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religious and moral precepts, and assigned to religion 

 and morality the inner man. By this separation religion 

 and morality gained as much as it was now possible, to 

 place the civil relations of man upon a reasonable, truly 

 humane basis. 



The greatest glory and the boldest step of the Romans, 

 in the history of civilization, is their jurisprudence. 

 The fine arts of Rome, her architecture, sculpture, 

 literature, are only more or less successful imitations of 

 Greece ; her conquests are destroyed, her roads and 

 aqueducts lie in dust and ruins, but the principles which 

 she has laid down for the meum ;iud iimm, and for the 

 regulation of the family, live still, and will live as long 

 as the world abhors the maxims of communism. " The 

 vain titles of the victories of Justinian are crumbled into 

 dust, but the name of the legislator is inscribed on a fair 

 and everlasting monument," says Gibbon. 



The Romans were no deep philosophers. Their ideas 

 about the nature of the Deity and her relations to man 

 are superficial reflections, or pale copies of Greek specu- 

 lation ; but their mind was peculiarly adapted to pene- 

 trate the entangled relations of the practical world. 

 Their views were more minute than elevated. This 

 power of their mind fitted them above all former nations 

 to regulate the social world in its material transactions. 

 Rome was thus destined, if I dare say eo, to complete 

 Christianity. What Christianity has done for the inner 

 man, Rome did for the outer man. Nay, we are almost 

 inclined to saj^, Rome, the heathen Rome, christianized 

 the relations of man to man, as far as these relations do 

 not belong to the purely moral and religious world. The 

 three " pr^ecf^:><a jwm " of heathen Borne, " honeste vivere, 

 alterum non laxlere, suum cui'que tribuere,^^ waited only for 

 the addition of the great Christian precept, " love your 

 neighbour as yourself," to complete the great fundamental 



