Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/138

 l;i>0 THE DECLINE AND FALL CHAP. IL It is the undoubted viglit of every society, to ex- ' • elude from its communion and benefits such among its Kxcoinmii- members as reject or violate those regulations which nication. j^.^^^ y^^^j^ established by general consent. In the ex- ercise of this jiower, the censures of the christian church were chiefly directed against scandalous sin- ners, and particularly those who were guilty of murder, of fraud, or of incontinence ; against the authors, or the followers of any heretical opinions which had been con- demned by the judgement of the episcopal order ; and against those unhappy persons who, whether from choice or from compulsion, had polluted themselves after their baptism by any act of idolatrous worship. The consequences of excommunication w^ere of a tem- poral as well as a spiritual nature. The christian against whom it was pronounced, was deprived of any part in the oblations of the faithful. The ties both of religious and of private friendship were dissolved : he found himself a profane object of abhorrence to the persons whom he the most esteemed, or by whom he had been the most tenderly beloved ; and as far as an expulsion from a respectable society could imprint on his cha- racter a mark of disgrace, he was shunned or sus- j)ected by the generality of mankind. The situation of these unfortunate exiles was in itself very painful and melancholy ; but, as it usually happens, their ap- prehensions far exceeded their sufferings. The benefits of the christian communion were those of eternal life ; nor could they erase from their minds the awful opi- nion, that to those ecclesiastical governors by whom they were condemned, the Deity had committed the keys of hell and of paradise. The heretics, indeed, who might be supported by the consciousness of their intentions, and by the flattering hope that they alone had discovered the true path of salvation, endeavoured to regain, in their separate assemblies, those comforts, fants are annually exposed in the streets of Pekin. See Le Comte, Me- moires sur la Chine, and the Recherches sur les Chinois et les Egyptiens, torn. i. p. 61.