Page:Works of Sir John Suckling.djvu/366

346 are our descriptions of Him, theirs looking as if they knew what power only by their fears, as their statues erected to him declare! for when he was Capitolinus, he appeared with thunder; when Latiaris, besmeared with blood; when Feretrius, yet more terrible. We may guess what their conceptions were by the worship they gave him. How full of cruelty were their sacrifices! it being received almost through the whole world, that gods were pleased with the blood of men; and this custom neither the Grecian wisdom nor Roman civility abolished, as appears by sacrifices to Bacchus.

Then the ceremonies of Liber Pater and Ceres, how obscene! and those days, which were set apart for the honour of the gods, celebrated with such shows as Cato himself was ashamed to be present at. On the contrary, our services are such as not only Cato, but God Himself, may be there: we worship Him that is the purest Spirit, in purity of spirit; and did we not believe what the Scriptures deliver from Himself, yet would our reason persuade us that such an essence could not be pleased with the blood of beasts, or delighted with the steam of fat; and in this particular Christians have gone beyond all others except the Mahometans, besides whom there has been no nation that had not sacrifice, and was not guilty of this pious cruelty.

That we have the same virtues with them is very true; but who can deny that those virtues have received additions from Christianity, conducing to men's better living together? Revenge of injuries Moses both took himself and allowed by the law to others; Cicero and Aristotle placed it in virtue's quarter. We extol patient bearing of injuries; and what quiet the one, what trouble the other, would give the world, let the indifferent judge. Their justice only took care that men should not do wrong; ours, that they should not think it, the very coveting severely forbidden; and this holds, too, in chastity, desire of a woman unlawfully being as much a breach of the commandment as their enjoying, which showed not only the Christian's care, but wisdom to prevent ill, who provided to destroy it, where it was weakest, in the cradle, and declared He was no less than a God which gave them these laws; for had He been but man, He never would have provided or taken care for what He could not look into, the hearts of men, and what He could not punish, their thoughts. What charity can be produced answerable to that of Christians? Look upon the primitive times, and you shall find that (as if the whole world had been but a private family) they sent from province to province, and from places far distant, to relieve them they never saw nor knew.