Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Chapter 2: The Ancient Churches (part 2)

"For the first three centuries the Lord placed Christianity in the most unfavorable circumstances that it might display its moral power, and gain its victory over the world by spiritual weapons alone. Until the reign of Constantine it had not even a legal existence in the Roman Empire, but was first ignored as a Jewish sect, then slandered, proscribed, persecuted, as a treasonable innovation, and the adoption of it made punishable with confiscation and death." (Schaff, History of the Christian Church, I. 148). [ibid, pg. 26]