and Menaces, Polieuctes hasa greater desire to die for God, than other men have to live for themselves. Nevertheless, this very subject, which wou'd make one of the finest Sermons in the world, wou'd have made a wretched Tragedy, if the conversation of Paulina and Severus, heightened with other sentiments and other passions, had not preserved that reputation to the Author, which the Christian Virtues of our Martyrs had made him lose.
The Theatre loses all its agreeableness when it pretends to represent sacred things; and sacred things lose a great deal of the religious opinion that is due to them, by being represented upon the Theatre. To say the truth, the Histories of the Old Testament are infinitely better suited to our Stage. Moses, Sampson, and Joshuah, wou'd meet with much better success, than Polieuctes and Nearchus: for the wonders they wou'd work there, wou'd be a fitter subject for the Theatre. But I am apt to believe, that the Priests wou'd not fail to exclaim against the Profanation of these sacred Histories; with which they fill their ordinary Conversations, their Books, and their Sermons: and to speak soberly upon the point, the miraculous passage thro' the Red-Sea; the Sun stopt in his career by the Prayer of Joshuah; and whole Armies defeated by Sampson with the Jaw-bone of an Ass; all these Miracles, I say, wou'd not be credited in a Play, because we believe them in the Bible; but we would be rather apt to question them in the Bible, because we should believe nothing of them in a Play. If what I have deliver'd is founded on good and solid Reasons, we ought to content our selves with things purely natural, but, at the same time, such as are extraordinary; and in our Heroes to chuse
