o their religion; nor will their bodies
be long exempted from their share of trouble; for if they do not very
quickly satisfy the priests of the truth of their repentance, they are
seized on by the Senate, and punished for their impiety. The education
of youth belongs to the priests, yet they do not take so much care of
instructing them in letters, as in forming their minds and manners
aright; they use all possible methods to infuse, very early, into the
tender and flexible minds of children, such opinions as are both good in
themselves and will be useful to their country, for when deep impressions
of these things are made at that age, they follow men through the whole
course of their lives, and conduce much to preserve the peace of the
government, which suffers by nothing more than by vices that rise out of
ill opinions. The wives of their priests are the most extraordinary
women of the whole country; sometimes the women themselves are made
priests, though that falls out but seldom, nor are any but ancient widows
chosen into that order.

"None of the magistrates have greater honour paid them than is paid the
priests; and if they should happen to commit any crime, they would not be
questioned for it; their punishment is left to God, and to their own
consciences; for they do not think it lawful to lay hands on any man, how
wicked soever he is, that has been in a peculiar manner dedicated to God;
nor do they find any great inconvenience in this, both because they have
so few priests, and because these are chosen with much caution, so that
it must be a very unusual thing to find one who, merely out of regard to
his virtue, and for his being esteemed a singularly good man, was raised
up to so great a dignity, degenerate into corruption and vice; and if
such a thing should fall out, for man is a changeable creature, yet,
there being few priests, and these having no authority but what rises out
of the respect that is paid them, nothing of great consequence to the
public can proceed from the indemnity that the priests enjoy.

"They have, indeed, very few of them, lest greater numbers sharing in the
same honour might make the dignity of that order, which they esteem so
highly, to sink in its reputation; they also think it difficult to find
out many of such an exalted pitch of goodness as to be equal to that
dignity, which demands the exercise of more than ordinary virtues. Nor
are the priests in greater veneration among them