ir own _Custodes et
Topicos Deos_, tutelar and local gods, as Symmachus calls them. Isocrates
adviseth Demonicus, "when he came to a strange city, to [6604]worship by
all means the gods of the place," _et unumquemque, Topicum deum sic coli
oportere, quomodo ipse praeceperit_: which Cecilius in [6605]Minutius
labours, and would have every nation _sacrorum ritus gentiles habere et
deos colere municipes_, keep their own ceremonies, worship their peculiar
gods, which Pomponius Mela reports of the Africans, _Deos suos patrio more
venerantur_, they worship their own gods according to their own ordination.
For why should any one nation, as he there pleads, challenge that
universality of God, _Deum suum quem nec ostendunt, nec vident,
discurrantem silicet et ubique praesentem, in omnium mores, actus, et
occultas, cogitationes inquirentem_, &c., as Christians do: let every
province enjoy their liberty in this behalf, worship one God, or all as
they will, and are informed. The Romans built altars Diis Asiae, Europae,
Lybiae, _diis ignotis et peregrinis_: others otherwise, &c. Plinius
Secundus, as appears by his Epistle to Trajan, would not have the
Christians so persecuted, and in some time of the reign of Maximinus, as we
find it registered in Eusebius _lib. 9. cap. 9._ there was a decree made to
this purpose, _Nullus cogatur invitus ad hunc vel illum deorum cultum_,
"let no one be compelled against his will to worship any particular deity,"
and by Constantine in the 19th year of his reign as [6606]Baronius
informeth us, _Nemo alteri exhibeat molestiam, quod cujusque animus vult,
hoc quisque transigat_, new gods, new lawgivers, new priests, will have new
ceremonies, customs and religions, to which every wise man as a good
formalist should accommodate himself.

[6607] "Saturnus periit, perierunt et sua jura,
Sub Jove nunc mundus, jussa sequare Jovis."

The said Constantine the emperor, as Eusebius writes, flung down and
demolished all the heathen gods, silver, gold statues, altars, images and
temples, and turned them all to Christian churches, _infestus gentilium
monumentis ludibrio exposuit_; the Turk now converts them again to
Mahometan mosques. The like edict came forth in the reign of Arcadius and
Honorius. [6608]Symmachus the orator in his days, to procure a general
toleration, used this argument, [6609]"Because God is immense and infinite,
and his nature cannot perfectly be known, it is convenient he should be as
d