For it ought to be confidered, that this was not setting forth, or magnifying the character and worship of fome new competitor for a place in the Pantheon, whose pretenfions might be difcuffed or afferted without queftioning the reality of any others. It was pronouncing all other gods to be false, and all other worship vain. From the facility with which the Polytheism of ancient nations admitted new objects of worship into the number of their acknowledged divinities, or the patience with which they might entertain propofals of this kind, we can argue nothing as to their toleration of a fyftem, or of the publishers and active propagators of a fyftem, which swept away the very foundation of the existing establishment. The one was nothing more than what it would be, in Popifh countries, to add a faint to the calendar; the other was to abolish and tread under foot the calendar itself.

Secondly, it ought also to be confidered, that this was not the cafe of philofophers

propounding in their books, or in their schools, doubts concerning the truth of the popular creed, or even avowing their dif belief of it. These philofophers did not go about from place to place to collect profelytes from amongst the common people; to form in the heart of the country focieties profeffing their tenets; to provide for the order, inftruction and permanency of these focieties; nor did they enjoin their followers to withdraw themselves from the public worfhip of the temples, or refufe a compliance with rites instituted by the laws*. These things are what the Chriftians did, and what the philofophers did not: and in these confifted the activity and danger of the enterprife.

Thirdly, it ought alfo to be confidered,

*The best of the ancient philofophers, Plato, Cicero and Epictetus, allowed, or rather enjoined, men to worfhip the gods of the country, and in the established form. See paffages to this purpose, collected from their works by Dr. Clarke, Nat. and Rev. Rel. p. 180, ed. v. Except Socrates, they all thought it wifer to comply with the laws, than to contend:

that

that this danger proceeded not merely from folemn acts and public refolutions of the ftate, but from fudden burfts of violence at particular places, from the licence of the populace, the rashness of some magistrates and the negligence of others, from the influence and instigation of interefted adverfaries, and, in general, from the variety and warmth of opinion which an errand fo novel and extraordinary could not fail of exciting. I can conceive that the teachers of Chriftianity might both fear and fuffer much from thefe causes, without any general perfecution being denouncedag a inft them by imperial authority. Some length of time, I should fuppofe, might pafs, before the vaft machine of the Roman empire would be put in motion, or its attention be obtained to religious controverfy; but, during that time, a great deal of ill usage might be endured, by a set of friendless, unprotected travellers, telling men, wherever they came, that the religion of their ancestors, the religion in which they had been brought up, the religion of

the

the ftate and of the magiftrate, the rites which they frequented, the pomp which they admired, was throughout a system of folly and delufion.

Nor do I think that the teachers of Chriftianity would find protection in that general disbelief of the popular theology, which is supposed to have prevailed amongst the intelligent part of the heathen public. It is by no means true that unbelievers are ufually tolerant. They are not difpofed (and why should they?) to endanger the present ftate of things, by fuffering a religion of which they believe nothing, to be disturbed by another of which they believe as little. They are ready themfelves to conform to any thing; and are, oftentimes, amongst the foremost to procure conformity from others, by any method which they think likely to be efficacious. When was ever a change of religion patronized by infidels? How little, notwithstanding the reigning fcepticism, and the magnified liberality, of that age, the true principles

principles of toleration were understood by the wifeft men amongst them, may be gathered from two eminent and uncontefted examples. The younger Pliny, polished, as he was, by all the literature of that foft and elegant period, could gravely pronounce this monftrous judgment: "Those who perfifted in declaring themselves Chriftians, I ordered to be led away to punishment (i. e. to execution), for I DID NOT DOUBT, whatever it was that they confeffed, that contumacy and inflexible obftinacy ought to be punished." His mafter, Trajan, a mild and accomplished prince, went, nevertheless, no farther in his fentiments of moderation and equity, than what appears in the following refcript: The Chriftians are not to be fought for; but if any are brought before you, and convicted, they are to be punished." And this direction he gives, after it had been reported to him by his own prefident, that, by the moft ftrict examination, nothing could be difcovered in the principles of thefe perfons, but "a bad and exceffive fuperftition," accompanied, it

VOL. I.

D

feems,