But if the crimes of Rome are authenticated, the case is not the same with its virtues.  An able critic has shown that nothing is more problematic than the history of the three or four first ages of that city.  As the confusions of the state increased, so do the confusions in its story.  The empire had masters, whose names are only known from medals.  It is uncertain of what princes several empresses were the wives.  If the jealousy of two antiquaries intervenes, the point becomes inexplicable.  Oriuna, on the medals of Carausius, used to pass for the moon:  of late years it is become a doubt whether she was not his consort.  It is of little importance whether she was moon or empress:  but ’how little must we know of those times, when those land-marks to certainty, royal names, do not serve even that purpose!  In the cabinet of the king of France are several coins of sovereigns, whose country cannot now be guessed at.

The want of records, of letters, of printing, of critics; wars, revolutions, factions, and other causes, occasioned these defects in ancient history.  Chronology and astronomy are forced to tinker up and reconcile, as well as they can, those uncertainties.  This satisfies the learned—­but what should we think of the reign of George the Second, to be calculated two thousand years hence by eclipses, lest the conquest of Canada should be ascribed to James the First.

At the very moment that the Roman empire was resettled, nay, when a new metropolis was erected, in an age of science and arts, while letters still held up their heads in Greece; consequently, when the great outlines of truth, I mean events, might be expected to be established; at that very period a new deluge of error burst upon the world.  Cristian monks and saints laid truth waste; and a mock sun rose at Rome, when the Roman sun sunk at Constantinople.  Virtues and vices were rated by the standard of bigotry; and the militia of the church became the only historians.  The best princes were represented as monsters; the worst, at least the most useless, were deified, according as they depressed or exalted turbulent and enthusiastic prelates and friars.  Nay, these men were so destitute of temper and common sense, that they dared to suppose that common sense would never revisit the earth:  and accordingly wrote with so little judgment, and committed such palpable forgeries, that if we cannot discover what really happened in those ages, we can at least he very sure what did not.  How many general persecutions does the church record, of which there is not the smallest trace?  What donations and charters were forged, for which those holy persons would lose their ears, if they were in this age to present them in the most common court of judicature?  Yet how long were these impostors the only persons who attempted to write history!