[402]. Vogelstein and Rieger, Gesch. der Juden, p. 61 seq. Friedländer, Darstellungen der Sitt.7 i. p. 514.
[403]. Ox. Pap. ii. no. 276.
[404]. Aurelian reigned from 270-275 C.E. The sol invictus whom he adored was probably the Baal of Palmyra. Cumont, Les rel. orient, pp. 170, 367, n. 59.
[405]. Cod. Theod. xvi. 4.
[406]. In 311 C.E. Galerius, and in 318 C.E. Constantine and Licinius, legalized the practice of Christianity. In 380 C.E., by the edict of Thessalonica, most of the heathen practices became penal offenses.
[407]. Every state as such had its characteristic and legally established state ritual. Many centuries later Gladstone, then “the rising hope of the stern and unbending Tories,” stated, as a self-evident proposition, that a government in its collective capacity must profess a religion (The Church in its Relation to the State, 1839).
[408]. Cyprian. De catholicae ecclesiae unitate, ch. x.
[409]. Matth. v. 13. Cf. generally the Pauline Epistles, e.g. II. Corinth. xiii. 13.