e6 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book IT. 



perrecutlon and maflacres, fiich as that of St Bartholeiny In France, 

 and religious wars fuch as were unheard of among the Heathens. 

 And thus a religion of the greateft love was made the fource of great 

 enmity and great deftru£lion of men; and when we join to this, 

 thofe foolilli romantic expeditions to the Holy Land, infpired by a 

 miftaken zeal for religion, in which fuch prodigeous numbers of 

 men periflied, as would have gone near to defolate Europe in its 

 prcfent ftate of population, we need not wonder at what our Saviour 

 faid, TbrJ he was come not to bring peace on earth hut a /word. 



And here it will not be improper to obferve the dilFerence betwixt 

 a modern European government, and the conflitution of the go- 

 vernment of Rome, not only with refped to facerdotal offices, but 

 alfo to the offices of the ftate; for, in Rome, the higheft offices of the 

 ftate, fuch as that of Didatoi and Conful, had no faiaries, or per- 

 quifites, annexed to them. And it is an obfervation of Ariftotle, in 

 his Books De Republican that it is a thing of great danger to the confti- 

 tution of any ftate, to make the public offices lucrative; and the rea- 

 fon is plain, that when faiaries and perquifites are annexed to fuch 

 offices, there muft, of neceffity, be contention about them ; and not 

 only ambition, but a much more powerful motive in corrupt ftates, 

 1 mean avarice, will excite men to fadlion and fedition, or even to 

 civil wars. 



As wealth has fuch an influence upon the charadters and fenti- 

 ments of men, it muft necelTarily have an influence upon government 

 as well as upon the manners of the people. Of this I have laid a 

 good deal in the 5th vol. of the Origin of Language^ where I have 

 ftiown, that it was the ruin of the antient heroic governments in 

 Greece, and alfo of the Governments of Sparta and Rome. And, 

 indeed, I believe, that there is no government that has been deftroy- 



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