"This prac

regarded without blame or censure."* tice," says Hume, "was very common; and is not spoken of by any author of those times with the horror it deserves, or scarcely even with disapprobation. Plutarch, the humane, good-natured Plutarch, mentions it as a merit in Attalus king of Pergamus, that he murdered, or if you will exposed, all his own children, in order to leave his crown to the son of his brother Eumenes. It was Solon, the most celebrated of the sages of Greece, that gave parents permission by law to kill their children."

ported the custom by argument.

Plato

Philosophers supAristotle thought it should be encouraged by the magistrates. maintained the same inhuman doctrine. It was complained of as a great singularity, that the laws of Thebes forbade the practice. In all the provinces, and especially in Italy, the crime was daily perpetrated. From one end to the other, the Roman empire was stained with the blood of murdered infants. Think of the state of domestic virtue, when such was a prevailing inhumanity of parents—when the learned defended it as wise, the magistrate countenanced it as useful, and public sentiment regarded it as innocent. Such was the power of a father, by the Roman law, that his adult children might be sent to the mines, sold into slavery, or destroyed at his will; his daughter could be compelled at his discretion, to forsake a husband whom he himself had approved; while his wife could be dismissed at pleasure, and for cer

* Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments.

* Hume on the Populousness of Ancient Nations.

tain crimes, some of them of a very trivial nature, she might be put to death. The authority of the father was that of a despot; the subjection of his family was that of slaves.

3. But the Greeks and Romans were as notorious for their departure from the lowest grade of decency, as for their savage disruption of all the ties of natural affection. Sallust, speaking of the Roman youth in the time of Cicero, says, "Luxury, avarice, and pride enslaved them; they wantoned in rapine and prodigality; undervalued their own, and coveted what belonged to others; trampled on modesty, friendship, and continence; confounded things divine and human, and threw off all manner of consideration and restraint." "Men and women laid aside all regard to chastity." We cannot name the degrading crimes which.in.Greece were sanctioned by the public laws, and at Rome were practised, in the time of Seneca, without shame. It was considered a singular example in Athens, that the most moral philosopher did not indulge in them. Even Cicero could speak, without any sign of disapprobation, of Cotta, an eminent Roman, as having owned an habitual addiction to the vileness we are alluding to, and as having quoted the authorities of ancient philosophers in its vindication. There was no species of degrading crime which had not its attempted justification in the written doctrines, and its shameless perpetration in the avowed practices of the wise men, and such as are usually supposed to have been the good men, of the most civil* Rose's Translation.

ized nations of antiquity. Quinctilian, speaking of the philosophers of the first century of the Christian era, says, "The most notorious vices are screened under that name; and they do not labor to maintain the character of philosophers by virtue and study, but conceal the most vicious lives under an austere look and singularity of dress."* Such also is the acknowledgment of Plutarch, with regard to the ancient philosophers in general. While he owns that they were generally noted for a certain infamous vice which we cannot name, he excuses them by the plea, that they improved their minds at the same time that they corrupted their bodies. Lucian and others unite in this representation. Neither Seneca, nor Xenophon, nor Plato, nor Aristotle, nor even Socrates, whose morals have been extolled by infidels as surpassing any thing in the Bible, is excepted from the revolting account of these writers. Granting that jealousy and calumny, among the ancients, included some of those illustrious names under a charge so degrading, what must have been the character of the great mass of the philosophers, when calumny durst venture so far?t

Such were the men whom our modern reformers would hold up to the public as patterns of virtue. "They opposed each other," says Voltaire, "in their dogmas; but in morality they were all agreed." "There has been no philosopher in all antiquity, who has not been desirous of making men better." To the truth of the first assertion, we have no reason to

* Quinctilian, Inst. Orat. + See M'Knight on Rom. 1:26, 27.

object. In a sense directly opposite to that in which the writer intended it to be understood, they were indeed in morality all agreed. As to their unanimous desire of making men better, we can only say that they adopted the most singular means of effecting it. A Roman citizen, of the Augustan age, described them as those who, being past feeling, had given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.*

We have now exhibited some of the prominent features in the moral character of the society of Greece and Rome, in their most enlightened ages. From what has been stated, we may form a conception sufficiently accurate of the condition of things in

* Among the philosophers of the time of Cicero, the Cynics were held in great repute, and were widely spread throughout the Roman empire. The wise man of this school "gave up all human relations towards mankind, contemned his country, his kindred, and the joys of wedded love, and sought his consolation in a self-complacent beastliness. One might see these beastly men half-naked, moving about everywhere, with a great cudgel and a bread-bag, performing the animal necessities of their nature before the eyes of all; thrusting themselves with extreme rudeness among the multitudes, and there stepping forward as teachers of wisdom, not in a regular discourse, but with abrupt and broken language of vulgar sport and derision." And yet, even the new Platonic philosophers greatly revered Cynicism, and represented Diogenes its leader as a godlike man.

Whoever may desire a more extended account of ancient, classic heathenism, in regard to its gross superstition, its disgusting sensuality, its obscene idols and ceremonies, its human sacrifices, its legalized cruelties, the odious vices of those who conformed to it, and its utter impotency for all purposes of moral improvement, is referred to an article, already quoted, on the Nature and Influence of Heathenism, by Prof. Tholuck of Halle, in Nos. 6 and 7 of the Biblical Repository.

all those departments of morality on which depends whatever is important to personal, domestic, and public happiness. We have been speaking of the most cultivated people of the ancient world. Unspeakably darker and more appalling would have been the picture, had we described the spirit, habits, and pervading crimes of any other pagan nations. But we are content that a fair representation of the best, should also be received as a good likeness of the worst communities of ancient heathenism.

We ask, what has become of all these deep-rooted deformities? Look around upon the countries over which the influence of Christianity has been exerted; those especially where the religion of Jesus has been enjoyed in the greatest purity, and cultivated with the truest devotion. Where are the remains of the abominations we have described? Crime remains indeed, but only in hidden dens. It shuns the light. Laws do not afford it countenance. Public sentiment drives it into concealment. What would the feeling of society now say to a show of gladiators; to the legalized exposure of infants by the hands of mothers; to the public, deliberate murder of worn-out slaves; to the justification of suicide and theft, and lying and assassination, and the acknowledged practice of the most odious sensuality, by those who are looked up to as the moral teachers and examples of society? How would idolatry, with all its cruelties and obscenities, its profligate deities, its human sacrifices, its hidden mysteries of iniquity, and its public ritual of vice, affect the public mind, were its temples and