The highest possible encouragement was given to matrimony. When the people were numbered, the censors asked each citizen, “Upon your faith, have you a wife?” and those who had none were subject to a fine. In the tribunals, those who came to make oath were asked, “Upon your faith, have you a horse? Have you a wife?” and unless they could answer these questions in the affirmative, they were not allowed to give testimony. Those who lived in celibacy could not succeed to an inheritance, or legacy, except of their nearest relations, unless they married within one hundred days after the death of the testator. Married men were preferred to all public employments; and the prescribed age was dispensed with in their favor, by taking off as many years as they had legitimate children. They had distinguished places at the theatre and the games, were exempted from guardianships, and other burthensome offices. But when the condition of the people required laws like these, it was useless to make them. Mere external rewards are as feeble a barrier against the tumult of the passions, as a bar of sand against a rushing stream. The Roman knights loudly demanded that the edicts should be revoked; and many, to avoid the penalties, went through the form of marriage with mere infants. Augustus, to prevent this fraud, forbade any one to contract a girl that was not at least ten years old, that the wedding might be celebrated two years after. Metellus, the censor, said to the people, “If it were possible for us to do without wives, we should escape a very great evil; but it is ordained that we cannot live very happily either with them or without them.” Such was the diseased state of society, when Christianity came in with its blessed influence, to purify the manners, and give the soul its proper empire over the senses. Many women of the noblest and wealthiest families, surrounded by the seductive allurements of worldly pleasure, renounced them all, for the sake of the strength and consolation they found in the words of Jesus. Undismayed by severe edicts against the new religion, they appeared before the magistrates, and by pronouncing the simple words, “I am a Christian,” calmly resigned themselves to imprisonment, ignominy, and death. Taught by the maxims of the Gospel that it was a duty to love and comfort each other, as members of the same family, they devoted their lives to the relief of the sick, the aged, and the destitute. Beautiful ladies, accustomed to all the luxurious appendages of wealth, might be seen in the huts of poverty, and the cells of disease, performing in the kindest manner the duties of a careful nurse.