MOREOVER, through their sins, and particularly that detestable and wicked vice of Sodom, as well as by divine vengeance, they lost Britain as they formerly lost Troy. For we read in the Roman history, that the emperor Constantine having resigned the city and the Western empire to the blessed Sylvester and his successors, with an intention of rebuilding Troy, and there establishing the chief seat of the Eastern Empire, heard a voice, saying, “Dost thou go to rebuild Sodom?” upon which, he altered his intention, turned his ships and standards towards Byzantium, and there fixing his seat of empire, gave his own propitious name to the city. The British history informs us, that Mailgon, king of the Britons, and many others, were addicted to this vice; that enormity, however, had entirely ceased for so long a time, that the recollection of it was nearly worn out. But since that, as if the time of repentance was almost expired, and because the nation, by its warlike successes and acquisition of territory, has in our times unusually increased in population and strength, they boast in their turn, and most confidently and unanimously affirm, that in a short time their countrymen shall return to the island, and, according to the prophecies of Merlin, the nation, and even the name, of foreigners, shall be extinguished in the island, and the Britons shall exult again in their ancient name and privileges. But to me it appears far otherwise; for since “Luxuriant animi rebus plerumque secundis, Nec facile est æqua commoda mente pati;” And because “Non habet unde suum paupertas pascat amorem, . . . Divitiis alitur luxuriosus amor.” So that their abstinence from that vice, which in their prosperity they could not resist, may be attributed more justly to their poverty and state of exile than to their sense of virtue. For they cannot be said to have repented, when we see them involved in such an abyss of vices, perjury, theft, robbery, rapine, murders, fratricides, adultery, and incest, and become every day more entangled and ensnared in evil-doing; so that the words of the prophet Hosea may be truly applied to them, “There is no truth, nor mercy,” etc.