The death of Julian left the Ancient Idolatry in possession of the empire, but without a champion. He had endeavored to thoroughly paganize the army but had succeeded only in making hypocrites of those who took any interest in religion. So long as he was the dispenser of the loaves and fishes of the state, the soldiery bowed the knee to Jupiter; but when the arrow of the Persian had given victory to "the Galilean," and the "pious Jovian" became the elect of the fickle host, whose affection had been gained by his comely person, cheerful temper, and familiar wit, the soldiers again displayed at the head of their legions the banner of the cross, the Labarum of Constantine, by which was announced to the people the superstition of their new emperor.

The first moments of peace were devoted by Jovian to the restoration of domestic tranquillity to the church and state. The "Christians," says Gibbon, "had forgotten the spirit of the gospel, and the pagans had imbibed the spirit of the church. In private families, the sentiments of nature were extinguished by the blind fury of zeal and revenge; the majesty of the laws was violated or abused; the cities of the east were stained with blood, and the most implacable enemies of the Romans were in the bosom of their country." As soon as Jovian was enthroned, he secured the legal establishment of the catholic superstition. The insidious edicts of Julian were abolished, and the immunities of the catholic apostasy were restored and enlarged, which gained for him, of course, the loud and sincere applause of its devotees. The episcopal leaders of their contending sects, convinced, by experience, how much their fate would depend on the earliest impressions made on the mind of an untutored soldier, hastened to the court at Antioch. "The highways of the east were crowded with Homoousian, and Arian, and Semi-Arian, and Eunomian bishops, who struggled to outstrip each other in the holy race for the prize of the imperial favor; the apartments of the palace resounded with their clamors, and the ears of Jovian were assailed, and perhaps astonished, by the Babel-mixture of metaphysics and passionate invectives. They discovered at length his admiration for ‘the celestial virtues of the great Athanasius,’" one of the most persistent ecclesiastics of which Jezebel could boast in that or any subsequent period of her career. By this discovery, Jovian was found to be possessed of the spirit of the times, and therefore in fellowship with the zeal and numbers of the most powerful sect of the Apostasy. Under his reign, Laodiceanism obtained an easy and lasting victory; and as soon as the sunshine of imperial patronage was withdrawn, the ancient idolatry, which had been cherished by the arts of Julian, sunk irrecoverably in the dust. Thus, as justly remarked by Themistius in his address to Jovian, "in the recent changes, both religions (Julian’s and Constantine’s) had been alternately disgraced by the seeming acquisition of worthless proselytes, of those votaries of the reigning purple, who could pass without a reason, and without a blush, from the church to the temple, and from the altars of Jupiter to the sacred table of the Christians."

After Jovian’s death, Valentinian was elected by the military to the absolute government of the Roman empire. In thirty days after his own election, he associated his brother Valens as his colleague in the emperorship. In June, A.D. 364, they divided the empire between them; Valentinian bestowing on his brother the rich praefecture of the Eastern Leg of the Babylonian Image, from the Lower Danube to the confines of Persia; whilst he reserved to himself the three praefectures of Illyricum, Italy, and Gaul, constituting the Western Leg, from the extremity of Greece to the Caledonian rampart, and from the rampart to the foot of Mount Atlas. This division being amicably arranged, preparation for the angel-trumpeters was advanced a stage. The Emperor of the West established his temporary residence at Milan; and the Emperor of the East returned to Constantinople, to assume the dominion of fifty provinces.

Both these men were cruel, but not equally and similarly zealous for the traditions of the Apostasy. Valens was an Arian, and therefore a persecutor of the Athanasians. These hostile factions were more equally balanced in the East than in the Latin West, where the Arian party was but small. The Arian and Athanasian monks and bishops supported their arguments by invectives, and these were sometimes followed by blows. Athanasius reigned archbishop in Alexandria over the most ignorant and ferocious catholics of the empire. Constantinople and Antioch were occupied by his enemies, the Arians; and every episcopal vacancy was the occasion of a popular tumult, greatly to the disgust and contempt of philosophers and pagans. So great was the lust of power, that the leaders of both factions believed that, if they were not suffered to reign, they were most cruelly injured and oppressed.

