trary to their words, and there was no dependence upon them in any matter. "As to their chastity, there were common baths in which the men and women bathed together; and it was ordered that the young maidens should appear naked in the public exercises, as well as the young men; and that they should dance naked with them at the solemn festivals and sacrifices. Husbands also were allowed to impart the use of their wives to handsome and deserving men, in order to the producing of healthy and vigorous children for the Commonwealth."* The number of the Roman gods was about thirty thousand! By the Romans, human sacrifices were, in many instances, offered to their deities. Even at the tombs of their illustrious generals, they, as well as the Greeks, sometimes offered human victims. Thus Æneas, their great founder, is represented by Virgil, in the Eleventh Book of the Eneid, as sending a number of captives to sprinkle with their blood, the funeral pile of his friend Pallas. Almost all their public exhibitions were scenes of cruelty, and defiled either with the blood of wild beasts, wantonly shed, for the abominable purpose of feeding a sanguinary and cruel disposition; or, what was still more horrid, drenched in the blood of their fellow men. "The Colossæum was built by Vespasian, who employed thirty thousand Jewish slaves in the work; but was finished and dedicated by his son Titus, who, on the first day of its being opened, produced fifty thousand wild beasts, which were all killed in the arena. The Romans were undoubtedly a barbarous people, who delighted in horrible Gospel its Own Witness, p. p. 89, 90. spectacles. They viewed with pleasure the bodies of criminals dragged through the streets, or thrown down the Scale Gemoniæ, and Tarpeian rock, for their contemplation. Their rostra were generally adorned with the heads of some remarkable citizens, like Temple-Bar, at London. They even bore the sight of Tully's head fixed upon that very rostrum, where he had so often ravished their ears with all the charms of eloquence, in pleading the cause of innocence and public virtue. They took delight in seeing their fellow creatures torn in pieces by wild beasts, in the amphitheatre. They shouted with applause, when they saw a poor dwarf or slave killed by his adversary; but their transports were altogether extravagant, when the devoted captives were obliged to fight in troops, till one side was entirely butchered by the other. Nero produced four hundred senators, aud six hundred of the equestrian order, as gladiators in the public arena : even the women fought with wild beasts, as well as with each other, and drenched the amphitheatres with their blood. Tacitus says "Sed fæminarum illustrium senatorumque filiorum plures per arenam fœdati sunt."* "The most illustrious period of the Roman History" says Mr. Hume, "considered in a political view, is that between the beginning of the first, and the end of the last Punic war; yet at this very time the horrid practice of poisoning was so common, that during part of a season, a Prætor punished capitally, for this crime, above three thousand persons, in a part of Italy; and found informations of this nature still multiplying upon him! So depraved in private life were that people whom, in their history, we so much admire."+ • Doctor Smollet's Travels, Letter xxxII. "The Romans were allowed by Romulus to destroy all their female children, except the eldest; and even with regard to their male children, if they were deformed or monstrous, he permitted the parents to expose them, after having shown them to five of their nearest neighbours. Such things were in common use amongst them, and were celebrated in their theatres. "Such was their cruelty to their slaves, that it was not unusual for the masters to put such of them as were old, sick, or infirm, upon an island in the Tiber, where they left them to perish. Some of them carried their luxury and wantonness so far as to drown them in the fish ponds, that the fish, by devouring them, might be rendered more delicate! "Gladiatory shows were common amongst them, in which a number of slaves were engaged to fight, for the diversion of the multitude, till each one slew, or was slain by, his antagonist. Of these brutish exercises the people were extremely fond; even the women ran eagerly after them, taking pleasure in seeing the combatants kill one another, desirous only that they should fall genteelly, or in an agreeable attitude! They were exhibited at the funerals of great and rich men, and on many other occasions: so frequent did they become, that no war (it is said) caused such slaughter of mankind, as did these sports of pleasure, throughout the several provinces of the Roman Empire. "That odious and unnatural vice, which prevailed amongst the Greeks, was also common amongst the Romans. Cicero introduces, without any mark of disapprobation, Cotta, a man of the first rank and genius, freely and familiarly owning to other Romans of the same quality, that worse than beastly vice, as practised by himself, and quoting the authorities of ancient philosophers, in vindication of it. It appears also from Seneca, that in his time it was practised at Rome openly, and without shame. He speaks of flocks and troops of boys distinguished by their colours and nations, and observes that great care was taken to train them up for that detestable employment. "The religious rites performed in honour of Venus, in Cyprus, and at Aphac on Mount Lebanus, consisted in lewdness of the grossest kinds. The young people of both sexes crowded, from all parts, to those sinks of pollution, and filling the groves and temples with their shameless practices, committed whoredom by thousands, out of pure devotion. "All the Babylonians were obliged to prostitute themselves, once in their lives, at the temple of Venus or Mylitta, to the first man that asked them, and the money earned by this means was always esteemed sacred."* If the most polished of the ancient Pagan nations were so demoralized, we must necessarily suppose that those which were less civilized, would suffer a still greater moral degradation. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians embraced a system of superstition, of the most horrible and sanguinary kind; and upon any reverse of fortune, the altars of their gods were generally imbrued with the blood of their own children. Of the Pagan nations who were neighbours to the Israelites, several were addicted to the same abominable practices, and the blood of their children streamed at the shrines of their deities. The children of the Ammonites were, by their own parents, given up to be burnt to their infernal god, Moloch, and so in • Fuller's Gospel its own Witness, p. p. 90, 91, 92. fecticus was this horrid rite of idolatry, that in defiance of the most pointed prohibition, the Israelites, in the times of their defection, had consecrated a valley called Gehenna, or the valley of the Son of Hinnom, in which they made their children pass through the fire to Moloch. The religion of the Druids, which, before the introduction of Christianity, was universally prevalent in France and England, and which is supposed by Cæsar to have had its origin in this country, was of the most savage kind. Men were surrounded with a kind of wicker-work, and burnt in honour of their gods. A few years previous to the Christian æra, when Cæsar visited this island, he describes the inhabitants as painting themselves with woad, ten or twelve having wives in common, and parents and children living in incestuous intercourse. There was scarcely a heathen country in which human sacrifices were not offered up; and the rites with which the worship of their gods was conducted, were often of the most profligate and flagitious kind. In the most polite nations there were no teachers of morality. The priests instructed men in nothing but in the objects of their adoration, in the kinds, and in the prescribed forms of the sacrifices to be offered. Indeed, so utterly corrupted was this order of men, who owed their affluence to trick and imposture, that, as Cicero says of the augurs, they could hardly salute one another without smiling at their own collusion, and at the credulity of those who were the dupes of their impositions. The expectation of a future state has, in every age, pervaded the world, and with the exception of a few who * Lev. xv, 21. |