rate, their prohibition was extremely feeble, since they declared that, in such a case, a Jew was only culpable of having spent his time about a frivolous thing. "Among the works of St. Cyprian we find a treatise, or kind of homily, on gaming,--De Aleatoribus,--which though of high antiquity, and evidently written by a Bishop, is probably not the composition of the saint to whom it has usually been ascribed. The author, whoever he may have been, calls games of hazard the nets of the devil; and affirms that they were invented by a certain learned man at the prompting of the evil spirit, and that he placed his portrait and name on the instruments of the game in order that he might be worshipped by those who used them.[325] He, consequently, maintains that whoever plays at such games offers sacrifice to their author, and thus commits an act of idolatry. Such chimerical arguments, when divested of all figure, only show that games of hazard are frequently the cause of disorder. A Flemish clergyman, in a historical treatise on this subject, published about the middle of the seventeenth century, gravely maintains that all games of hazard are contrary to every one of the ten commandments.[326] It may be easily imagined that he is obliged to employ many devices in order to give a colour of plausibility to this paradox; and that whenever he advances anything really pertinent, it applies only to the abuses, which, more or less, may insinuate themselves into every kind of game. A prelate of distinguished merit, Sidonius Apollinaris, Bishop of Clermont, in Auvergne, who flourished in the fifth century, was of a different way of thinking; for he was accustomed to amuse himself at Trictrac, as he relates in his letters without testifying any compunction, and without even saying that he had abandoned the amusement on his being advanced to the office of Bishop, though he mentions that he had then given up poetry. "Others have imagined that they have discovered in the very nature of games of hazard something which renders them essentially sinful; supporting their views by an argument which, though extremely specious, is yet easily refuted. For instance, they say that God presides over what we call chance, and directs it in a special manner; and that, as chance enters into all games of hazard, such games are manifestly sinful as requiring the intervention of Divine Providence in affairs which are not only trivial, but also subject to many incommodities.