The western emperor Valentinian reigned over the countries in which the Sealing Angel was occupied in the work of sealing the servants of the Deity in the forehead. Though a man whose savage disposition was hardened against pity and remorse, he uniformly maintained a firm and temperate impartiality in an age of singular discord and contention among ecclesiastics. He declined with respectful indifference the subtle questions of their debates; and, while he remembered that he was a disciple of the church, he never forgot that he was lord and master of the clergy. The pagans, the Jews, and all the various sects which acknowledged the divine authority of Christ, were protected by the laws from arbitrary power, or popular insult; nor did he prohibit any mode of worship, except those secret and criminal practices which abused the name of religion for the dark purposes of vice and disorder.

He published an edict A.D. 370, addressed to Damasus, Bishop of Rome, restraining the avarice of the clergy. The things he forbad them to practice show in what they were especially guilty. He admonished the ecclesiastics and monks not to frequent the houses of widows and virgins; and menaced their disobedience with the animadversion of the civil authority. These were of that sort Paul predicted would "creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away by divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" (2 Tim. iii. 6,7). These reprobates installed themselves with these "silly women" as their spiritual directors. But Valentinian rightly discerned the corruptness of their purposes. He therefore forbad their visiting the houses, or receiving any gift, legacy, or inheritance, from the liberality of their spiritual daughters. He had to step in as the civil guardian of domestic happiness and virtue, against the assaults of clerical wolves in sheep’s clothing, calling themselves christian pastors of Christ’s flock!! By their professed contempt of the world, they insensibly acquired the most desirable advantages; the lively attachment, perhaps, of a young and beautiful woman, the delicate plenty of an opulent household, and the respectful homage of the slaves, the freedmen and clients of senatorial families. Under this spiritual direction, the immense fortunes of Roman ladies were gradually consumed in lavish alms and expensive pilgrimages; and the artful ecclesiastic, who had assigned himself the first, or possibly the sole, place in the testament of his spiritual daughter, still presumed to declare, with the smooth face of hypocrisy, that he was only the instrument of charity and the steward of the poor. The lucrative, but disgraceful trade which was exercised by the clergy to defraud the expectations of the natural heirs, had provoked the indignation of a superstitious age; and two of the most respectable of Latin spiritual directors, Jerome and Ambrose, honestly confess that the ignominious edict of Valentinian was just and necessary.

What Gibbon styles "the splendid vices of the church of the Rome," in the reign of Valentinian, and under the spiritual direction of Damasus, its bishop, have been impartially stated by Ammianus, who says, "The praefecture of Juventius was accompanied with peace and plenty; but the tranquillity of his government was soon disturbed by a bloody sedition of the distracted people. The ardor of Damasus and Ursinus to seize the episcopal seat surpassed the ordinary measure of human ambition. They contended with the rage of party; the quarrel was maintained by the wounds and death of their followers; and the praefect, unable to resist or appease the tumult, was constrained, by superior violence, to retire into the suburbs. Damasus prevailed; the well-disputed victory remained on the side of his faction; one hundred and thirty-seven dead bodies were found in the Basilica of Sicininus, where the christians (!) hold their religious assemblies; and it was long before the angry minds of the people resumed their accustomed tranquility. When I consider the splendor of the capital, I am not astonished that so valuable a prize should inflame the desires of ambitious men, and produce the fiercest and most obstinate contest. The successful candidate is secure that he will be enriched by the offerings of matrons; that as soon as his dress is composed with becoming care and elegance, he may proceed, in his chariot, through the streets of Rome; and that the sumptuousness of the imperial table will not equal the profuse and delicate entertainments provided by the taste and at the expense of the Roman Pontiffs. How much more rationally (continues the honest pagan, more christian in spirit than "the christians") would these pontiffs consult their true happiness, if instead of alleging the greatness of the city as an excuse for their manners, they would imitate the exemplary life of some provincial bishops, whose temperance and sobriety, whose mean apparel and downcast looks, recommended their pure and modest virtue to the Deity and his true worshippers." When the tranquillity of the city was restored by the wisdom of the prefect Praetextatus, this polite and philosophic pagan, disguising a reproach in the form of a jest, remarked to the "right reverend bishop" Damasus, that if he could obtain the bishopric of Rome, he himself would immediately embrace the christian religion. This lively picture of the wealth and luxury of the bishops of Rome in the fourth century becomes the more curious as it represents the intermediate degree between the humble poverty of the Apostles, and the royal state of an Imperial Pontiff, whose temporal dominions once extended from the confines of Naples to the Po.

