ularly since the time of Constantine, because its festivals,
becoming every day more numerous, and its sanctuaries more solemn,
spacious, and adorned with greater splendour,--its ceremonies more
complicated,--its emblems more diversified,--offered to the Pagans an ample
compensation for the artistic pomp of their ancient worship. "The
frankincense," says an eminent Roman Catholic writer of our time, "the
flowers, the golden and silver vessels, the lamps, the crowns, the
luminaries, the linen, the silk, the chaunts, the processions, the
festivals, recurring at certain fixed days, passed from the vanquished
altars to the triumphant one. Paganism tried to borrow from Christianity
its dogmas and its morals; Christianity took from Paganism its
ornaments."(13) Christianity would have become triumphant without these
transformations. It would have done it later than it did, but its triumph
would have been of a different kind from that which it has obtained by the
assistance of these auxiliaries. "Christianity," says the author quoted
above, "_retrograded_; but it was this which made its force." It would be
more correct to say, that it advanced its external progress at the expence
of its purity; it gained thus the favour of the crowd, but it was by other
means that it obtained the approbation of the cultivated minds.(14)

The church made a compromise with Paganism in order to convert more easily
its adherents,--forgetting the precepts of the apostle, to beware of
philosophy and vain traditions, (Col. ii. 8,) as well as to refuse profane
and old wives' fables, (1 Tim. iv. 7.) And it cannot be doubted that St
Paul knew well that a toleration of these things would have rapidly
extended the new churches, had the quantity of the converts been more
important than the quality of their belief and morals.

This subject has been amply developed by one of the most distinguished
French writers of our day, who, belonging himself to the Roman Catholic
Church, seeks to justify her conduct in this respect, though he admits
with the greatest sincerity that she had introduced into her polity a
large share of Pagan elements. I shall give my readers this curious piece
of special pleading in favour of the line of policy which the church had
followed on that occasion, as it forms a precious document, proving, in an
unanswerable manner, the extent of Pagan rites and ideas contained in the
Roman Catholic Church, particularly as it proceeds, not from an