The interruption of that public exercise may consummate, in the period of a few years, the important work of a national revolution.

The memory of theological opinions cannot long be preserved, without the artificial helps of priests, of temples, and of books.

[66] The ignorant vulgar, whose minds are still agitated by the blind hopes and terrors of superstition, will be soon persuaded by their superiors to direct their vows to the reigning deities of the age; and will insensibly imbibe an ardent zeal for the support and propagation of the new doctrine, which spiritual hunger at first compelled them to accept.

The generation that arose in the world after the promulgation of the Imperial laws, was attracted within the pale of the Catholic church: and so rapid, yet so gentle, was the fall of Paganism, that only twenty-eight years after the death of Theodosius, the faint and minute vestiges were no longer visible to the eye of the legislator.

[67] [Footnote 61: Libanius suggests the form of a persecuting edict, which Theodosius might enact, (pro Templis, p.