immediately punish those who behave impiously towards the gods, such as are confessed to be gods?” ----- Footnote 17: Joseph. ibid. § 36. Athen. ibid. Footnote 18: Joseph. § 37. Footnote D: See note [D] at the end of the volume. Footnote 19: Herodot. Melpom. p. 246. Edit. Gronov. Footnote 20: Id. p. 248. Footnote 21: Joseph. ibid. Footnote 22: Athen. p. 300. ----- [Illustration] SECT. III. _Egyptian persecutions._ Juvenal[23] gives us a very tragical account of some disputes and quarrels about religion amongst the Egyptians, who entertained an eternal hatred and enmity against each other, and eat and devoured one another, because they did not all worship the same god. ----- Footnote 23: Satyr. 15. See also Joseph. cont. Ap. l. 2. § 6. ----- “[24]Ombos and Tentyr, neighbouring towns, of late, Broke into outrage of deep fester’d hate. Religious spite and pious spleen bred first This quarrel, which so long the bigots nurst. Each calls the other’s god a senseless stock, His own, divine, tho’ from the self-same block. At first both parties in reproaches jar, And make their tongues the trumpets of the war. Words serve but to inflame the warlike lists, Who wanting weapons clutch their horny fists. Yet thus make shift t’ exchange such furious blows, Scarce one escapes with more than half a nose. Some stand their ground with half their visage gone, But with the remnant of a face fight on. Such transform’d spectacles of horror grow, That not a mother her own son would know, One eye remaining for the other spies, Which now on earth a trampled gelly lies.” ----- Footnote 24: Englished by Mr. Dryden, &c. ----- All this religious zeal hitherto is but mere sport and childish play, and therefore they piously proceed to farther violences; to hurling of stones, and throwing of arrows, till one party routs the other, and the conquerors feast themselves on the mangled bodies of their divided captives. “Yet hitherto both parties think the fray But mockery of war, mere children’s play. This whets their rage, to search for stones—— An Ombite wretch (by headlong strait betray’d, And falling down i’th’ rout) is prisoner made. Whose flesh torn off by lumps the ravenous foe In morsels cut, to make it farther go. His bones clean pick’d, his very bones they gnaw; No stomach’s balk’d, because the corps is raw. T’ had been lost time to dress him: keen desire Supplies the want of kettle, spit, and fire.”