And how should it have been otherwise, since they confounded the cause of God with the miserable interests of their own vanity?
Thus, being little disposed to give way on one part or the other, they cut one another's throats; they tormented, they burnt each other: they tore one another to pieces; and having exterminated or put down the obnoxious sects, they sung Te Deum.
It is not my intention to pursue, in this place, the horrid detail of ecclesiastical history, as connected with that of the Roman empire.
Mr.Gibbon has exhibited in such colours this dreadful record of follies, and of crimes, that it is difficult to see how the maxim of judging the tree by its fruit, will not fatally affect the cause of the Christian religion.

I refer to Mr.Gibbon's history as a cool and impartial narrative; for I am well satisfied that, so far from having reason to complain of him, the advocates of Christianity have very great reason, indeed, to thank him for his forbearance, since, with his eloquence, he might have drawn a picture that would have made humanity shudder.

For, throughout the whole history, if a man had wished to know what was then the orthodox faith, the best method of ascertaining it, would have been, undoubtedly, to ask, " What is the catechism of this public executioner." The Christian religion was, it is evident from his history, the principal, though by no means the only cause of the decline and fall of the Roman empire.

Because it degraded the spirit of the people, and because it produced monks and hermits in abundance, but yielded no soldiers.

The heathen adversaries of Christianity were in the right when they said, that "if it prevailed, Rome was no more!" The Christians would not serve in the armies of the emperor, if they could possibly avoid it.