d pounds
sterling. A fine, not less considerable, is imposed on the connivance
of the secret enemies of religion, who shall neglect the duty of their
respective stations, either to reveal, or to punish, the guilt of
idolatry. Such was the persecuting spirit of the laws of Theodosius,
which were repeatedly enforced by his sons and grandsons, with the loud
and unanimous applause of the Christian world. [56]

[Footnote 53: Libanius (pro Templis, p. 15, 16, 17) pleads their cause
with gentle and insinuating rhetoric. From the earliest age, such feasts
had enlivened the country: and those of Bacchus (Georgic. ii. 380) had
produced the theatre of Athens. See Godefroy, ad loc. Liban. and Codex
Theodos. tom. vi. p. 284.]

[Footnote 54: Honorius tolerated these rustic festivals, (A.D. 399.)
"Absque ullo sacrificio, atque ulla superstitione damnabili." But nine
years afterwards he found it necessary to reiterate and enforce the same
proviso, (Codex Theodos. l. xvi. tit. x. leg. 17, 19.)]

[Footnote 55: Cod. Theodos. l. xvi. tit. x. leg. 12. Jortin (Remarks on
Eccles. History, vol. iv. p. 134) censures, with becoming asperity, the
style and sentiments of this intolerant law.]

[Footnote 5511: Paganism maintained its ground for a considerable time
in the rural districts. Endelechius, a poet who lived at the beginning
of the fifth century, speaks of the cross as Signum quod perhibent esse
crucis Dei, Magnis qui colitur solus inurbibus. In the middle of the
same century, Maximus, bishop of Turin, writes against the heathen
deities as if their worship was still in full vigor in the neighborhood
of his city. Augustine complains of the encouragement of the Pagan rites
by heathen landowners; and Zeno of Verona, still later, reproves the
apathy of the Christian proprietors in conniving at this abuse. (Compare
Neander, ii. p. 169.) M. Beugnot shows that this was the case throughout
the north and centre of Italy and in Sicily. But neither of these
authors has adverted to one fact, which must have tended greatly to
retard the progress of Christianity in these quarters. It was still
chiefly a slave population which cultivated the soil; and however, in
the towns, the better class of Christians might be eager to communicate
"the blessed liberty of the gospel" to this class of mankind; however
their condition could not but be silently ameliorated by the humanizing
influence of Christianity; yet, on the whole, no doubt the servile class
would