ble edict was either composed without being published,
or was published without being executed. The evidence of facts, and the
monuments which are still extant of brass and marble, continue to prove
the public exercise of the Pagan worship during the whole reign of the
sons of Constantine. In the East, as well as in the West, in cities, as
well as in the country, a great number of temples were respected, or at
least were spared; and the devout multitude still enjoyed the luxury of
sacrifices, of festivals, and of processions, by the permission, or
by the connivance, of the civil government. About four years after the
supposed date of this bloody edict, Constantius visited the temples of
Rome; and the decency of his behavior is recommended by a pagan orator
as an example worthy of the imitation of succeeding princes. "That
emperor," says Symmachus, "suffered the privileges of the vestal virgins
to remain inviolate; he bestowed the sacerdotal dignities on the nobles
of Rome, granted the customary allowance to defray the expenses of the
public rites and sacrifices; and, though he had embraced a different
religion, he never attempted to deprive the empire of the sacred worship
of antiquity." The senate still presumed to consecrate, by solemn
decrees, the divine memory of their sovereigns; and Constantine himself
was associated, after his death, to those gods whom he had renounced and
insulted during his life. The title, the ensigns, the prerogatives, of
sovereign pontiff, which had been instituted by Numa, and assumed
by Augustus, were accepted, without hesitation, by seven Christian
emperors; who were invested with a more absolute authority over the
religion which they had deserted, than over that which they professed.

The divisions of Christianity suspended the ruin of Paganism; and the
holy war against the infidels was less vigorously prosecuted by princes
and bishops, who were more immediately alarmed by the guilt and danger
of domestic rebellion. The extirpation of idolatry might have been
justified by the established principles of intolerance: but the hostile
sects, which alternately reigned in the Imperial court were mutually
apprehensive of alienating, and perhaps exasperating, the minds of
a powerful, though declining faction. Every motive of authority
and fashion, of interest and reason, now militated on the side of
Christianity; but two or three generations elapsed, before their
victorious influence was universal