n their
circumstances, are very apposite as illustrations: the first being from
the history of Paganism, the other from the history of Christianity; and
both proving the inability of moral feelings to control religious
persecution.

I. The Roman emperors, as is well known, subjected the early Christians
to persecutions which, though they have been exaggerated, were frequent
and very grievous. But what to some persons must appear extremely
strange, is, that among the active authors of these cruelties we find
the names of the best men who ever sat on the throne; while the worst
and most infamous princes were precisely those who spared the
Christians, and took no heed of their increase. The two most thoroughly
depraved of all the emperors were certainly Commodus and Elagabalus;
neither of whom persecuted the new religion, or indeed adopted any
measures against it. They were too reckless of the future, too selfish,
too absorbed in their own infamous pleasures, to mind whether truth or
error prevailed; and being thus indifferent to the welfare of their
subjects, they cared nothing about the progress of a creed which they,
as Pagan emperors, were bound to regard as a fatal and impious delusion.
They therefore allowed Christianity to run its course, unchecked by
those penal laws which more honest but more mistaken rulers would
assuredly have enacted. We find, accordingly, that the great enemy of
Christianity was Marcus Aurelius; a man of kindly temper, and of
fearless, unflinching honesty, but whose reign was characterized by a
persecution from which he would have refrained had he been less in
earnest about the religion of his fathers. And to complete the argument,
it may be added that the last and one of the most strenuous opponents of
Christianity who occupied the throne of the Caesars was Julian; a prince
of eminent probity, whose opinions are often attacked, but against whose
moral conduct even calumny itself has hardly breathed a suspicion.

II. The second illustration is supplied by Spain; a country of which it
must be confessed, that in no other have religiuos feelings exercised
such sway over the affairs of men. No other European nation has produced
so many ardent and disinterested missionaries, zealous self-denying
martyrs, who have cheerfully sacrificed their lives in order to
propagate truths which they thought necessary to be known. Nowhere else
have the spiritual classes been so long in the ascendant; nowhere els