Note 10 — Chapter XXI · Antichrist.

The beginnings of that mongrel of superstitions which at last gained the name of Christianity were in the liberation, by decay of parts and particles, of all those systems which Julius Cæsar had caged together for mutual destruction. ‘With new thrones rise new altars,’ says Byron’s Sardanapalus; but it is still more true that, with new thrones all altars crumble a little. At an early period the differences between the believers in Christ and those they called idolaters were mainly in name; and, with the increase of Gentile converts, the adoption of the symbolism and practices of the old religions was so universal that the quarrel was about originality. ‘The Devil,’ says Tertullian, ‘whose business it is to pervert the truth, mimics the exact circumstances of the Divine Sacraments in the mysteries of idols. He himself baptizes some, that is to say, his believers and followers: he promises forgiveness of sins from the sacred fount, and thus initiates them into the religion of Mithras; he thus marks on the forehead his own soldiers: he then celebrates the oblation of bread; he brings in the symbol of resurrection, and wins the crown with the sword.’10