tutelar deity of the place, and by promising him greater honours
than those he at present enjoyed, bribe him to betray his old
friends and votaries. The name of the tutelar deity of ROME was for
this reason kept a most religious mystery; lest the enemies of the
republic should be able, in the same manner, to draw him over to
their service. For without the name, they thought, nothing of that
kind could be practised. P/LINY\ says, that the common form of
invocation was preserved to his time in the ritual of the pontifs.
And M/ACROBIUS\ has transmitted a copy of it from the secret things
of S/AMMONICUS\ S/ERENUS\.

     [48]Xenophon, <Memorabilia>, Bk. I, Ch. 3, Sect. 1.

     [49]Plutarch, , Bk. V, "Isis and Osiris," Ch. 72.

     [50]Herodotus, , Bk. II, Ch. 180.

     [51]Thomas Hyde, <Historia religionis veterum Persarum.>

     [52]Arrian, <Anabasis of Alexander>, Bk. III, Ch. 16, Sect. 3-
9, and Bk. VII, Ch. 17.

     [53]Ibid., Bk. III, Ch. 16, Sect. 5.

     [54]Suetonius, <Lives of the Caesars>, Bk. II, "The Deified
Augustus," Ch. 93.

     [55]Corruptio optimi pessima.

     [56]M/OST\ nations have fallen into this guilt of human
sacrifices; though, perhaps, that impious superstition has never
prevailed very much in any civilized nation, unless we except the
C/ARTHAGINIANS\. For the T/YRIANS\ soon abolished it. A sacrifice is
conceived as a present; and any present is delivered to their deity
by destroying it and rendering it useless to men; by burning what is
solid, pouring out the liquid, and killing the animate. For want of
a better way of doing him service, we do ourselves an injury; and
fancy that we thereby express, at least, the heartiness of our good-
will and adoration. Thus our mercenary devotion deceives ourselves,
and imagines it deceives the deity.

     [57]Strabo, , Bk. V, Ch. 3, Sect. 12; Suetonius,
<Lives of the Caesars>, Bk. IV, "Gaius Caligula," Ch. 35, Sect. 3.

     [58]Arrian, <Anabasis of Alexander>, Bk. IV, Ch. 28, Sect. 4;
Bk. V, Ch. 26, Sect. 5.

     [59]Thucydides, <Peloponnesian War>, Bk. V, Ch. 11.

     [60]Plutarch, , Bk. III, "Sayings of Kings and
Commanders," Brasidas, Sect. 190b.

     [61]Pierre Bayle, <Dictionary Historical and Critical>,
(London: 1734-41), article on Bellarmine.

     [62]It is strange that the E/GYPTIAN\ religion, though so
absurd, should yet have borne so great a resemblance to the
J/EWISH\, that ancient writers even of the greatest genius were not
able to observe any difference between them. For it is remarkable
that both T/ACITUS\, and S/UETONIUS\, when they mention that decree
of the senate, under T/IBERIUS\, by which the E/GYPTIAN\ and
J/EWISH\ proselytes were banished from R/OME\, expressly treat these
religions as the same; and it appears, that even the decree itself
was founded on that supposition. "Actum et de sacris AE/GYPTIIS\,
J/UDAICISQUE\ pellendis; factumque patrum consultum, ut quatuor
millia libertini generis <ea superstitione> infecta, quis idonea
aetas, in insulam Sardiniam veherentur, coercendis illic
latrociniis; et si ob gravitatem coeli interissent, <vile damnum>:
Ceteri cederent I/TALIA\, nisi certam ante diem profanos ritus
exuissent." ['Another debate dealt with the proscription of the
Egyptian and Jewish rites, and a senatorial edict directed that four
thousand descendants of enfranchised slaves, tainted with that
superstition and suitable in point of age, were to be shipped to
Sardinia and there employed in suppressing brigandage: if they
succumbed to the pestilential climate, it was a cheap loss. The rest
had orders to leave Italy, unless they had renounced their impious
ceremonial by a given date.'] Tacitus, , Bk. II, Ch. 85.
"Externas caeremonias, AE/GYPTIOS\, J/UDAICOSQUE\ ritus compescuit;
coactus qui <superstitione ea> tenebantur, religiosas vestes cum
instrumento omni comburere, etc." ['He abolished foreign cults,
especially the Egyptian and the Jewish rites, compelling all who
were addicted to such superstitions to burn their religious
vestments and all their paraphernalia.'] Suetonius, <Lives of the
Caesars>, Bk. III, "Tiberius," Ch. 36. These wise heathens,
observing something in the general air, and genius, and spirit of
the two religions to be the same, esteemed the differences of their
dogmas too frivolous to deserve any attention.

     [63]Diodorus Siculus, <Library of History>, Bk. I, Ch. 83,
Sect. 8-9.

     [64]When L/OUIS\ the XIVth took on himself the protection of
the Jesuits' College of C/LERMONT\, the society ordered the king's
arms to be put up over the gate, and took down the cross, in order
to make way for it: Which gave occasion to the following epigram:

     Sustulit hinc Christi, posuitque insignia Regis:

     Impia gens, alium nescit habere Deum.