ly accosted, or imperiously commanded, the lions and
serpents of the desert; infused vegetation into a sapless trunk;
suspended iron on the surface of the water; passed the Nile on the
back of a crocodile, and refreshed themselves in a fiery furnace. These
extravagant tales, which display the fiction without the genius, of
poetry, have seriously affected the reason, the faith, and the morals,
of the Christians. Their credulity debased and vitiated the faculties
of the mind: they corrupted the evidence of history; and superstition
gradually extinguished the hostile light of philosophy and science.
Every mode of religious worship which had been practised by the saints,
every mysterious doctrine which they believed, was fortified by the
sanction of divine revelation, and all the manly virtues were oppressed
by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks. If it be possible
to measure the interval between the philosophic writings of Cicero and
the sacred legend of Theodoret, between the character of Cato and
that of Simeon, we may appreciate the memorable revolution which was
accomplished in the Roman empire within a period of five hundred years.

[Footnote 73: I know not how to select or specify the miracles contained
in the Vitae Patrum of Rosweyde, as the number very much exceeds the
thousand pages of that voluminous work. An elegant specimen may be found
in the dialogues of Sulpicius Severus, and his Life of St. Martin. He
reveres the monks of Egypt; yet he insults them with the remark, that
they never raised the dead; whereas the bishop of Tours had restored
three dead men to life.] II. The progress of Christianity has been
marked by two glorious and decisive victories: over the learned and
luxurious citizens of the Roman empire; and over the warlike Barbarians
of Scythia and Germany, who subverted the empire, and embraced the
religion, of the Romans. The Goths were the foremost of these savage
proselytes; and the nation was indebted for its conversion to a
countryman, or, at least, to a subject, worthy to be ranked among
the inventors of useful arts, who have deserved the remembrance and
gratitude of posterity. A great number of Roman provincials had been led
away into captivity by the Gothic bands, who ravaged Asia in the time
of Gallienus; and of these captives, many were Christians, and several
belonged to the ecclesiastical order. Those involuntary missionaries,
dispersed as slaves in the villages of Dacia, suc