e gods an easy passage from the temple to the church.
If we consider that, notwithstanding all these concessions, the ruin of
Paganism was accomplished only by degrees and imperceptibly,--that during
more than two centuries it was necessary to combat, over the whole of
Europe, an error which, although continually overthrown, was incessantly
rising again,--we shall understand that the conciliatory spirit of the
leaders of the church was true wisdom.

"St John Chrysostom says, that the devil, having perceived that he could
gain nothing with the Christians by pushing them in a direct way into
idolatry, adopted for the purpose an indirect one.(16) If the devil, that
is to say, the pagan spirit, was changing its plan of attack, the church
was also obliged to modify her system of defence, and not to affect an
inflexibility which would have kept from her a great number of people
whose irresolute conscience was fluctuating between falsehood and truth.

"Already, at the beginning of the fifth century, some haughty spirits,
Christians who were making a display of the rigidity of their virtues, and
who were raising an outcry against the profanation of holy things, began
to preach a pretended reform; they were recalling the Christians to the
apostolic doctrine; they demanded what they were calling a true
Christianity. Vigilantius, a Spanish priest, sustained on this subject an
animated contest with St Jerome. He opposed the worship of the saints and
the custom of placing candles on their sepulchres; he condemned, as a
source of scandal, the vigils in the basilics of the martyrs,(17) and many
other usages, which were, it is true, derived from the ancient worship. We
may judge by the warmth with which St Jerome refuted the doctrines of this
heresiarch of the importance which he attached to those usages.(18) He
foresaw that the mission of the Christian doctrine would be to adapt
itself to the manners of all times, and to oppose them only when they
would tend towards depravity. Far from desiring to deprive the Romans of
certain ceremonial practices which were dear to them, and whose influence
had nothing dangerous to the Christian dogmas, he openly took their part,
and his conduct was approved by the whole church.

"If St Jerome and St Augustinus had shared the opinions of Vigilantius,
would they have had the necessary power successfully to oppose the
introduction of pagan usages into the ceremonies of the Christian church?
I don't be