Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

320 THE THIRD AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.was writing just at the end of the longest periodof peace which is found during those three centuries.From the death of the Emperor SeptimusSeverus in 211 to that of the Emperor Philip in.this year 249, there * had been, with the exceptionof a short attack from Maximin, to which his deathput a stop, no general persecution of Christians.Thus thirty-eight years had passed of such tranquillityas it was ever in those times the lot ofChristians to obtain. The mother of one emperorhad been Origen's disciple, and the emperor actuallyreigning was a Christian, however unworthyof such a profession. Now in this work Origeiispeaks of the superiority of the Christian churchesin each several place, as, for instance, at Athens,Corinth, Alexandria, to the heathen assemblies,and of the Christian rulers to the heathen. Heputs it as a mark of divine power that God sendingHis Son, " a God come in human soul and bodyshould have established everywhere churches offer-ins: O the contrast of their polity JL */ to the assemblies ofthe superstitious, the impure, and the unjust. Heconsiders that Christians do a greater benefit totheir country than all other men by teaching thempiety to the one God, and "gathering up into acertain divine and heavenly city those who havelived well in the smallest cities."8 " We," he says,u knowing that there is in each city another fabricT 7 '-%c « 1/iOV *.1iii. 29.8 Ibid. viii. 71Cont. Cels