Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

184 MARTYR CHURCH.not on tradition and national inheritance, but ona fact touching the whole race of man, and thereforeclaiming the allegiance of the whole racethe assumption of human nature by a divine Per-son. Thus the doctrine in which lay the wholecreative force, the truth and the life of Christianity,was that which from the first caused thedislike of the Jew and the persecution of the Gentile-thekingship of Christ, involving the headshipof a universal religion, and a power which wasnot that of Ca3sar.We have, then, now to treat of a period of 280years, homogeneous in its character from the beginningto the end, which is, that it is the carryingout by a people ever increasing in numberand strength of that good confession made beforePontius Pilate-that witness at its proper time ofwhich S. Paul4 in its first stage said that he wasthe herald and apostle. The course and life ofChristians during these ten generations is to bethe prolongation of this testimony, the embodimentof this confession. It is as soldiers, imitators, followersof one Chief, that all appear on the sce^ie intheir respective order.5 It is by a direct virtuedrawn from the cross of that Chief that they move« 1 Tim. vi. 13; ii. C.5 "^Emulos nos ergo Sibi esse yoluit, ac primus virtute coelesti in-justorum Justus obtemperavit arbitrio; dans scilicet secuturis viam, utpius Dominus exemplum famulis Se prasbendo, ne onerosus prseceptormPertulit ante ilia quas aliis perferenda mandavit."Ej)ist, Ecc. Smyr. i. Ruinart, p. 31.