Foreword. Chapter 13. The Book of Enoch. ” 14. Philo Judaeus. ” 15. The Gnostics. ” 16. The Christian Apocrypha. ” 17. The Recognitions of Clement and Simon Magus. ” 18. The Confession of Cyprian and some similar stories. ” 19. Origen and Celsus. ” 20. Other Christian Discussion of Magic before Augustine. ” 21. Christianity and Natural Science; Basil, Epiphanius, and the Physiologus. ” 22. Augustine on Magic and Astrology. ” 23. The Fusion of Pagan and Christian Thought in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries. BOOK II. EARLY CHRISTIAN THOUGHT FOREWORD We now turn back chronologically to the point from which we started in our survey of classical science and magic in order to trace the development of Christian thought in regard to the same subjects. How far did Christianity break with ancient science and superstition? To what extent did it borrow from them? [Sidenote: Magic and religion.] It has often been remarked that, as a new religion comes to prevail in a society, the old rites are discredited and prohibited as magic. The faith and ceremonies of the majority, performed publicly, are called religion: the discarded cult, now practiced only privately and covertly by a minority, is stigmatized as magic and contrary to the general good. Thus we shall hear Christian writers condemn the pagan oracles and auguries as arts of divination, and classify the ancient gods as demons of the same sort as those invoked in the magic arts. Conversely, when a new religion is being introduced, is as yet regarded as a foreign faith, and is still only the private worship of a minority, the majority regard it as outlandish magic. And this we shall find illustrated by the accusations of sorcery and magic heaped upon Jesus by the Jews, and upon the Jews and the early Christians by a world long accustomed to pagan rites. The same bandying back and forth of the charge of magic occurred between Mohammed and the Meccans.[1509] [Sidenote: Relation between early Christian and medieval literature.]