On the death of Valentinian, A.D. 375, Gratian, his son, a youth of seventeen, and his brother, Valentinian II, then only four years old became emperors of the West, so that the government of the Roman world was now exercised in the united names of Valens and his two nephews. On the fall of Valens in the battle of Hadrianople, A.D. 378, Gratian appointed Theodosius his successor over the East. Gratian was a feeble and indolent character, piously credulous, and a mere tool in the hands of ecclesiastical hypocrites, who procured from him an edict to punish, as a capital offence, the violation, neglect, or even the ignorance, of what they were pleased to call the divine law. This would give them power to persecute and destroy "the servants of the Deity," then being impressed with his seal. The murder of Gratian did not improve the situation; for Theodosius, a name dear to the Apostasy, was pious and cruel, with strength and activity of mind.

Among the benefactors of the catholic church, the fame of Constantine has been rivalled by the glory of Theodosius, who assumed the merit of subduing Arianism, and abolishing the worship of idols in the Roman world. Theodosius was the first of the emperors immersed in what the apostasy terms "the true faith of the Trinity." As he ascended from the water, "still glowing with the warm feelings of regeneration," he dictated a solemn edict which proclaimed his own opinions and prescribed the religion of his subjects. "It is our pleasure," said this sacramentally regenerated prince, "that all the nations, which are governed by our clemency and moderation, should stedfastly adhere to the religion which was taught by St. Peter to the Romans, which faithful tradition hath preserved, and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus (!) and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the discipline of the Apostles and the doctrine of the gospel, let us believe the sole Deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, under an equal majesty, and a pious Trinity. We authorize the followers of this doctrine to assume the title of ‘CATHOLIC CHRISTIANS’; and as we judge that all others are extravagant madmen, we brand them with the infamous name of HERETICS, and declare that their conventicles shall no longer usurp the respectable appellations of churches. Besides the condemnation of divine justice, they must expect to suffer the severe penalties which our authority guided by heavenly wisdom, shall think proper to inflict upon them."

This edict of Theodosius caused great joy to the catholics. He convened, A.D. 381, a council at Constantinople, of one hundred and fifty bishops, to complete the theological system which had been established in the council of Nice. They decreed the equal Deity of the Holy Ghost, which, upon their authority, has been received by all the deluded nations and all the churches of the Apostasy. But, whatever the merits of the question, the sober evidence of history will not allow much weight to the personal authority of these Theodosian fathers. In an age when the spirituals of the Apostasy were a scandalous degeneration from apostolic purity, the most worthless and corrupt were always the most eager to frequent, and disturb the episcopal assemblies. The conflict and fermentation of so many opposite interests and tempers inflamed the passions of the bishops; and their ruling passions were the love of gold and the love of dispute. Many of the same churchmen who now applauded the orthodox piety of Theodosius, had repeatedly changed, with prudent flexibility, their creeds and opinions; and in the various revolutions of the church and the state, the religion of their sovereign was the rule of their obsequious faith. The unjust and disorderly proceedings of these sycophants forced the gravest members of the council to dissent and secede; and the clamorous majority, which remained masters of the field, could be compared only to wasps or magpies, to a flight or cranes, or to a flock of geese.

The decrees of the council of Constantinople had set up the standard of catholic opinion; and the spirituals who governed the beclouded conscience of Theodosius suggested the most effectual methods of persecution. In the space of fifteen years, he promulgated at least fifteen severe edicts against the heretics; and, to deprive them of every hope of escape, he sternly enacted that if any laws or rescripts should be alleged in their favor, the judges should consider them as illegal productions either of fraud or forgery. The penal statutes were directed against the ministers, the assemblies, and the persons of "the heretics"; and the passions of the legislator were expressed in the language of declamation and invective.

Thus the theory of persecution was established by this regenerated trinitarian emperor, whose justice and piety have been applauded by "the church"; but the practice of it, in the fullest extent, was reserved for his rival and colleague, Maximus, then reigning beyond the Alps, the first, among catholic princes, who shed the blood of his subjects on account of their religious opinions. These were Priscillian and six of his brethren, who were tortured, condemned, and executed at Treves. Their tenets being reported by their enemies, it is not possible to speak with certainty respecting them. Their rejection by the clergy and their adherents is a presumption in favor of their being sufferers for the truth. Their death was the subject of a long and vehement controversy, in which, though Martin, Bishop of Tours, and Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, proclaimed the eternal damnation of heretics, they both were surprised and shocked by the bloody image of their temporal death. Since the murder of Priscillian by the catholics, they have become scarlet with the blood of the saints, and drunk with the blood of the witnesses for Jesus (Apoc. xvii. 6); and their proceedings have been refined and methodized in the "Holy Office," which assigns their distinct parts to the ecclesiastical victim, is hypocritically expressed in the language of pity and intercession. Who need wonder at seven angels being commissioned to inflict vengeance upon such a communion of blood? How can wrath cease against men, so long as the earth is cursed with the presence of catholicism, and its kindred abominations? The divine indignation can only be appeased by their extirpation total and complete.

