HKB
a crowd of superstitions whose influence was felt but too long;(41) whilst the slightest sign of Paganism was sufficient to call back to it those servants of all the parties.
“It was then, unfortunately, a too common thing to see men who made a profession of passing, without any difficulty, from one religion to another, as many times as it was required by their interests. The principle of that inconceivable corruption in the bosom of a religion which was not yet completely developed, dated from a period anterior to that which we are describing.(42) The councils and the emperors had struggled in vain against apostasy, which the multitude of heresies, and the vices of the times, had placed amongst legitimate actions.
“Theodosius began in 381 to punish the apostates by depriving them of the right to make wills. In 383, he modified this law in respect to the apostate catechumens; but the general principle maintained all the apostates absque jure Romano. Valentinian II. followed the example of his colleague, and applied the before-mentioned dispositions to those Christians who became Jews or Manicheans. We know, from a law of 391, that the nobility was infected by the general spirit of the age, because Valentinian enacted, by this law, that those nobles who became apostates were to be degraded in such a manner that they should not count even in vulgi ignobilis parte. In 396, Arcadius deprived again of the right to make wills those Christians qui se idolorum superstitione impia maculaverint.(43) The political authorities, therefore, cannot be accused of having remained indifferent to the progress of the evil. We must now show how little power the laws had in a time like that which we are describing.
“One day, St Augustinus presented to the assembly of the Christians of Hippona, a man who was to become celebrated amongst renegades; born a Pagan, he embraced Christianity, but returned again to the idols, and exercised the lucrative profession of an astrologer; he now demanded to be readmitted into the church, that is to say, to change for the third time his religion. St Augustinus addressed, on that occasion, the above-mentioned assembly in the following manner:—