een called to the feast of this salutary and
mystical Easter, look how you preserve your souls from those aliments
which have been defiled by the superstition of the Pagans. It is not
enough for a true Christian to reject the poisoned food of the demons; he
must also fly from all the abominations of the Pagans,--from all the frauds
of the idolaters, as from venom ejected by the serpent of the devil.
Idolatry is composed of poisonings, of enchantments, ligatures, presages,
augurs, sorceries, as well as of all kinds of vain observances, and,
moreover, of the festival called _Parentales_; by means of which idolatry
is reanimating error; and indeed men, giving way to their gluttony, began
to eat the viands which had been prepared for the dead; afterwards they
were not afraid of celebrating in their honour sacrilegious
sacrifices,--although it is difficult to believe that a duty towards their
dead is discharged by those who, with a hand shaking from the effects of
drunkenness, place tables on sepulchres, and say, with an unintelligible
voice, _The spirit is thirsty_.(49) I beseech you, take heed of these
things, in case God should deliver to the flames of hell his contemners
and enemies, who have refused to wear his yoke.'

"Who may wonder that such Christians allowed the pagan idols, temples, and
altars to remain, and to be honoured on their estates, as is attested by
the same bishop? St Augustinus, whom I am not tired of quoting, because no
other doctor of that time expressed so vividly the true Christian ideas,
lamented this monstrous worship, which was neither Paganism nor
Christianity. 'Many a man,' says he, 'who enters the church a Christian,
leaves it a Pagan,' However, far from despairing, he wrote to the virgin
Felicia, 'I advise thee not to be affected too much by these offences;
they were predicted, in order that, when they should come, we might
remember that they had been announced, and consequently not be hurt by
them.' But the Pagans, for whom this premature corruption of Christianity
was not a predicted thing, rejoiced in contemplating the extent of its
progress; they would not believe the duration of a worship which had so
rapidly arrived at the period of its decline, and they were repeating in
their delusion this celebrated saying, 'Christians are only for awhile;
they will afterwards perish, and the idols will return.' "--_Beugnot_, vol.
ii. p. 97, _et seq._

This melancholy picture of Christian society, at