Note 2 — RELIGIOUS AUSTERITY.

When this short interval of happiness closed before the tyranny of the succeeding Cæsars, the increase of the slave population, and the inroads of the northern barbarians, the human mind again relapsed into a gloomy superstition. The influx of Asiatics and Egyptians into Rome, conspiring with a strong sense of present misery, revived the taste for portents and prophecies: the fantastical religions of the east were imported, with its other products; and thus the Western World was prepared to receive those manifold corruptions of Christianity, which, under the name of church, have so long held mankind in slavery.