Augustine, to justify the ways of Providence in the
destruction of the Roman greatness. He celebrates, with peculiar
satisfaction, this memorable triumph of Christ; and insults his
adversaries by challenging them to produce some similar example of a
town taken by storm, in which the fabulous gods of antiquity had been
able to protect either themselves or their deluded votaries.
In the sack of Rome, some rare and extraordinary examples of Barbarian
virtue have been deservedly applauded. But the holy precincts of the
Vatican, and the apostolic churches, could receive a very small
proportion of the Roman people; many thousand warriors, more especially
of the Huns, who served under the standard of Alaric, were strangers to
the name, or at least to the faith, of Christ; and we may suspect,
without any breach of charity or candor, that in the hour of savage
license, when every passion was inflamed, and every restraint was
removed, the precepts of the Gospel seldom influenced the behavior of
the Gothic Christians. The writers the best disposed to exaggerate their
clemency have freely confessed that a cruel slaughter was made of the
Romans; and that the streets of the city were filled with dead bodies,
which remained without burial during the general consternation.
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