III.
(These crimes, p. 36.)
The iniquity here pointed at has become of frightful magnitude in the United States of America. We shall hear of it again when we come to Hippolytus. 1 May the American editor be pardoned for referring to his own commonitory to his countrywomen on this awful form of murder, in Moral Reforms, 2 a little book upon practical subjects, addressed to his own diocese.
Hippolytus speaks of the crime which had shocked Tertullian as assuming terrible proportions at Rome in the time of Callistus 3 and under his patronage, circa A.D. 220. But in this case it was not so much the novelty of the evil which attracted the rebuke of the Christian moralist, but the fact that it was licensed by a bishop.
