OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, 259
grims, without computing the number and value chap.of similar visits, which they prevented by their i - LXIX, _ linhospitable sacrilege. Even the influence ofsuperstition is fluctuating and precarious; andthe slave, whose reason is subdued, will often bedelivered by his avarice or pride. A credulousdevotion for the fables and oracles of the priest-hood most powerfully acts on the mind of a bar*barian: yet such a mind is the least capable ofpreferring imagination to sense, of sacrificing toa distant motive, to an invisible, perhaps an ideal,object, the appetites and interests of the presentworld. In the vigour of health and youth, hispractice will perpetually contradict his belief;till the pressure of age, or sickness, or calamity,awakens his terrors, and compels him to satisfythe double debt of piety and remorse. I havealready observed, that the modern times of reli-gious indifference are the most favourable to thepeace and security of the clergy. Under thereign of superstition, they had much to hopefrom the ignorance, and much to fear from theviolence of mankind. The wealth, whose con-stant increase must have rendered them the soleproprietors of the earth, was alternately bestow-ed by the repentant father, and plundered by thetapacious son: their persons were adored or vio-lated; and the same idol, by the hands of thesame votaries, was placed on the altar or tram-pled in the dust. In the feudal system of Eu- Sedition*
rope, arms were the title of distinction and the again*t themeasure of allegiance; and amidst their tumult, pope '’the still voice of law and reason was seldom heard