What David meant by these curses can be best known from his own actions. What certain persons have meant by them since is patent enough from their actions. Mediaeval monks considered but too often the enemies of their creed, of their ecclesiastical organisation, even of their particular monastery, to be ipso facto enemies of God; and applied to them the seeming curses of David's Psalms, with fearful additions, of which David, to his honour, never dreamed. 'May they feel with Dathan and Abiram the damnation of Gehenna,' {285} is a fair sample of the formulae which are found in the writings of men who, while they called themselves the servants of Jesus Christ our Lord, derived their notions of the next world principally from the sixth book of Virgil's AEneid. And what they meant by their words their acts shewed. Whenever they had the power, they were but too apt to treat their supposed enemies in this life, as they expected God to treat them in the next. The history of the Inquisition on the continent, in America, and in the Portuguese Indies--of the Marian persecutions in England--of the Piedmontese massacres in the 17th century--are facts never to be forgotten. Their horrors have been described in too authentic documents; they remain for ever the most hideous pages in the history of sinful human nature. Do we find a hint of any similar conduct on the part of David? If not, it is surely probable that he did not mean by his imprecations what the mediaeval clergy meant.