Flagellations of different kinds being universally practised among the Heathens, this circumstance must needs have given but little encouragement to the first Christians, to imitate such mode of correction; and we may take it for granted that they had not adopted it. Indeed, we find that no mention is made of it in the writings of the first, either Greek or Latin Fathers; for instance, in the Epistles of St. Ignatius, the Apologies of Justinius, the Apostolic Canons, the Constitutions attributed to Clement the Roman, the works of Origen, the _Stromats_ of Clement of Alexandria, and all the works in general of Eusebius of Cæsarea, of St. Chrysostom, of St. Basil, and of St. Basil of Seleucia. In all the above Authors, no mention, I say, is made of flagellations; at least, of those of a voluntary kind; unless we are absolutely to explain in a literal manner passages in which they manifestly spoke in a figurative sense: we may therefore safely conclude, that the first Christians had no notion of those cruel exercises which prevail in our days, and that to flay one’s hide with scourges or rods, as is in these times the practice of numberless Devotees, in or out of religious Orders, were practices unknown among them. So far, indeed, were the first Christians from approving the practice of self-flagellations, that they seem on the contrary to have entertained a notion, that their very quality of Christians freed them from any kind of flagellation whatever, as we may learn from the inscription in Latin verses that had been placed by them upon the column to which Jesus Christ was fastened when he was whipped: the following is the translation of that inscription: ‘In this House our Lord stood bound; and, being fastened to this column, like a slave, offered his back to the whip. This venerable column is still standing, continuing to support the fabric of the Temple, and teaches us to live exempt from every kind of flagellation.’ “_Vinctus in his Dominus stetit ædibus, atque Columnæ Annexus, tergum dedit ut servile flagellis. Perstat adhuc, templumque gerit veneranda Columna, Nosque docet cunctis immunes vivere flagris._”