And to prove this pre-eminence of right in the Roman people, and their heirs, the Emperors of Christendom, he appeals not merely to the course of Providence, to their high and noble ancestry, to the blessings of their just and considerate laws, to their unselfish guardianship of the world--"_Romanum imperium de fonte nascitur pietatis_;"--not merely to their noble examples of private virtue, self-devotion, and public spirit--"those most sacred victims of the Decian house, who laid down their lives for the public weal, as Livy--not as _they_ deserved, but as _he_ was able--tells to their glory; and that unspeakable sacrifice of freedom's sternest guardians, the Catos;" not merely to the "judgment of God" in that great duel and wager of battle for empire, in which heaven declared against all other champions and "co-athletes"--Alexander, Pyrrhus, Hannibal, and by all the formalities of judicial combat awarded the great prize to those who fought, not for love or hatred, but justice--"_Quis igitur nunc adeo obtusæ mentis est, qui non videat, sub jure duelli gloriosum populum coronam totius orbis esse lucratum?_"--not merely to arguments derived "from the principles of the Christian faith"--but to _miracles_. "The Roman empire," he says, "was, in order to its perfections, aided by the help of miracles; therefore it was willed by God; and, by consequence, both was, and is, of right." And these miracles, "proved by the testimony of illustrious authorities," are the prodigies of Livy--the ancile of Numa, the geese of the Capitol, the escape of Clelia, the hail-storm which checked Hannibal.[83] [Footnote 83: _De Monarch._ lib. ii. pp. 62, 66, 78, 82, 84, 108-114, 116, 72-76.]