manners, the dress, or the language of their native country. ^8
^*

[Footnote 8: From the arguments of Celsus, as they are
represented and refuted by Origen, (l. v. p. 247 - 259,) we may
clearly discover the distinction that was made between the Jewish
people and the Christian sect. See, in the Dialogue of Minucius
Felix, (c. 5, 6,) a fair and not inelegant description of the
popular sentiments, with regard to the desertion of the
established worship.]

[Footnote *: In all this there is doubtless much truth; yet does
not the more important difference lie on the surface? The
Christians made many converts the Jews but few. Had the Jewish
been equally a proselyting religion would it not have encountered
as violent persecution? - M.]

The surprise of the Pagans was soon succeeded by resentment;
and the most pious of men were exposed to the unjust but
dangerous imputation of impiety. Malice and prejudice concurred
in representing the Christians as a society of atheists, who, by
the most daring attack on the religious constitution of the
empire, had merited the severest animadversion of the civil
magistrate. They had separated themselves (they gloried in the
confession) from every mode of superstition which was received in
any part of the globe by the various temper of polytheism: but it
was not altogether so evident what deity, or what form of
worship, they had substituted to the gods and temples of
antiquity. The pure and sublime idea which they entertained of
the Supreme Being escaped the gross conception of the Pagan