Page:Four Dissertations - David Hume (1757).djvu/96

 a remarkable instance to this purpose, of which he was himself an eye-witness. While Egypt lay under the greatest terror of the Roman name, a legionary soldier having inadvertently been guilty of the sacrilegious impiety of killing a cat, the whole people rose upon him with the utmost fury; and all the efforts of their prince were not able to save him. The senate and people of Rome, I am persuaded, would not, then, have been so delicate with regard to their national deities. They very frankly, a little after that time, voted Augustus a place in the celestial mansions; and would have dethroned every god in heaven, for his sake, had he seemed to desire it. Præsens divus habebitur Augustus, says Horace. That is a very important point: And in other nations and other ages, the same circumstance has not been esteemed altogether indifferent.

the sanctity of our holy religion, says Tully, no crime is more