But the fact, as between Gibbon and me, is flatly the reverse.  I advance nothing novel as to the numbers of the Christians, no hypothesis of my own, no assumption.  I have merely adopted Gibbon’s own historical estimate, that (judging, as he does judge, by the examples of Rome and Antioch), the Christians before the rise of Constantine were but a small fraction of the population.  Indeed, he says, not above one-twentieth part; on which I laid no stress.

It may be that Gibbon is here in error.  I shall willingly withdraw any historical argument, if shown that I have unawares rested on a false basis.  In balancing counter statements and reasons from diverse sources, different minds come to different statistical conclusions.  Dean Milman ("Hist. of Christianity,” vol. ii. p. 341) when deliberately weighing opposite opinions, says cautiously, that “Gibbon is perhaps inclined to underrate” the number of the Christians.  He adds:  “M.  Beugnot agrees much with Gibbon, and I should conceive, with regard to the West, is clearly right.”

I beg the reader to observe, that I have not represented the numerical strength of the Christians in Constantine’s army to be great.  Why my opponent should ridicule my use of the phrase Christian regiments, I am too dull to understand. ("Who would not think,” says he, “that it was one of Constantine’s aide-de-camps that was speaking?”) It may be that I am wrong in using the plural noun, and that there was only one such regiment,—­that which carried the Labarum, or standard of the cross (Gibbon, ch. 20), to which so much efficacy was attributed in the war against Licinius.  I have no time at present, nor any need for further inquiries on such matters.  It is to the devotion and organization of the Christians, not to their proportionate numbers, that I attributed weight.  If (as Milman says) Gibbon and Beugnot are “clearly right” as regards the West—­i.e., as regards all that vast district which became the area of modern European Christendom, I see nothing in my argument which requires modification.

But why did Christianity, while opposed by the ruling powers, spread “in the East?” In the very chapter from which I have quoted, Dean Milman justifies me in saying, that to this question I may simply reply, “I do not know,” without impairing my present argument. (I myself find no difficulty in it whatever; but I protest against the assumption, that I am bound to believe a religion preternatural, unless I con account for its origin and diffusion to the satisfaction of its adherents.) Dean Milman, vol. ii. pp. 322-340, gives a full account of the Manichaean religion, and its rapid and great spread in spate of violent persecution.  MANI, the founder, represented himself as “a man invested with a divine mission.”  His doctrines are described by Milman as wild and mystical metaphysics, combining elements of thought from Magianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Buddhism.