from a violent attack. The nations were as if dazzled
by the image of this divine mother, who united in her person the two most
tender feelings of nature, the pudicity of the virgin and the love of the
mother; an emblem of mildness, of resignation, and of all that is sublime
in virtue; one who weeps with the afflicted, intercedes for the guilty,
and never appears otherwise than as the messenger of pardon or of
assistance. They accepted this new worship with an enthusiasm sometimes
too great, because with many Christians it became the whole Christianity.
The Pagans did not even try to defend their altars against the progress of
the worship of the mother of God; they opened to Mary the temples which
they kept closed to Jesus Christ, and confessed their defeat.(25) It is
true, that they often mixed with the worship of Mary those pagan ideas,
those vain practices, those ridiculous superstitions, from which they
seemed unable to detach themselves; but the church rejoiced, nevertheless,
at their entering into her pale, because she well knew that it would be
easy to her to purge of its alloy, with the help of time, a worship whose
essence was purity itself.(26) Thus, some prudent concessions, temporarily
made to the pagan manners and the worship of Mary, were two elements of
force which the church employed in order to conquer the resistance of the
last Pagans,--a resistance which was feeble enough in Italy, but violent
beyond the Alps."(27)

Chapter III. Position Of The First Christian Emperors Towards Paganism,
And Their Policy In This Respect.

I have given in the preceding chapter a description, traced by one of the
most learned Roman Catholic writers of our day, of the compromise between
Christianity and Paganism, by which the church has endeavoured to
establish her dominion over the adherents of the latter. I shall now try
to give a rapid sketch of the circumstances which undoubtedly have
influenced the church, to a considerable degree, in the adoption of a line
of policy which, though it certainly has much contributed to the extension
of her external dominion, has introduced into her pale those very errors
and superstitions which it was her mission to destroy, and to deliver
mankind from their baneful influence.

There is a widely-spread but erroneous opinion, that the conversion of
Constantine was followed by an immediate destruction of Paganism in the
Roman empire. This opinion originated from the incorrect s