sturbed the peace, and frequently disgraced the name, of religion,
they contributed to assist rather than to retard the progress of
Christianity. The Gentile converts, whose strongest objections and
prejudices were directed against the law of Moses, could find admission
into many Christian societies, which required not from their untutored
mind any belief of an antecedent revelation. Their faith was insensibly
fortified and enlarged, and the church was ultimately benefited by the
conquests of its most inveterate enemies.

But whatever difference of opinion might subsist between the Orthodox,
the Ebionites, and the Gnostics, concerning the divinity or the
obligation of the Mosaic law, they were all equally animated by the
same exclusive zeal; and by the same abhorrence for idolatry, which had
distinguished the Jews from the other nations of the ancient world. The
philosopher, who considered the system of polytheism as a composition of
human fraud and error, could disguise a smile of contempt under the
mask of devotion, without apprehending that either the mockery, or the
compliance, would expose him to the resentment of any invisible, or, as
he conceived them, imaginary powers. But the established religions of
Paganism were seen by the primitive Christians in a much more odious and
formidable light. It was the universal sentiment both of the church
and of heretics, that the daemons were the authors, the patrons, and the
objects of idolatry. Those rebellious spirits who had been degraded
from the rank of angels, and cast down into the infernal pit, were still
permitted to roam upon earth, to torment the bodies, and to seduce the
minds, of sinful men. The daemons soon discovered and abused the natural
propensity of the human heart towards devotion, and artfully withdrawing
the adoration of mankind from their Creator, they usurped the place
and honors of the Supreme Deity. By the success of their malicious
contrivances, they at once gratified their own vanity and revenge, and
obtained the only comfort of which they were yet susceptible, the hope
of involving the human species in the participation of their guilt and
misery. It was confessed, or at least it was imagined, that they
had distributed among themselves the most important characters of
polytheism, one daemon assuming the name and attributes of Jupiter,
another of AEsculapius, a third of Venus, and a fourth perhaps of Apollo;
and that, by the advantage of their long e