passions) really do themselve embroil things, and raise miserable
combustions in the world. So it is that they who have the
conscience to do mischief, will have the confidence also to disavow
the blame and the iniquity, to lay the burden of it on those who are
most innocent. Thus, whereas nothing more disposeth men to live
orderly and peaceably, nothing more conduceth to the settlement and
safety of the public, nothing so much draweth blessings down from
heaven upon the commonwealth, as true religion; yet nothing hath
been more ordinary than to attribute all the miscarriages and
mischiefs that happened unto it; even those are laid at his door,
which plainly do arise from the contempt or neglect of it; being the
natural fruits or the just punishments of irreligion. King Ahab by
forsaking God's commandments, and following wicked superstitions,
had troubled Israel, drawing sore judgments and calamities thereon;
yet had he the heart and the face to charge those events on the
great assertor of piety, Elias: "Art thou he that troubleth
Israel?" The Jews by provocation of Divine justice had set
themselves in a fair way towards desolation and ruin; this event to
come they had the presumption to lay upon the faith of our Lord's
doctrine: "If," said they, "we let Him alone, all men will believe
on Him, and the Romans shall come, and take away our place and
nation:" whereas, in truth, a compliance with His directions and
admonitions had been the only means to prevent those presaged
mischiefs. And, si Tibris ascenderit in maenia, if any public
calamity did appear, then Christianos ad leones, Christians must be
charged and persecuted as the causes thereof. To them it was that
Julian and other pagans did impute all the concussions, confusions,
and devastations falling upon the Roman Empire. The sacking of Rome
by the Goths they cast upon Christianity; for the vindication of it
from which reproach St. Austin did write those renowned books de