5, 6,) a fair and not inelegant description of the popular sentiments, with regard to the desertion of the established worship.] [Footnote 8a: In all this there is doubtless much truth; yet does not the more important difference lie on the surface?
The Christians made many converts the Jews but few.

Had the Jewish been equally a proselyting religion would it not have encountered as violent persecution ?--M.] The surprise of the Pagans was soon succeeded by resentment; and the most pious of men were exposed to the unjust but dangerous imputation of impiety.

Malice and prejudice concurred in representing the Christians as a society of atheists, who, by the most daring attack on the religious constitution of the empire, had merited the severest animadversion of the civil magistrate.

They had separated themselves (they gloried in the confession) from every mode of superstition which was received in any part of the globe by the various temper of polytheism: but it was not altogether so evident what deity, or what form of worship, they had substituted to the gods and temples of antiquity.

The pure and sublime idea which they entertained of the Supreme Being escaped the gross conception of the Pagan multitude, who were at a loss to discover a spiritual and solitary God, that was neither represented under any corporeal figure or visible symbol, nor was adored with the accustomed pomp of libations and festivals, of altars and sacrifices.