The sublime and simple theology of the primitive Christians was gradually corrupted. And the monarchy of heaven, already clouded in metaphysical subtleties, was degraded by the introduction of a popular mythology, which tended to restore the reign of polytheism. As the objects of religion were gradually reduced to the standard of the imagination, the rites and ceremonies were introduced that seemed most powerfully to affect the senses of the vulgar. (…) The most respectable bishops had persuaded themselves that the ignorant rustics would most cheerfully renounce the superstitions of Paganism if they found some resemblance, some compensation, in the bosom of Christianity. The religion of Constantine achieved, in less than a century, the final conquest of the Roman empire, but the victors themselves were insensibly subdued by the arts of their vanquished rivals.

From Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, London: Wordsworth, 1998 (first published from 1776 to 1788), pp. 571-573.