Part 125 (1/2)

[446:4] Ibid. lib. 3, ch. lxiii.

[446:5] Ibid. lib. 3, ch. lxiv.

[446:6] Ibid. lib. 4, ch. xv.

[446:7] Ibid. ch. lxiii.

Plato places the ferocious tyrants in the Tartarus, such as Ardiacus of Pamphylia, who had slain his own father, a venerable old man, also an elder brother, and was stained with a great many other crimes.

Constantine, covered with similar crimes, was better treated by the Christians, who have sent him to heaven, and _sainted_ him besides.

[447:1] Gibbon's Rome, vol. ii. p. 274.

[447:2] ”Theodosius, though a professor of the orthodox Christian faith, was not baptized till 380, and his behavior after that period stamps him as one of the most cruel and vindictive persecutors who ever wore the purple. His arbitrary establishment of the Nicene faith over the whole empire, the deprivation of civil rites of all apostates from Christianity and of the Eunomians, the sentence of death on the Manicheans, and Quarto-decimans all prove this.” (Chambers's Encyclo., art. Theodosius.)

[447:3] Quoted in Taylor's Syntagma, p. 54.

[447:4] Gibbon's Rome, vol. iii. p. 81.

[448:1] Gibbon's Rome, vol. iii. pp. 91, 92.

[448:2] All their writings were ordered to be destroyed.

[448:3] Gibbon's Rome, vol. ii. p. 359.

[448:4] Ibid. note 154.

[449:1] Julian: Epistol. lii. p. 436. Quoted in Gibbon's Rome, vol. ii.

p. 360.

[449:2] ”_Thing_”--a general a.s.sembly of the freemen, who gave their a.s.sent to a measure by striking their s.h.i.+elds with their drawn swords.

[449:3] See Mallet's Northern Antiquities, pp. 180, 351, and 470.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

THE ANTIQUITY OF PAGAN RELIGIONS.

We shall now compare the great antiquity of the sacred books and religions of Paganism with those of the Christian, so that there may be no doubt as to which is the original, and which the copy. Allusions to this subject have already been made throughout this work, we shall therefore devote as little s.p.a.ce to it here as possible.

In speaking of the sacred literature of India, Prof. Monier Williams says:

”Sanskrit literature, embracing as it does nearly every branch of knowledge is entirely deficient in one department. It is wholly dest.i.tute of trustworthy historical records. Hence, little or nothing is known of the lives of ancient Indian authors, and the dates of their most celebrated works cannot be fixed with certainty. A fair conjecture, however, may be arrived at by comparing the most ancient with the more modern compositions, and estimating the period of time required to effect the changes of structure and idiom observable in the language. In this manner we may be justified in a.s.suming that the hymns of the Veda were probably composed by a succession of poets at different dates between 1500 and 1000 years B.

C.”[450:1]

Prof. Wm. D. Whitney shows the great antiquity of the Vedic hymns from the fact that,

”The language of the Vedas is an _older_ dialect, varying very considerably, both in its grammatical and lexical character, from the cla.s.sical Sanscrit.”