enforce virtue, it
fails to meet the judgment of men concerning the true character and
office of a religion, and so with the exception of such beasts, and such
there always are, who esteem a faith in proportion to its corruptions,
they look with favor upon any new one which promises to be what they
want. It is for this reason that this religion from Judea has made its
way so far and so soon. But, it will, by and by, degenerate from its
high estate, just as others have done, and be succeeded by another that
shall raise still higher expectations. In the meantime, it serves the
state well, both by the virtue which it enjoins upon its own subjects,
and the influence it exerts, by indirection, upon those of the prevalent
faiths, and upon the general manners and morals.'

'What you say,' observed Aurelian musingly, 'has some show of sense. So
much, at least, may be said for this religion.'

'Yet a lie,' said Fronto, 'can be none the less hateful to the gods,
because it sometime plays the part of truth. It is a lie still.'

'Hold,' said Aurelian, 'let us hear the Greek. What else?'

'I little thought,' I replied, 'as I rode toward the city this morning,
that I should at this hour be standing in the presence of the Emperor of
Rome, a defender of the Christians. I am in no manner whatever fitted
for the task. My knowledge is nothing; my opinions, therefore, worth but
little, grounded as they are upon the loose reports which reach my ear
concerning the character and doctrines of this sect, or upon what little
observation I have made upon those whom I have known of that
persuasion. Still, I honor and esteem them, and such aid as I can bring
them in their straits, shall be very gladly theirs. I will, however, add
one thing more to what I have said in answer to Fronto, who represents
the gods as more concerned to destroy the Christians than to reform the
common religion and the public morals. I cannot think that. Am I to
believe that the gods, the supreme directors of human affairs, whose aim
must be man's highest well-being, regard with more abhorrence an error
than a vice?--an error too that acts more beneficently than most truth,
and is the very seed of the purest virtues? I can by no means believe
it. So that if I were interpreter of the late omens, I should rather see
them pointed at the vices which prevail; at the corruptions of the
public morals, which are fouler than aught I had so much as dreamed of
before I was myself a