the language
of their native country. *

The surprise of the Pagans was soon succeeded by resentment; and the
most pious of men were exposed to the unjust but dangerous imputation of
impiety. Malice and prejudice concurred in representing the Christians
as a society of atheists, who, by the most daring attack on the
religious constitution of the empire, had merited the severest
animadversion of the civil magistrate. They had separated themselves
(they gloried in the confession) from every mode of superstition
which was received in any part of the globe by the various temper of
polytheism: but it was not altogether so evident what deity, or what
form of worship, they had substituted to the gods and temples of
antiquity. The pure and sublime idea which they entertained of the
Supreme Being escaped the gross conception of the Pagan multitude,
who were at a loss to discover a spiritual and solitary God, that was
neither represented under any corporeal figure or visible symbol, nor
was adored with the accustomed pomp of libations and festivals, of
altars and sacrifices. The sages of Greece and Rome, who had elevated
their minds to the contemplation of the existence and attributes of
the First Cause, were induced by reason or by vanity to reserve
for themselves and their chosen disciples the privilege of this
philosophical devotion. They were far from admitting the prejudices of
mankind as the standard of truth, but they considered them as flowing
from the original disposition of human nature; and they supposed that
any popular mode of faith and worship which presumed to disclaim the
assistance of the senses, would, in proportion as it receded from
superstition, find itself incapable of restraining the wanderings of the
fancy, and the visions of fanaticism. The careless glance which men
of wit and learning condescended to cast on the Christian revelation,
served only to confirm their hasty opinion, and to persuad