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be opened for the universal diffusion of the Christian religion . Every one knows what tremendous evils afflicted Rome , and the world around her , ere such poets and orators could arise ;—how dearly , for example , Sicily paid for Cicero ^ s oration against Verres , —and Rome herself for his pleadings against Catiline and Antony ! To purchase the ^ Eneid of Virgil , and the peaceful muse of H orace , torrents of Roman blood must previously have been shed , and innumerable tribes and kingdoms cruelly oppressed . Were these fair fruits of a golden age , thus extorted , worth the price that must be paid for them ? The case was the same with the Roman law ;—since who does not know the vexations that were inflicted by it on the world , and the destruction which it occasioned of the many more suitable institutions of the most different nations ? People were judged by a moral code which did not suit them ; they had crimes , and the attendant penalties imposed upon them , of which they had never heard ; till , at last , the whole course of this legislation , which was adapted only to the constitution of Rome , after a thousand forms of oppression , so completely corrupted and effaced the character of all the conquered tribes , that in place of it there appeared , over all the earth , only the image of the Roman eagle , which , after tearing out the eyes , and lacerating the vitals of the provinces , fluttered over them , as over a bleeding corpse , with enfeebled wings . The Latin language , too , gained nothing by the conquered people , nor the conquered people by it . It was vitiated till it became finally
a romantic mixture , not only in the provinces , but in Rome itself . The nobler language of the Greeks was ,, by the same influences , deprived of its purity and beauty ; and those thousand dialects of many different nations , which would have been far more beneficial to us and to them than a corrupted Latinity , have perished even to the smallest relic . Finally , with respect to the Christian religion , deeply as I venerate the benefits which it has conferred on the human race , I am yet far from believing that a single stone was laid in Rome with a view to it . It was not for Christianity that Romulus built his city , and Pompey and Crassus marched through Judaea ; still less were all those Roman establishments erected in Europe and Asia to prepare the way for its promulgation through all lands . Rome embraced the Gospel , just as she embraced the worship of Isis and every abject superstition of the east . It would be unworthy of God to conceive that his providence could select no better instrument for his noblest work , the propagation of truth and virtue , than the bloody , tyrannical hand of the Romans . The Christian religion rose by its native energy , and by its native energy grew the empire of Rome ; and , when finally they formed an union , neither the one nor the other gained by the alliance . A bastard offspring , half Roman , half Christian , was its fruit , which many could wish had never existed .
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220 The Philosophy of the History of Mankind .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1832, page 220, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1810/page/4/
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