Wesley Corpus

Is the King of France, or the republic of Holland, at liberty to violate their most solemn treaties at pleasure, provided they give up to the King of England the Ambassador, or General, by whom that treaty was made? What would all Europe have said of the late Czar, if, instead of punctually performing the engagements made with the Porte when in his distress, he had only given up the persons by whom he transacted, and immediately broke through them all? There is therefore no room to say, Modo Punica scripta supersint, Non minus infamis forte Latina fides. “Perhaps, if the Carthaginian writings were extant, Roman faith would be as infamous as Punic.” We need them not. In vain have they destroyed the Carthaginian writings; for their own sufficiently testify of them; and fully prove that in perfidy the natives of Carthage could not exceed the senate and people of Rome. 14. They were as a nation aa top you, void of natural affection, even to their own bowels. Witness the universal custom which obtained for several ages in Rome, and all its dependencies, (as it had done before through all the cities of Greece,) when in their highest repute for wisdom and virtue, of exposing their own new-born children, more or fewer of them, as every man pleased, when he had as many as he thought good to keep; throwing them out to perish by cold and hunger, unless some more merciful wild beast shortened their pain, and provided them a sepulchre. Nor do I remember a single Greek, or Roman, of all those that occasionally mention it, ever complaining of this diabolical custom, or fixing the least touch of blame upon it. Even the tender mother in Terence, who had some compassion for her helpless infant, does not dare to acknowledge it to her husband, without that re markable preface, Ut miserè superstitiosae sumus omnes; “As we women are all miserably superstitious.” 15. I would desire those gentlemen who are so very severe upon the Israelites for killing the children of the Canaanites, at their entrance into the land of Canaan, to spend a few thoughts on this.