Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/21

Rh At the same epoch Cicero writes in his book "Of the Republic," "There shall not be one law at Rome, another at Athens; one now, another then; but one law, immutable and eternal, shall rule all nations, throughout all time; and he who has made, manifested, and promulgated this law, shall be the sole common master and supreme sovereign of all

Whoever shall refuse to obey him, must fly from himself, and renounce his human nature; and by that he will become subject to great punishments, even though he should escape what here below is called by that name."

India, the Roman empire, the civilised world in fact, was thus looking for a renovation of humanity; and it is very remarkable that, precisely at that time, the most distant people of the east, the Seres or Chinese, sent ambassadors to Rome to seek the friendship of Augustus. A Roman author tells us expressly ; and the annals of China show a high probability of such a circumstance having really taken place. Towards the period when Pompey had extended the dominion of Rome to the western shores of the Caspian Sea, the Chinese had approached the eastern, and thus the two great nations were brought into proximity with each other. At the very moment when Augustus was closing the temple of war, two immense empires, Rome in the West, and China in the East, were thus taking each other by the hand, as if to keep the world in the stillness of expec-