Pliny uses it similarly of the oath by which the Christians of Bithynia bound themselves at their solemn meetings not to commit any act of wickedness.
Roman literature, faithfully reflecting the sentiments of the aristocratic salons of the capital, while it almost canonized those who had been his victims, fully avenged their wrongs by painting Nero as a monster of wickedness.
His first refuge was in Wei, a part of the present Ho-nan, the marquis of which received him kindly; but he was a weak man, ruled by his wife, a woman notorious for her accomplishments and wickedness.
It was long an ordinary practice with pious writers to cite Bunyan as an instance of the supernatural power of divine grace to rescue the human soul from the lowest depths of wickedness.