tated on the side of
Christianity; but two or three generations elapsed, before their
victorious influence was universally felt. The religion which had
so long and so lately been established in the Roman empire was still
revered by a numerous people, less attached indeed to speculative
opinion, than to ancient custom. The honors of the state and army
were indifferently bestowed on all the subjects of Constantine and
Constantius; and a considerable portion of knowledge and wealth and
valor was still engaged in the service of polytheism. The superstition
of the senator and of the peasant, of the poet and the philosopher, was
derived from very different causes, but they met with equal devotion
in the temples of the gods. Their zeal was insensibly provoked by the
insulting triumph of a proscribed sect; and their hopes were revived by
the well-grounded confidence, that the presumptive heir of the empire,
a young and valiant hero, who had delivered Gaul from the arms of the
Barbarians, had secretly embraced the religion of his ancestors.

[Footnote 173: As I have freely anticipated the use of pagans and
paganism, I shall now trace the singular revolutions of those celebrated
words. 1. in the Doric dialect, so familiar to the Italians, signifies
a fountain; and the rural neighborhood, which frequented the same
fountain, derived the common appellation of pagus and pagans. (Festus
sub voce, and Servius ad Virgil. Georgic. ii. 382.) 2. By an easy
extension of the word, pagan and rural became almost synonymous, (Plin.
Hist. Natur. xxviii. 5;) and the meaner rustics acquired that name,
which has been corrupted into peasants in the modern languages of
Europe. 3. The amazing increase of the military order introduced the
necessity of a correlative term, (Hume's Essays, vol. i. p. 555;) and
all the people who were not enlisted in the service of the prince were
branded with the contemptuous epithets of pagans. (Tacit. Hist. iii.
24, 43, 77. Juvenal. Satir. 16. Tertullian de Pallio, c. 4.) 4. The
Christians were the soldiers of Christ; their adversaries, who
refused his sacrament, or military oath of baptism might deserve the
metaphorical name of pagans; and this popular reproach was introduced as
early as the reign of Valentinian (A. D. 365) into Imperial laws
(Cod. Theodos. l. xvi. tit. ii. leg. 18) and theological writings.
5. Christianity gradually filled the cities of the empire: the old
religion, in the time of Prudentius (advers.