28. Let them say, then, that all things ought to have remained in their first dark beginnings; that the world covered with darkness is now displeasing because it has brightened with the rising of the sun. And how much more pleasant is it to have dispelled the darkness of the mind than that of the body, and that the rays of faith should have shone than that of the sun. So, then, the primeval state of the world, as of all things, has passed away that the venerable old age of hoary faith might follow.… 30. If the old rites pleased, why did Rome also take up foreign ones? I pass over the ground hidden with costly buildings, and shepherds’ cottages glittering with degenerate gold. Why, that I may reply to the very matter which they complain of, have they eagerly received the images of captured cities, and conquered gods, and the foreign rites of alien superstition? Whence, then, is the pattern of Cybele washing her chariots in a stream counterfeiting the Almo? Whence were the Phrygian prophets and the deities of unjust Carthage, always hateful to the Romans? And he whom the Africans worship as Celestis, the Persians as Mithra, and the greater number as Venus, according to a difference of name, not a variety of deities? 31. They ask to have her altar erected in the Senate House of the city of Rome, that is where the majority who meet together are Christians! There are altars in all the temples, and an altar also in the Temple of Victory. Since they delight in numbers, they celebrate their sacrifices everywhere. To claim a sacrifice on this one altar, what is it but to insult the faith? Is it to be borne that a heathen should sacrifice and a Christian be present?… Shall there not be a common lot in that common assembly? The faithful portion of the Senate will be bound by the voices of those who call upon the gods, by the oaths of those who swear by them. If they oppose they will seem to exhibit their falsehood, if they acquiesce, to acknowledge what is a sacrilege. (_f_) _Codex Theodosianus_, XVI, 10, 12; A. D. 392. Decree of Theodosius prohibiting heathen worship as a crime of the same character as treason. The following decree may be said to have permanently forbidden heathenism, at least in the East, though as a matter of fact many heathen not only continued to practise their rites in defiance of the law or with the connivance of the authorities, but also received appointments at the court and elsewhere. The law was never repealed. In course of time heathenism disappeared as a religious system.