Nostrum

“ Do you think that, when you have taken upon yourself the cause of the allies, and the fortunes of the province, and the rights of the Roman people, and the dignity of the judgment-seat and of the law, in a discussion of the most important and serious matters, you are able to support so many affairs and those so weighty and so various with your voice, your memory, your counsel, and your ability? ”

“ As we have said, Roman religion was in the third century what it always had been, purely political. It was the prosperity of the Empire, its peace and immortality, for which sacrifices were made; with the individual, his happiness and prosperity, it concerned itself not at all. ”

“ If for three centuries Christianity has been gradually returning to its origin, that is, becoming purely a religion and a moral teaching, for some centuries in the ancient world it was a thing much more complicated; a government and an administration that willed not only to regulate the relations between man and God, but to govern the intellectual, social, moral, political, and economic life of the people! The historian ought to explain how this new Empire--for it was indeed a new Empire--was formed in Rome and upon its ruins: this is a problem much more intricate than at first appears. ”

“ In like manner, history leads you to a similar conclusion as to the Roman Church. History, with an impartial pen, tells us how the Roman heresy sprang up, and grew, and reigned in every land. History robs Romanism of all its terror and of all its power. We see it, with plain, unblinded eyes, to be a heresy gradually enlarging its claims in accordance with the increasing ambition of its prelates, and the increasing credulity of its devotees. ”

“ Though conquer'd princes grace his chariot wheels,
Though tributary monarchs wait his nod,
And vanquish'd nations bend the knee before him,
E'er shone with half the lustre that surrounds
This voluntary sacrifice for Rome!
Who loves his country will obey her laws;
Who most obeys them is the truest patriot.
Reg. Be our last parting worthy of ourselves.
Farewell! my friends.—I bless the gods who rule us,
Since I must leave you, that I leave you Romans. ”

“ O all ye deities who have exalted the present magnitude of the Roman empire to a position of supremacy over the world, guard, preserve, and protect, I entreat and conjure you, in the name of the Commonwealth, our present state, our present peace, [our present prince [104] !] And when he shall have completed a long course on earth, grant him successors to the remotest ages, and such as shall have abilities to support the empire of the world as powerfully as we have seen him support it! ”

“ The dominion which thus grew upon and over the vast empire of Rome, though growing with her growth and strengthening with her strength, sunk not with her weakness, but, stretching abroad fresh branches, whose leaves were for the healing of nations then unknown, showed its divine origin by its immortality ”

“ The diplomatists, the generals, the legislators of Rome created by political means, by wars, treaties, laws, a grand economic and political unity, which they consolidated, quite giving up the formation of a large intellectual and moral unity. The intellectual men, who formed the most powerful nucleus of the Church after the fourth century, took up again the Roman idea of unity and of empire ”

“ Inasmuch as the majesty of the holy Roman empire has to wield the laws and the government of diverse nations distinct in customs, manner of life, and in language, it is considered fitting, and, in the judgment of all wise men, expedient, that the prince electors, the columns and sides of that empire, should be instructed in the varieties of the different dialects and languages: so that they who assist the imperial sublimity in relieving the wants of very many people, and who are constituted for the sake of keeping watch, should understand, and be understood by, as many as possible. ”

“ The Romanists, who have imagined from what is taught them that they can live a life of dissipation, and yet, provided they confess themselves in their dying hour, be saved, remain in the heretical sect of Rome. ”

“ The Manners and Principles of early Rome, which tended to enlarge and aggrandize the Republic, were 1. A Love of their Country instilled into their rising Youth: Formed chiefly on the Power of Custom; and more particularly on the warlike Genius of the State. Their Annals abound with so many Instances of this grand Passion, that present Times stand amazed, and with Difficulty credit their Story. ”

“ Roman feelings, Roman views and modes of judging, the traditions of the empire and the city, the legislation of the emperors and the popes,—these were their sources both of opinion and action. The predominance of the kings must have appeared to them natural and salutary; the subordination of all men to their appointed rulers was even one of the doctrines of Christianity itself, as taught by the great apostle of the gentiles, and recommended by the example of the Saviour. ”

“ Thus, in the second century A.D., the Empire spread, in the sun of the pax Romana, which illumined the world, its countless marble-decked cities, as our time spreads, in the sun of modern civilisation, the confused and smoky opulence of its cities, large and moderate-sized, crowded, disordered, a blaze of light by night, bristling with chimneys and shrouded in black fog by day. ”

“ Everything both at Rome, and in the Roman armies, breathed that love of fellow-citizens one for another, and that respect for the Roman name, which raised the courage and inspired the virtue of every one who had the honour to bear it. ”

“ All the parts of the body, Romans, need one another. The patricians need you working-men, and you need the patricians to lead you and advise you, in peace and war. Come back to Rome, and we will agree that you shall choose five people's men, or tribunes, who shall sit with the senate, and take a share in the ruling of the city. ”

“ A century or two ago, when old aristocracies, old royalties, and old religions imagined themselves eternal; when Popes innocently assured the fortunes of their nephews, and the welfare of their mistresses; when the simplicity of Catholic countries regilt annually the pontifical idol; when Europe contained some half-million of individuals who deemed themselves created for mutual understanding and amusement, without any thought of the classes beneath them, Rome was the Paradise of foreigners, and foreigners were the Providence of Rome. ”

“ Rome, he maintained, was not and never could be eternal; for the one eternal kingdom was the Civitas Dei, or ‘City of God’, towards whose reign of triumph the human race had been tending since earliest times. Before her glory the kingdoms of this world, and all the culture and civilization of which men boasted, must fade away. ”

