the terrified Pagans the last judgment and the torments of hell.(388) But especially the belief, which was sincerely held, and sedulously inculcated, that temporal success followed in the train of Christianity, and that every pestilence, famine, or military disaster was the penalty of idolatry, heresy, sacrilege, or vice, assisted the movement. The theory was so wide, that it met every variety of fortune, and being taught with consummate skill, to barbarians who were totally destitute of all critical power, and strongly predisposed to accept it, it proved extremely efficacious; and hope, fear, gratitude, and remorse drew multitudes into the Church. The transition was softened by the substitution of Christian ceremonies and saints for the festivals and the divinities of the Pagans.(389) Besides the professed missionaries, the Christian captives zealously diffused their faith among their Pagan masters. When the chieftain had been converted, and the army had followed his profession, an elaborate monastic and ecclesiastical organisation grew up to consolidate the conquest, and repressive laws soon crushed all opposition to the faith. In these ways the victory of Christianity over the barbarian world was achieved. But that victory, though very great, was less decisive than might appear. A religion which professed to be Christianity, and which contained many of the ingredients of pure Christianity, had risen into the ascendant, but it had undergone a profound modification through the struggle. Religions, as well as worshippers, had been baptised. The festivals, images, and names of saints had been substituted for those of the idols, and the habits of thought and feeling of the ancient faith reappeared in new forms and a new language. The tendency to a material, idolatrous, and polytheistic faith, which had long been encouraged by the monks, and which the heretics Jovinian, Vigilantius, and Aerius had vainly resisted, was fatally strengthened by the infusion of a barbarian element into the Church, by the general depression of intellect in Europe, and by the many accommodations that were made to facilitate conversion. Though apparently defeated and crushed, the old gods still retained, under a new faith, no small part of their influence over the world.