the _Lares_ and _Penates_. It seems to have been
particularly prevalent amongst the rustic population of the provinces, and
it was not entirely extinct in Italy even at the beginning of the sixth
century; because the Goth, Theodoric the Great, who reigned over that
country from 493 to 526, published an edict forbidding, under pain of
death, to sacrifice according to the Pagan rites, as well as other
superstitious practices remaining from the ancient polytheism.

I have given this sketch of the state of Paganism after the conversion of
Constantine, and of the policy which was followed towards it by the first
Christian emperors, because it seems to explain, at least to a certain
degree, the manner in which Christianity was rapidly corrupted in the
fourth and fifth centuries by the Pagan ideas and practices which I shall
endeavour to trace in my next chapter.

Chapter IV. Infection Of The Christian Church By Pagan Ideas And Practices
During The Fourth And Fifth Centuries.

I have said that the council of Elvira, in Spain, held in 305, prohibited
the use of images in the churches. Other canons of the same council show
that even then Christians were but too prone to relapse into the practices
and customs of Paganism; because they enact very severe ecclesiastical
penances against those Christians who took part in the rites and festivals
of the Pagan worship.(39)

If such enactments were required to maintain the purity of Christian
doctrine, at a time when its converts, instead of expecting any worldly
advantages, were often exposed to severe persecution, and consequently had
no other motives for embracing it than a mere conviction of its truth, how
much more was this purity endangered when conversion to Christianity led
to the favour of the sovereign, and when the church, instead of severely
repressing the idolatrous propensities of her children, endeavoured to
facilitate as much as possible the entrance of the Pagans into her pale!
Let me add, that the mixture of Christianity with Paganism in various
public acts of the first Christian emperors, which I have described in the
preceding chapter, could not but contribute to the general confusion of
ideas amongst those Christians whom the church was continually receiving
into her pale, with all their pagan notions. I have described, in the
second chapter of this essay, the policy of compromise adopted by the
church after the conversion of Constantine. I shall now descr