"Men of a desperate, lawless, reckless faction," says the heathen Cæcilius, in the passage above referred to, "who collect together out of the lowest rabble the thoughtless portion, and credulous women seduced by the weakness of their sex, and form a mob of impure conspirators, of whom nocturnal assemblies and solemn fastings and unnatural food, no sacred rite but pollution, is the bond. A tribe lurking and light-hating, dumb for the public, talkative in corners, they despise our temples as if graves, spit at our gods, deride our religious forms; pitiable themselves, they pity, forsooth, our priests; half-naked themselves, they despise our honors and purple; monstrous folly and incredible impudence!... Day after day their abandoned morals wind their serpentine course; over the whole world are those most hideous rites of an impious association growing into shape;... they recognize each other by marks and signs, and love each other almost before they recognize; promiscuous lust is their religion. Thus does their vain and mad superstition glory in crimes.... The writer who tells the story of a criminal capitally punished, and of the gibbet (_ligna feralia_) of the cross being their observance (_ceremonias_), assigns to them thereby an altar in keeping with the abandoned and wicked, that they may worship (_colant_) what they merit.... Why their mighty effort to hide and shroud whatever it is they worship (_colunt_), since things honest ever like the open day, and crimes are secret? Why have they no altars, no temples, no images known to us, never speak abroad, never assemble freely, were it not that what they worship and suppress is subject either of punishment or of shame? "What monstrous, what portentous notions do they fabricate! that that God of theirs, whom they can neither show nor see, should be inquiring diligently into the characters, the acts--nay, the words and secret thoughts of all men; running to and fro, forsooth, and present everywhere, troublesome, restless--nay, impudently curious they would have him; that is, if he is close at every deed, interferes in all places, while he can neither attend to each as being distracted through the whole, nor suffice for the whole as being engaged about each. Think, too, of their threatening fire, meditating destruction to the whole earth--nay, the world itself with its stars!... Nor content with this mad opinion, they add and append their old wives' tales about a new birth after death, ashes and cinders, and by some strange confidence believe each other's lies.