such learned Gentiles as exposed the profligacy of the first Christians, we quote part of the decree of the Emperor Theodosius, as follows:--"We decree that all writings whatever, which Porphyry, or anyone else, hath written against the Christian religion, in the possession of whomsoever they may be found, _shall be committed to the fire_." (See the original Latin, quoted by Lardner.) Thus the Emperors soon found that, with the connivance and subserviency of the priests, the new superstition was much better calculated than the old for the purposes of tyranny; and that the one thing needful was to suppress all Pagan learning--to foster and diffuse the gloom of ignorance, as the only element in which their nefarious schemes for the subjugation of the human mind could prosper. * The tide of prosperity and greatness followed the Romans, so long as they were reared under the moral and heroic virtues of the old religion, until the new superstition arose like a blighting meteor, shedding its baleful influence over the empire; and by its pernicious dogmas and emasculating tendency, gradually reduced the most warlike nation in the world to contempt and vassalage. ** The Emperor Julian, in a discourse to the Christians, told them that "It was enough for you at first to seduce a few servants--a few beggars, such as Cornelius and Sergius. But let me be regarded as the most impudent of impostors, if among those who embraced your feet under Tiberius and Claudius, there was a single man of birth or merit." Julian here alludes to the Jewish sect of Galileans, who had not assumed the name of Christians under Tiberius and Claudius. In latter times history vouches for the horrible persecutions and bloody wars, which this fresh version of Christianity occasioned throughout Europe and part of Asia, for more than thirteen hundred years, viz., from the reign of Constantine till towards the latter end of the sixteenth century, when some glimmerings of science began to dispel the gloom of ignorance, and to weaken that priestly and aristocratic despotism, which even to this day has not been entirely shaken off by any European nation. A celebrated philosopher,* when speaking of the above period, makes the following observations:--If, says he, God deigned to make himself a man, and a Jew, and to die in Palestine by an infamous punishment, to expiate the crimes of mankind, and to banish sin from the earth, there ought to have been no longer any sin or crime amongst men, whereas religious crimes seem only to have commenced since the time when that event is said to have happened: and the Christians, by their holy massacres and burnings, have shown themselves more abominable monsters than all the sectaries of the other religions put together.** * Freret.