cquired a knowledge of Christianity,
in the genuine and perfect sense of the word, when, as was frequently
the case, they only assumed the profession of the religion that had
become the choice of some favoured chief, whose example they followed in
mere love and loyalty, without, perhaps, attaching more consequence to a
change of religion than to a change of garments. Such hasty converts,
professing themselves Christians, but neither weaned from their old
belief, nor instructed in their new one, entered the sanctuary without
laying aside the superstitions with which their young minds had been
imbued; and accustomed to a plurality of deities, some of them, who
bestowed unusual thought on the matter, might be of opinion that, in
adopting the God of the Christians, they had not renounced the service
of every inferior power.

If, indeed, the laws of the empire could have been supposed to have had
any influence over those fierce barbarians, who conceived that the
empire itself lay before them as a spoil, they might have been told that
Constantine, taking the offence of alleged magicians and sorcerers in
the same light in which it was viewed in the law of Moses, had denounced
death against any who used these unlawful enquiries into futurity. "Let
the unlawful curiosity of prying into futurity," says the law, "be
silent in every one henceforth and for ever.[11] For, subjected to the
avenging sword of the law, he shall be punished capitally who disobeys
our commands in this matter."

[Footnote 11: "Codex," lib. ix. tit. 18, cap. 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8.]

If, however, we look more closely into this enactment, we shall be led
to conclude that the civil law does not found upon the prohibitions and
penalties in Scripture; although it condemns the _ars mathematica_ (for
the most mystic and uncertain of all sciences, real or pretended, at
that time held the title which now distinguishes the most exact) as a
damnable art, and utterly interdicted, and declares that the
practitioners therein should die by fire, as enemies of the human
race--yet the reason of this severe treatment seems to be different from
that acted upon in the Mosaical institutions. The weight of the crime
among the Jews was placed on the blasphemy of the diviners, and their
treason against the theocracy instituted by Jehovah. The Roman
legislators were, on the other hand, moved chiefly by the danger arising
to the person of the prince and the quiet of the state, so apt