Consistently with this exalted conception of their authority, priestly orders threaten punishment to offenders, and announce the future destiny of souls. Thus the Mexican priests warned their penitents after confession not to fall again into sin, holding out the prospect of the torments of hell if they should neglect the admonition (A. M., vol. v, p. 370). The priests in some parts of Africa know the fate of each soul after death, and can say whether it has gone to God or to the evil spirit (G. d. M., p. 335). Sometimes the priests are held to be protected against injury by the especial care of heaven. To take away a Brahman's wife is an offense involving terrible calamities, while kings who restore her to the Brahman enjoy "the abundance of the earth" (0. S. T., vol. i. p. 257). A king who should eat a Brahman's cow is warned in solemn language of the dreadful consequences of such conduct, both in this world and the next (Ibid., vol. i. p. 285). The sacred volumes declare that "whenever a king, fancying himself mighty, seeks to devour a Brahman, that kingdom is broken up, in which a Brahman is oppressed" (Ibid., vol. i. p. 287). "No one who has eaten a Brahman's cow continues to watch (_i.e._, to rule) over a country." The Indian gods, moreover, "do not eat the food offered by a king who has no ... Purohita," or domestic chaplain (A. B., p. 528). The murder of a king who had honored and enriched the Buddhist priesthood, is said to have entailed the destruction of the power and strength of the kingdom of Thibet, and to have extinguished the happiness and welfare of its people (G. O. M., p. 362). And Jewish history affords abundant instances of the manner in which the success or glory of the rulers was connected, by the sacerdotal class, with the respect shown towards themselves as the ministers of Jehovah, and with the rigor evinced in persecuting or putting down the ministers of every other creed. That the same bias has been betrayed by the Christian priesthood and their adherents in the interpretation of history needs no proof.