The Greeks were early infected with this execrable doctrine, and shew the effect it had upon their manners by their violation of publick faith, and contempt for the most sacred ties of religion. Trust, says Polybius, but a single talent to a Greek, who has been used to finger the publick money, and though you have the security of ten counterparts, drawn up by as many publick notaries, backed by as many seals, and the testimony of twice as many witnesses, yet, with all these precautions, you cannot possibly prevent him from proving a rogue.[323] Whilst the Romans, who, by their various offices, are intrusted with large sums of publick money, pay so conscientious a regard to the religion of their office-oath, that they were never known to violate their faith, though restrained only by that single tie. How greatly they deviated from this rectitude of manners, after these infidel tenets had taken root amongst them, we may learn from Cicero, in his orations and epistles. Sallust too will inform us, how extremely common the crime of perjury was grown, in that severe reproach, which Lucius Philippus, a patrician, makes to Lepidus, the consul, before the whole senate. That he neither stood in awe of men or gods, whom he had so frequently injured, and defied by his villanies and perjuries.[324] Polybius gives it as his real opinion, that nothing shows the superior excellence of the civil government of the Romans, to that of other people, so much as those religious sentiments with respect to their gods, which they constantly inculcated and supported.[325] He affirms too his real sentiments to be, that the chief support and preservation of the Roman republick arose from that awful fear of the gods, which was so much ridiculed, and exploded by the Grecians. I have taken the liberty to render τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀνθρώποις, the Grecians, who are evidently pointed at in this passage.[326] For so just and accurate a writer as Polybius could not be ignorant, that the Grecians were the only people in the world at that time, who had been debauched into atheism by the pernicious tenets of Epicurus. Polybius firmly believed the existence of a Deity, and the interposition of a divine superintending Providence, though he was an enemy to superstition. Yet when he observed the good effects produced amongst the Romans by their religion,[327] though carried even to the highest possible degree of superstition, and the remarkable influence it had upon their manners in private life, as well as upon their publick counsels, he concludes it to be[328] the result of a wise, and consummate policy in the ancient legislators. He therefore very justly censures those as wrong-headed, and wretchedly bungling politicians, who at that time endeavoured to eradicate the fear of an after-reckoning, and the terrors of an hell, out of the minds of a people. Yet how few years ago did we see this miserably mistaken policy prevail in our own country, during the whole administration of some late