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The ancients, he thought, knew how to bear misfortune. Levius fit patientia Quidquid corrigere est nefas. As the words occurred to him he thought how much better equipped he was for the bitter trial, since had he not the certain hope of another life, and of meeting his beloved in the spaces of endless felicity?
He says that what an infinitely wise and free cause has chosen is better than what it has not chosen. Is not that recognizing that goodness is the object and the reason of his choice? In this sense one will here aptly say: Sic placuit superis; quaerere plura, nefas.
If that balance should little correspond with the bold and unscrupulous allegations of Mr Cobden if it should be found to derogate from the assumed super-eminence of the foreign trading interest over the colonial, let it be remembered that the invidious discussion was not raised by us, nor by any member of the Legislature who can rightfully be classed as the representative of great national and constitutional principles; that the distinction and disjunction of interests, both national, with the absurd attempt unduly to elevate the one by unjustly depreciating the other, is the work of the League alone, which, having originated the senseless cry of "class interests," would seem doggedly determined to establish the fact, per fas et nefas, as the means of funding and perpetuating class divisions.
Valerius Maximus, in his anecdotes, mentions him slightingly, as an evil man is spoken of who has forced himself into notice. Virgil has stamped his name with everlasting ignominy. "Sequiturque nefas Egyptia conjux." I can think of no Roman writer who has named him with honor. He was a Roman of the day what Rome had made him brave, greedy, treacherous, and unpatriotic.
That man has another future elsewhere, on high, below, anywhere, I don't believe; not one single word of it. Ah! sacrifice and renunciation are recommended to me; I must take heed to everything I do; I must cudgel my brains over good and evil, over the just and the unjust, over the fas and the nefas. Why? Because I shall have to render an account of my actions. When? After death.
Instead of appreciating this, Mr. Stanton seems to have jumped to the conclusion that it was an act of vanity or of political ambition which was to be squelched per fas aut nefas, and in his passionate and hasty action he compromised the whole administration.
If, nefas dictu, our Church is by any formal acts rendered schismatical, while Greek and Roman idolatry remains not of the Church, but in it merely, denounced by Councils, though admitted by authorities of the day, if our own communion were to own itself Protestant, while foreign communions disclaimed the superstition of which they are too tolerant, if the profession of Ancient Truth were to be persecuted in our Church, and its teachings forbidden, then doubtless, for a season, Catholic minds among us would be unable to see their way.
In a similar spirit of religion, Æneas, when leaving burning Troy, refuses to enter the temple of Ceres until his hands, polluted by recent strife, had been washed in the living stream. "Me bello e tanto digressum et cæde recenti, Attrectare nefas, donec me flumine vivo Abluero." Æn. ii. 718.
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