preceding Essay observes, that it is absurd for an insect to pretend to revenge the Supreme Being. A village magistrate, or the magistrate of a city, is neither a Moses nor a Joshua.
CHAPTER VI.
Of the Indulgence of the Romans in Matters of Religion.
THE amazing contrast between the Roman laws, and the barbarous institutions by which they were succeeded, hath often been the subject of conversation among the speculative part of mankind.
Doubtless the Roman senate held the supreme God in as great veneration as we; and professed as much esteem for their secondary deities as we for our saints. Ab Jove principium was their common formule. Pliny, in his panegyric on the good Trajan, attests, that the Romans never omitted to begin their discourse and affairs by invoking the Deity. Cicero and