After the death of Valentinian II, and the overthrow of Maximus, the Roman world was in the undivided possession of Theodosius; and thus it continued till his death, A.D. 395, when the separation of the East and the West became final under his sons Arcadius and Honorius.

About sixty years after Constantine’s conversion to catholicism, the ancient form of heathenism was completely superseded by catholic polytheism; and the temples of the gods were replaced by the Bazaars of Guardian Saints and Angels, in which Theodosius, and his sacramentally regenerated coreligionists, convened under the spiritual direction of reprobate bishops and presbyters, for the degrading adoration of dead men’s bones, and other relics they were taught to venerate as sacred. A pagan, treating of this change in the form of Rome’s polytheism, says: "The monks" (a race of filthy animals, to whom he is tempted to refuse the name of men) "are the authors of the new worship, which, in the place of those deities who are conceived by the understanding, has substituted the meanest and most contemptible slaves. The heads, salted and pickled, of those infamous malefactors who, for the multitude of their crimes, have suffered a just and ignominious death; their bodies, still marked by the impression of the lash, and the scars of those tortures which were inflicted by the sentence of the magistrates; such are the gods which the earth produces in our days; such are the martyrs, the supreme arbitrators of our prayers and petitions to the Deity, whose tombs are now consecrated as the objects of the veneration of the people." This writer was the spectator of a revolution which raised a multitude of fabulous saints and victims to the rank of mahuzzim, of celestial and invincible protectors of the Roman empire! He might well be indignant at the worse than pagan abomination. Fifty years after the building of Constantinople, the pretended remains of Samuel, the prophet of Israel, were transported to that city. His ashes, deposited in a golden vase, and covered with a silken veil, were delivered by the episcopal mountebanks into each other’s hands. These fabulous relics were received by the infatuated catholic multitude with infinitely more demonstrations of joy and reverence than they would have shown to the real prophet; the highways, from Palestine to the gates of Constantinople, were filled with an uninterrupted procession; and the emperor Arcadius, at the head of the most illustriously betitled members of the clergy and senate, advanced to meet this extraordinary and fictitious guest! The example of Rome and Constantinople confirmed the superstition, blasphemy and discipline of the catholic world. The honors of fictitious saints and martyrs, after an ineffectual protest of the sealed servants of the Deity* were universally established; and in the age of those conspicuous theological empirics, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine, something was still deemed wanting to the sanctity of a catholic bazaar, till it had been consecrated by some portion of "holy relics," which fixed and inflamed the devotion of the deluded multitude.

[* In a note, Gibbon says: "The presbyter Vigilantius, the protestant of his age, firmly, though ineffectually, withstood the superstition of the monks, relics, saints, fasts, etc., for which Jerome compares him to the Hydra, Centaurs, Cerberus, etc., and considers him only as the organ of the demon." Whoever will peruse the controversy of Jerome and Vigilantius, and Augustin’s account of the miracles of Stephen, may speedily gain some idea of the spirit of the fathers of the Apostasy.]

The Catholic Apostasy by the end of the preparation period for angelic sounding had become a system of organized and established idolatry -- of the worship of gods produced from the earth by the clerical officials of Satan’s kingdom. Perceiving how profitable were the so-called relics of saints, more valuable to church-knaves than gold and precious stones, the clergy were stimulated to multiply these treasures of "the church." Without regard for truth or probability they invented names for skeletons, and actions for names. The fame of the apostles and prophets, and their holy brethren, was darkened by superstitious fraud and falsehood. To the invincible band of real saints, whose blood from beneath the Altar cried for vengeance against their pagan murderers, the Theodosian craftsmen added myriads of imaginary heroes, who had never existed except in the fancy of "daemons speaking lies in hypocrisy; and having their conscience seared as with a hot iron," of whom Ambrose, bishop of Milan, his pupil "St. Augustine" and "St. Jerome," were notable examples: "and there is reason to suspect," says Gibbon, "that Tours might not be the only diocese in which the bones of a malefactor were adored instead of those of a saint. A superstitious practice, which tended to increase the temptations of fraud and credulity, insensibly extinguished the light of history and of reason in," what he incorrectly terms, "the christian world."

