e populations amongst whom
the ancient traditions were preserved could favour this reaction. The
clergy were, moreover, interested in maintaining one of their most
powerful means of teaching. The long and persevering efforts of the
Iconoclasts proved therefore ineffective; and the Waldenses were not more
fortunate. Wickliffe, the Hussites, and Carlostad, attacked the images;
but it was reserved only to the Calvinists to establish in some parts of
Europe the triumph of the ideas of the Iconoclasts. The shock was
terrible. The Religionists frequently committed acts of a fanatical and
senseless vandalism; and art had many losses to deplore. But the
idolatrous tendency was struck at its very root; and Catholicism itself
found, after the struggle, more purity and idealism in its own
worship.(11) The Reformed perceived afterwards the exaggeration of their
principles; and though they continued to defend the entrance of their
temples to the simulachres, condemned by God on Mount Sinai, they spared
those which had been bequeathed by the less severe and more material faith
of their fathers."(12)

The principal cause of the corruption of the Christian church, by the
introduction of the Pagan ideas and practices alluded to above, was,
however, chiefly the lamentable policy of compromise with Paganism which
that church adopted soon after her sudden triumph by the conversion of
Constantine. The object of this policy was to lead into her pale the
Pagans as rapidly as possible; and, therefore, instead of making them
enter by the strait gate, she widened it in such a manner, that the rush
of Paganism had almost driven Christianity out of her pale. The example of
the emperors, who, professing Christianity, were, or considered themselves
to be, obliged, by the necessities of their position, to act on some
occasions as Pagans, may have been not without influence on the church. I
shall endeavour to develop this important subject in the following
chapters; and, in order to remove every suspicion of partiality, I shall
do it almost entirely on the authority of an eminent Roman Catholic writer
of our day.

Chapter II. Compromise Of The Church With Paganism.

I have described, in the preceding chapter, the causes which made
Christian worship gradually to deviate from its primitive purity, and to
assume a character more adapted to the ideas of the heathen
population,--numbers of whom were continually joining the church. It was,
partic