220 THE WORLD AT THE ADVENT. 



most awful oaths. Deeds were nightly performed, whose chastest rela- 

 tion is impure. The grossest filthiness was connected with murder, 

 where the shrieks of the slain were drowned by coarse instruments 

 of music and the shouts of the Bacchanals. Thousands of men and 

 women weie drawn into these accursed assemblies, where every shame- 

 less and nameless crime was committed. The guardian and father- 

 in-law of jEbutius had fraudulently used the estate left his race by 

 his father. To conceal his crime he wished to get him initiated, know- 

 ing that his complete ruin or murder would soon ensue. iEbutius was 

 warned, by a lewd yet faithful woman, with whom he was connected, 

 of the nature of these secrets with which she had become acquainted. 

 Through him they reached the ears of the officers of the city. The 

 strong arm of the civil power at once came down upon these filthy and 

 bloody wretches. Many were executed — many more w^ere imprisoned. — 

 Every place, used for their purposes, was destroyed, unless some 

 ancient altar or statue stood there. Yet the very law which pronoun- 

 ced so just a sentence, made this provision, "that if any one felt him- 

 self bound in conscience and by religious conviction to worship with 

 these rites (of course without the impurity and murder which had been 

 added to them,) on making application through the praetor to a quorum 

 of the Senate, the privilege might be obtained — though not more than 

 five could be allowed to be present, nor could there be funds or priests 

 set apart. " This was a great and wise policy — and so fixed was the 

 defence of the rights of conscience as a principle, that these flagrant 

 abuses of it did not lead to an invasion of their true prerogatives. — 

 [Liv. XXXIX : 18.] 



This liberality was doubtless cherished and heightened by the liter- 

 ary character of the age. As diversity of views is proportioned to the 

 number of thinkers, the most intellectual nations are ever the most tol- 

 erant, for the men who design to secure it for themselves are most ready 

 to grant to others freedom of thought and speech. In this intellectual 

 advancement, were advantages to the Christian religion, so decided that 

 it has been universally acknowledged. Origen, so original as sometimes 

 to be almost fantastic, remarks it. Nor need we argue that Christianity 

 demanded an age advanced far beyond the elements of religious truth. 

 Had twelve artisans propagated it one hundred years earlier — we speak 

 of it now considered simply as a religion promoted by the oidinary ap- 

 pliances of truth — it would have died with them. The world was not 

 ripe enough. Had twelve artisans proclaimed it a century later it 

 would have died with them. The world was too ripe. This period 

 alune was the (uUness of the times. 



