intense religious
enthusiasm. They thought much less of the civil than of the religious
consequence of magic, and sacrilege seemed much more terrible in their
eyes than anarchy.

The Christians found in Rome a vast polytheistic religion in contrast to
their own in which the entire world was divided into the Kingdom of God
and the Kingdom of Satan. For them the world seemed to be teeming with
malignant demons, who had in all ages persecuted and deluded mankind.
"According to these Christians, the immediate objects of the devotions
of the pagan world were subsidiary spirits of finite power and imperfect
morality; angels, or, as they were then called, demons, who acted the
part of mediators, and who, by permission of the Supreme and
Inaccessible Deity, regulated the religious government of mankind. The
Christians had adopted this conception of subsidiary spirits, but they
maintained them to be not the willing agents, but the adversaries of the
Deity; and the word demon, which among the pagans, signified only a
spirit below the level of a Divinity, among the Christians signified a
devil." (_Lecky._)

"This notion seems to have existed in the very earliest period of
Christianity; and in the second century, we find it elaborated with the
most minute and detailed care. Tertullian, who wrote in that century,
assures us that the world was full of these evil spirits, whose
influence might be descried in every portion of the pagan creed. If a
Christian in any respect deviated from the path of duty, a visible
manifestation of the devil sometimes appeared to terrify him. The terror
which such a doctrine must have spread among the early Christians may
be easily conceived. They seemed to breathe an atmosphere of miracles.
Wherever they turned they were surrounded and beleaguered by malicious
spirits, who were perpetually manifesting their presence by supernatural
arts. Watchful fiends stood beside every altar, they mingled with every
avocation of life, and the Christians were the special objects of their
hatred. All this was universally believed, and was realized with an
intensity which, in this secular age, we can scarcely conceive. The
bearing of this view upon the conception of magic is very obvious. Among
the more civilized pagans, magic was mainly a civil, and in the last
days of the empire, a political crime. In the early church, on the other
hand, it was esteemed the most horrible form of sacrilege effected by
the direct age