But the progress of catholic idolatry would have been much less rapid and victorious, if the superstition of the people had not been assisted by the seasonable aid of what Paul styles, "signs and wonders of falsehood;" that is, of pretended visions and spurious miracles, to ascertain the authenticity and virtue of the most suspicious relics. When Ambrose refused to obey the sentence of banishment decreed against him by the Arian government of Valentinian II, and while he and his party were blockaded in the cathedral of Milan, he falsely declared that he was instructed by a dream, to open the earth in a place where the relics or remains of two martyrs, Gervasius and Protasius, had been deposited above three hundred years. Immediately under the church-pavement two perfect skeletons were found, with the heads separated from their bodies, and a plentiful effusion of blood. These "holy relics" were presented, in solemn pomp, to the veneration of his credulous flock. The knavish designs of Ambrose were admirably promoted by this pretended discovery. Their bones, blood, and garments, were supposed to contain a healing power; and their praeternatural influence was said to be communicated to the most distant objects, without losing any part of its original virtue. The alleged extraordinary cure of a blind man by touching the garment, and the reluctant confessions of several daemoniacs, were adduced to justify the Athanasian opinions and sanctity of this rebel churchman! The truth of these miracles is attested by Saint Ambrose himself, and by his proselyte, the celebrated Saint Augustin, who, at that time professed the art of rhetoric in Milan. The Arian court very properly rejected the testimony of such interested parties; and derided the theatrically represented cures, exhibited by the contrivance and at the expense of the archbishop. The effect, however, upon the irrational and strongly deluded multitude was rapid and irresistible; and the feeble sovereign of Italy found himself unable to contend with such a favorite of heaven!

The same "grave and learned Augustin" afterwards bishop of Hippo in the Roman Africa, attests the innumerable prodigies performed there by the relics of Stephen, stoned in the presence of Saul of Tarsus. These were brought to light by a dream, thrice repeated to one Lucian, a presbyter, residing twenty miles from Jerusalem. When they were unearthed, the ground trembled, and an odor, such as that of paradise, was smelt, which instantly cured the various diseases of seventy-three of the grave-openers. The relics were transported, in solemn procession, to a house of the dead, called "a church" by the ignorant multitude, constructed in their honor on Mount Zion; and the minute particles of those relics, a drop of blood, or the scrapings of a bone, were acknowledged, in almost every province of the catholic world, to possess a divine and miraculous virtue. This "wonder of falsehood" is inserted in his elaborate work, "The City of God," which Augustin designed as a solid and immortal proof of the truth of what he called christianity. He solemnly enumerates above seventy miracles, performed by Stephen’s relics, of which three were resurrections from the dead, in the space of two years, and within the limits of his own diocese! "If we enlarge our views to all the dioceses, and all the saints, of the ‘christian’ world", says Gibbon, truly, "it will not be easy to calculate the fables, and the errors, which issued from this inexhaustible source. But we may surely be allowed to observe, that a miracle in that age of credulity and superstition, lost its name and its merit, since it could scarcely be considered as a deviation from the ordinary, and established, laws of nature."

