priests themselves, their gods and their altars, subsisted in peaceful obscurity till the final destruction of paganism. 1295. “Rome, the capital of a great monarchy, was incessantly filled with subjects and strangers from every part of the world, who all introduced and enjoyed the favourite superstitions of their native country. Every city in the empire was justified in maintaining the purity of its ancient ceremonies; and the Roman senate, using the common privilege, sometimes interposed to check this inundation of foreign rites. The Egyptian superstition, of all the most contemptible and abject, was frequently prohibited; the temples of Serapis and Isis demolished, and their worshippers banished from Rome and Italy. But the zeal of fanaticism prevailed over the cold and feeble efforts of policy. The exiles returned, the proselytes multiplied, the temples were restored with increasing splendour, and Isis and Serapis at length assumed their place among the Roman deities. Nor was this indulgence a departure from the old maxims of government. In the purest ages of the commonwealth, Cybele and Æsculapius had been invited by solemn embassies, and it was customary to tempt the protectors of besieged cities by the promise of more distinguished honours than they possessed in their native country. Rome gradually became the common temple of her subjects, and the freedom of the city was bestowed on all the gods of mankind.” _For more than a thousand years the Grecian or Roman Catholic Clergy were the sole depositories of the word of God, so called, and Regulators of Religious morals; yet during that time the Clergy were for the most part pre-eminent in vice, as compared with the rest of the community; whence it is inferred that, like Pope Boniface, the wicked Clergy in general were really unbelievers in the truth of the Gospel. If the morals of the modern Clergy are better, it is neither from the barbarous example furnished them in the Old Testament, nor the ultra precepts of the Gospel; being too much enlightened to be governed in practice by either._ 1296. “ORIGEN complains of the neglect and inattention of his day, through the increase of worldliness. Cyprian about the same time mourns over the progress of degeneracy, and Eusebius, toward the close of the third century, laments the corruption of the primitive morality in strong terms of censure.