This religion has reduced the world under my laws.

These rites have repelled Hannibal from the city, and the Gauls from the Capitol.

Were my gray hairs reserved for such intolerable disgrace?
I am ignorant of the new system that I am required to adopt; but I am well assured, that the correction of old age is always an ungrateful and ignominious office." [16] The fears of the people supplied what the discretion of the orator had suppressed; and the calamities, which afflicted, or threatened, the declining empire, were unanimously imputed, by the Pagans, to the new religion of Christ and of Constantine.
[Footnote 12: Ambrose repeatedly affirms, in contradiction to common sense (Moyle's Works, vol.ii.p.

147,) that the Christians had a majority in the senate.] [Footnote 13: The first (A.D.

382) to Gratian, who refused them audience; the second (A.D.