The innumerable "wonders of falsehood," of which the tombs were the perpetual theatre, impressed the infatuated crowd with a notion of the state and constitution of the invisible world, which became the basis of the system of idol-worship, which darkens the kingdom of the clergy to this day. Whatever might be the condition of the common herd between death and resurrection of body, it was fancifully supposed that the disembodied ghosts of so-called saints and martyrs did not consume that interval in silent and inglorious sleep. It was imagined (without presuming to determine the place of their habitation, or the nature of their felicity) that they employed the lively and active consciousness of their happiness, their virtue, and their powers; and that they had already secured the possession of their eternal reward. The supposed enlargement of their intellectual faculties surpassed the measure of human conception; since they imagined that they had proved by experience, that they were capable of hearing and understanding the various petitions of their numerous votaries, who, in the same moment of time, but in the most distant parts of the world, invoked the name and assistance of Stephen or of Martin. The confidence of their petitioners was founded on the heathen dogma of inherent immortality; and the supposition, that the disembodied immortal souls of saints go to Christ at death, and as unclothed and naked ghosts are reigning with him, and in this their glory cast an eye of pity upon earth; their worshippers are strongly deluded with the notion that these naked souls are warmly interested in the prosperity of the church; and that the individuals, who imitated the fabled example of their faith and piety, were the peculiar and favorite objects of their most tender regard. Sometimes, indeed, it was thought that their friendship might be influenced by considerations of a less exalted kind; that they viewed, with partial affection, the places which had been consecrated by their birth, their residence, their death, their burial, or the possession of their relics. They were regarded as not exempt from pride, avarice, and revenge; hence they were supposed to approve with gratitude the liberality of their votaries; and to hurl the keenest bolts of punishment against the impious wretches, who violated their magnificent shrines, or disbelieved their supernatural power. Severus, bishop of Minorca, says that the relics of St. Stephen in eight days, converted in that island five hundred and forty Jews; but, it must not be forgotten, that they were aided by some potent severities, such as burning the synagogue, driving the obstinate infidels to starve among the rocks, and so forth. The immediate, and almost instantaneous, effects, that were supposed to follow the prayer, or the offence, satisfied the deluded fanatics of the ample measure of favor and authority enjoyed by Immortal Ghosts in the presence of the Supreme; and it seemed superfluous to inquire, whether they were continually obliged to intercede before the throne of grace, or whether they might not be permitted to exercise, according to the dictates of their benevolence and justice, the delegated powers of a subordinate ministry. The imagination, which had been raised by a powerful effort to the contemplation and worship of Eternal Spirit, eagerly embraced such inferior objects of adoration as were more in keeping with its gross conceptions and imperfect faculties. The simplicity which is in Christ, or, as Gibbon styles it, "the sublime and simple theology of the primitive christians," was not only corrupted, but practically and doctrinally abolished; and the Monarchy of Heaven, already clouded by metaphysical subtleties, was dethroned by the introduction of a popular mythology, which restored the reign of a multitude of gods, which became the Mahuzzim, or ghost-protectors, of the "Religious World."

Having thus substituted for the old gods of Greece and Rome, the phantasmata of their corrupt imaginations, which they decorated with the names of real and fictitious saints and angels, they next proceeded to institute the rites and ceremonies, or will-worship, with which they deemed that their new deities ought to be satisfied. These were such as seemed most powerfully to affect the senses of the vulgar herd. If, in the beginning of the fifth century, Paul or Luke, had been raised from the dead, to witness the festival of some popular saint, or martyr, they would have gazed with astonishment and indignation on the profane spectacle, which had superseded the pure and spiritual worship of a christadelphian ecclesia. As soon as the doors of the Saint-Bazaar, or "church," were thrown open, they would have been annoyed by the smoke of incense, the perfume of flowers, and the glare of lamps and tapers, which diffused at noonday a gaudy, superfluous, and in their judgment sacrilegious light. If they approached the balustrade of the Saint-altar, they would have made their way through a prostrate crowd, consisting for the most part of strangers and pilgrims, who resorted to the city on the vigil of the feast, and who already felt the "strong delusion," or intoxication, of fanaticism, and perhaps of wine. Their devout kisses were imprinted on the walls and pavement of the Idol-Bazaar; and their fervent "vain repetitions" were directed, whatever might be the expletives of their conscience-keepers, the priests, to the bones, the blood, or the dust, of the tutelar of the bazaar, which were usually concealed by a linen or silken veil, from the eyes of the vulgar. The fanatics frequented the tombs of their ghost-deities, in the hope of obtaining, from their supposed powerful intercession, every sort of spiritual, but more especially of temporal, blessings. They implored the preservation of their health, or the care of their infirmities; the fruitfulness of their barren wives, or the safety and happiness of their children. Whenever they undertook any distant or dangerous journey, they requested that "the holy martyrs" would be their guides and protectors, or Mahuzzim, on the roads; and if they returned without having experienced any misfortune, they again hastened to the ghost-bazaar tombs, to celebrate, with grateful thanksgivings, their obligations to the memory and relics of their invisible patrons. The walls were hung round with symbols of the favors they supposed they had received; eyes, and hands, and feet, of gold and silver; and memorial pictures, which also soon became objects of idolatry, represented the image, the attributes, and the miracles of the tutelar phantasma. All this new system of idolatry was the invention of that spirit of superstition that reigned incarnate in the presbyters and bishops of the church who imitated the polytheism and ritual they were impatient to destroy. They had persuaded themselves, that the ignorant rustics would more cheerfully renounce the superstition of paganism, if they found some resemblance, some compensation, in the bosom of their catholicism. This religion of Constantine achieved, in less than a hundred years, the final conquest of the old idolatry in all the Roman empire; but the catholic victors themselves were completely subdued by the heathen arts of their vanquished rivals.