e ignorant rusties would more cheerfully
renounce the superstitions of Paganism, if they found some
resemblance, some compensation, in the bosom of Christianity.
The religion of Constantine achieved, in less than a century,
the final conquest of the Roman empire: _but the victors
themselves were insensibly subdued by the arts of their
vanquished rivals_."[411:1]

Faustus, writing to St. Augustine, says:

"You have substituted your agapae for the sacrifices of the
Pagans; for their idols your martyrs, whom you serve with the
very same honors. You appease the shades of the dead with wine
and feasts; you celebrate the solemn festivities of the
_Gentiles_, their calends, and their solstices; and, as to
their manners, those you have retained without any alteration.
_Nothing distinguishes you from the Pagans, except that you
hold your assemblies apart from them._"[411:2]

Ammonius Saccus (a Greek philosopher, founder of the Neo-platonic
school) taught that:

"Christianity and Paganism, when rightly understood, differ in
no essential points, but had a common origin, _and are really
one and the same thing_."[411:3]

Justin explains the thing in the following manner:

"It having reached the devil's ears that the prophets had
foretold that Christ would come . . . he (the devil) set the
heathen poets to bring forward a great many who should be
called sons of Jove, (_i. e._, "The Sons of God.") The devil
laying his scheme in this, to get men to imagine that the
_true_ history of Christ was of the same character as the
prodigious fables and poetic stories."[411:4]

Caecilius, in the Octavius of Minucius Felix, says:

"All these fragments of crack-brained opiniatry and silly
solaces played off in the sweetness of song by (the) deceitful
(Pagan) poets, by you too credulous creatures (_i. e._, the
Christians) have been shamefully reformed and made over to
your own god."[411:5]

Celsus, the Epicurean philosopher, wrote that:

"The Christian religion contains nothing but what Christians
hold in common with heathens; nothing new, or truly
great."[411:6]

This assertion is fully verified by Justin Martyr, in his apology to the
Emperor Adrian, which is one of the most remarkable admissions ever made
by a Christian writer. He says:

"In saying that all things wer