PERSECUTION INEVITABLE. 9 95 attack, when his troops would slay all who dared to stand before them. So complete became the trust enjoined in the efficacy of the invocation of God, that enthusiasts denounced it as unworthy a Christian to rely upon human prudence and sagacity in trouble. St. Nilus tells us that in cases of sickness recourse is to be had to prayer, rather than to physicians and physic ; and St. Augustin, in his recital of miraculous cures beyond the reach of science to effect, evidently regards the appeal to God and the saints as far more trustworthy than all the resources of the medical art.* It was inevitable that the triumphant theurgy should set to work with remorseless vigor to extirpate its fallen rival, as soon as it could fully control the powers of the State. It was not so much the worship and propitiation of the pagan gods that was first attacked, as the thousand methods of divination and devices to avert evil which had become ingrained in daily life — oracles and auguries and portents and omens and soothsaying. Their efficacy was the work of Satan to deceive and seduce mankind, and their use was the direct or indirect invocation of demons. To attempt to foretell the future in any way was sorcery, and all sorcery was the work of the devil ; and it was the same with the amulets and charms, the observance of lucky and unlucky days, and the innumerable trivial superstitions which amused the popu-
- Pauli Diac. Hist. Miscell. x., xt— Euseb. Vit. Constant. 11. 4-7, 11-12.— S.
Nili Capita parsenetica No. 61.— S. August, de Civ. Dei xxn. 8. Cf. Evodii de Mirac. S. Stephani. The Labarum of Constantine was the Greek cross with four equal arms, a symbol frequently seen on Chaldean and Assyrian cylinders. Oppert attaches to it the root l^jh, thus explaining the word Labarum, the derivation of which has never been understood (Oppert et Menant, Documents juridiques de l'Assyrie, Paris, 1877, p. 209). The fetichism connected with the cross probably took its rise from the Labarum. Maxentius, we are told, was an ardent adept in magic, and relied upon it for success against Constantine, who was much alarmed until reassured by the vision of the cross and its starry inscription,"/^ hoc vince" (Euseb. H. E. ix. 9; Vit. Const. 1. 28-31, 36.— Pauli Diac. Hist. Miscell. Lib. xi.— Zonarse Annal. T. in.). The melting of pagan superstitions into Christian is illustrated by the incident that when Constantine routed Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge he was preceded in battle by an armed cavalier bearing a cross, and at Adrianople two youths were seen who slaughtered the troops of Licinius (Zonarse Annal. T. in.). The Christian annalists had no difficulty in identifying with angels of God those whom Pagan writers would designate as Castores.
