an army, and like Mahommed, establish his religion by the sword.* Constantine, whether actuated by illusion, or impelled by policy, gave, however, other more substantial and unequivocal proofs of his belief in the truths of Christianity, and the beneficent tendency of its doctrines. He was the man who can claim the honour of the first edict, which condemned the art and amusement of shedding human blood. This benevolent law, indeed, must be acknowledged to have expressed more the wishes of the prince, than to have reformed the abuse; an abuse which had run into an atrocious disease, which degraded a civilized nation below the condition of savage cannibals, and which had become almost incurable. Several hundred, perhaps several thousand victims, were annually slaughtered in the great cities of the empire; and the month of December, more peculiarly devoted to the combats of gladiators, still exhibited to the eyes of the Roman people, a grateful spectacle of blood and cruelty. With such games, and within a few years afterwards, A. D. 404, Honorius, for the last time, polluted the amphitheatre at Rome.§ Priestly. Chrisianity + Cod. Theodos. Gibbon. $ Gibbon. Christianity worked this happy reformation it preached equality, and on irrefragable principles, established the rights of man. Never could the poor Christian afterwards behold the amphitheatre at Nismes, that at Verona, or that at Rome, without reflecting, in the bitterness of sorrow, on the deluges of human blood, which had drenched their several arenas. How horrible that savage humour, which can be amused by murder! How dreadful the lot of the world, when one despotic monster rules the uncontrolable lord of his country, and indulges, without restraint, his mischievous and unnatural propensities! "O that heaven and earth might perish with me when I die!" says Tiberius. "How gratifying, to see men feel they are dying!" says his no less abominable successor, Caligula. "Make even the friends and relations of the sufferers be always present," says he, "at their executions. O, father Jupiter, that the Roman people had but one neck, that I might dispatch them at a blow!" To that religion shall we then refuse our gratitude, to which we owe, that such servile subjection now no longer subsists, as to admit the possibility of an amusing spectacle of gladiators; and that a second Coliseum shall shall never again be reared, a terrible memento of human depravity. The exposition of children was also a prevailing and stubborn vice in antiquity. It was sometimes prescribed, often permitted, almost always practised with impunity; and even the dramatic poets, who appeal to the feeling heart, represent with indifference a popular custom, which was palliated by the fallacious motives of œconomy and compassion. The Roman empire was stained from one end with the blood of infants. of it to the other, It was every day practised in the provinces, and especially in Italy.* Christianity at length eradicated this inhuman practice also; Constantine put a stop to this crying enormity, by an edict. This law, were there no other, remains an authentic monument of the vices and iniseries of the times. "Can there be greater barbarity," says the moral Adam Smith, "than to hurt an infant? Its helplessness, its innocence, its amiableness, call forth the compassion even of an enemy; and not to spare that tender age, is regarded as the + Codex Theodosian. * Gibbon. ↑ Gibbon. most most furious effort of an enraged and cruel conqueror. What then can we imagine the heart of a parent to have been, who could have injured that 'weakness, which even a furious enemy is afraid to violate? Yet the exposition, that is, the murder of new-born infants was an allowed practice in almost all the states of Greece and Rome: even among the polite and civilized Athenians, the abandoning one's child to hunger, or to wild beasts, was regarded without blame or censure. Nay, the loose maxims of the world tolerated not only this barbarous prerogative; but even the doctrine of philosophers, which ought to have been more just and accurate, instead of censuring, supported the horrible abuse, by far-fetched considerations of public utility. Aristotle, for instance, speaks of this practice as what the magistrate ought, upon many occasions, to encourage. Even the humane Plato is of the same opinion; and with all that love of mankind which seems to animate all his writings, he no where marks this practice with disapproba tion."* The end, then, that was put to the destruc tion of children by Christianity, speaks with the tongue of angels. But murder was in vogue Theory of Moral Sentiments. among among all classes of antiquity, and was extended to all ages. "Such was the unhappy condition, even of Roman emperors," says Gibbon, "that whatever might be their conduct, their fate was commonly the same. A life of pleasure or virtue, of severity or mildness, of indolence or glory, alike led to an untimely grave; and almost every reign is closed by the same disgusting repetition of treason and murder. But there is one very early instance recorded, of the resplendent influence of Christianity. This honourable event (and I mention it because it is the first of the kind in the annals of the world) was the public penance of the emperor Theodosius, A. D. 390, for the massacre at Thessalonica. St. Ambrose, the archbishop, stopped him in the porch of the great church of Milan, as he was proceeding to pay his devotions in the accustomed manner; and in the tone and language of an ambassador from heaven, declared to him, that private contrition was not sufficient to atone for public guilt, or to appease the justice of the offended Deity. The emperor of the Romans, in consequence, stripped of his royalty, appeared in a mournful and suppliant posture; and, in the midst of the church of Milan, humbly solicited, with sighs and tears, the pardon of his sins." VOL. VI. L Mr. |
