ade between the Jewish people and the Christian
sect. See, in the Dialogue of Minucius Felix, (c. 5, 6,) a fair and
not inelegant description of the popular sentiments, with regard to the
desertion of the established worship.]

[Footnote 8a: In all this there is doubtless much truth; yet does not
the more important difference lie on the surface? The Christians
made many converts the Jews but few. Had the Jewish been equally
a proselyting religion would it not have encountered as violent
persecution?--M.]

The surprise of the Pagans was soon succeeded by resentment; and the
most pious of men were exposed to the unjust but dangerous imputation of
impiety. Malice and prejudice concurred in representing the Christians
as a society of atheists, who, by the most daring attack on the
religious constitution of the empire, had merited the severest
animadversion of the civil magistrate. They had separated themselves
(they gloried in the confession) from every mode of superstition
which was received in any part of the globe by the various temper of
polytheism: but it was not altogether so evident what deity, or what
form of worship, they had substituted to the gods and temples of
antiquity. The pure and sublime idea which they entertained of the
Supreme Being escaped the gross conception of the Pagan multitude,
who were at a loss to discover a spiritual and solitary God, that was
neither represented under any corporeal figure or visible symbol, nor
was adored with the accustomed pomp of libations and festivals, of
altars and sacrifices. [9] The sages of Greece and Rome, who had
elevated their minds to the contemplation of the existence and
attributes of the First Cause, were induced by reason or by vanity to
reserve for themselves and their chosen disciples the privilege of this
philosophical devotion. [10] They were far from admitting the prejudices
of mankind as the standard of truth, but they considered them as flowing
from the original disposition of human nature; and they supposed that
any popular mode of faith and worship which presumed to disclaim the
assistance of the senses, would, in proportion as it receded from
superstition, find itself incapable of restraining the wanderings of the
fancy, and the visions of fanaticism. The careless glance which men
of wit and learning condescended to cast on the Christian revelation,
served only to confirm their hasty opinion, and to persuade them that
the principle, which they migh