“ The officials of the Roman Empire in time of persecution sought to force the Christians to sacrifice, not to any of the heathen gods, but to the Genius of the Emperor and the Fortune of the City of Rome ”

“ The more closely, then, we study the manner in which Christianity was propagated in the first ages, the more clearly does the mission of the Roman Empire stand out before our eyes. It becomes more and more evident, the longer we look at facts, that Rome’s conquering legions, her great far-reaching roads, her laws, and her one universal language were all made use of by God in a wonderful way, not only to prepare the way for, but also for the establishment of his great spiritual kingdom upon earth. ”

“ THE RISE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE Nations rose and fell, leaving the earth to a few powerful ones who attacked one another until, finally, the vast and powerful Roman Empire rose upon the ruins of the others. The central point of unification was nearer, and it appeared when Christ was born, the Saviour of all the world. ”

“ If religion wanes before the dazzling forces of a brilliant material civilization, and scarcely holds her own, when all profess to be governed by Christian truth, so that in a moral and spiritual view, society rather retrogrades than advances, I am amazed that it made so considerable a progress in the Roman empire, and increased from generation to generation until it shook the throne of emperors. ”

“ At the time when Rome first rose into mundane brilliancy—that Rome which was fated to last as long as mankind shall endure, and to be increased with a sublime progress and growth—virtue and fortune, though commonly at variance, agreed upon a treaty of eternal peace, as far as she was concerned. ”

“ Thus the Roman Empire, whose fall was so inglorious, and whose chastisement was so severe, was made by Providence to favor the ultimate progress of society, since its civilization entered into new combinations, and still remains one of the proudest monuments of human genius. ”

“ All nations now to Rome obedience pay— To Rome's great Emperor, whose wide domain, In ample territory, wealth and power, Civility of manners, arts and arms, And long renown, thou justly may'st prefer Before the Parthian. ”

“ The ancient aristocratic and military Roman society had had so great and world-wide a success, that the ideas, the institutions and the customs, that had made it a perfect model of State, considered as an organ of political and military domination, exercised a great prestige on the following generations. Even during the time of which we speak, every one was forced after eight years of peace, to admit that the Empire had been created by those ideas, those institutions and those customs ”

“ Resume the manners and customs of your country, renouncing the pleasures, through which, rather than through their arms, the Romans secure their power against subject nations. A pure and untainted race, forgetting your past bondage, you will be the equals of all, or will even rule over others. ”

“ According to this definition of ours, the Roman people is a people, and its weal is without doubt a commonwealth or republic. But what its tastes were in its early and subsequent days, and how it declined into sanguinary seditions and then to social and civil wars, and so burst asunder or rotted off the bond of concord in which the health of a people consists, history shows, and in the preceding books I have related at large. ”

“ Cast off the silly bigotry with which Rome knows how to inoculate you, and live and labour, not for Rome's Bishop and her ambitious prelates, but with and for your fellow-citizens!
"Seek rather to attain an honourable place among your fellow-citizens, and their respect and love—by activity, unblemished character, and a virtuous—life, than to way-lay or supplicate an indolent and hateful benefice. ”

“ We will give you no peace till you restore to the Volscians all the land and cities which Rome has ever taken from them, and till you make them citizens of Rome, and give them all the rights in your city which you have yourselves. ”

“ In the intellectual history of the nineteenth century this leading phenomenon of our culture is clearly evident. If any one asked me why, during the past century, Roman history has proved so interesting, I should not hesitate to reply, "Because Europeans and Americans find, there more than elsewhere what has been the greatest political upheaval of the hundred years that followed the French Revolution--the struggle between monarchy and republic." ”

“ On the other hand, the legendary history of the early Republic, and many great examples, in the midst of the corruption of the later Republic and of the Empire, prove that the ideal of domestic virtue and affection among the Romans was no mere passing fancy or dream of an age of primitive innocence, but was in harmony with the national conscience throughout the whole course of their history. ”

“ In which foolish speech that might have been uttered, let those we speak of observe their own likeness, and blush, if there is any sense of shame in them, because they have uttered similar complaints; although the Roman empire is afflicted rather than changed,—a thing which has befallen it in other times also, before the name of Christ was heard, and it has been restored after such affliction,—a thing which even in these times is not to be despaired of. ”

“ In tracing the various senses of "the world" we have not dwelt prominently upon the conception of the world as embodied [Pg 163] in the Roman Empire, and in the city of Rome as its seat—an empire standing over against the Church as the Kingdom of God. ”

“ So long as the Empire held together the unifying influence of official Latin, and the constant intercommunication between the provinces, preserved the essential unity of Latin throughout the world, but when the bonds were broken, the naturally divergent tendencies which had existed from the beginning, but had been held in check, made themselves felt, and the speech of the several sections of the Old World developed into the languages which we find in them to-day. ”

“ Nothing was more natural than that the poetic form that had reflected the glories of imperial Rome should bow to the fascination of Rome, the visible emblem on earth of the spiritual empire of Christ. ”

“ Such were the men who became the heirs of the Romans,—races never subdued by arms or vices, among whom Christianity took a peculiar hold, and gradually developed among them principles of progress such as were never seen among the older nations. Can we wonder that such men should prevail?—men who loved war as the Romans did under the republic; men who gloried in their very losses, and felt that death in the field would secure future salvation and everlasting honor; men full of hope, energy, enthusiasm, and zeal; men who had, what the old races had not,—a soul, life, uncorrupted forces. ”