Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH I Ipublication of the Gospel-kingdom took place, wemust bear in mind the great temporal prosperity, that" immense majesty of the Koman peace " which a worldstrained to the utmost by the jealous armaments ofrival nations ought at least to admire. Not less shouldwe note that profound corruption of manners whichmade the domestic lives of even the greatest men, suchas Augustus, sinks of pollution, not adequately to bedescribed without contamination. It was a corruptionof manners both represented and authorised by thedolatrous polytheism which was in full possession aswell of public as of private life, dissolving the marriedlife in nations yet possessing the institution cmonogamy. These two things as to the general massmoreover, in the realm of thought that lassitude andathy of the Hellenic mind betokened by the eclecticfusion and faltering accents of its philosophy, andreflected in its Eoman scholars. Nor must we forgetthat cultivated Greeks and Jews had been broughtogether not only at Alexandria but in all the citiesf the empire, without the higher knowledge andurer life of the Jew communicating themselves inay appreciable degree to the Gentile.The beginning of quite a different state of thingsis full of interest, and it takes place in the reign ofClaudius. Instead now of Jews seated to the numberof many thousands at Rome, and invested more or lesswith the privileges of Roman citizenship, while theyremained not indeed without occasional proselytes, butwith all their Jewish feelings and convictions isolatedamid foreign customs and corrupt worship, we shalltrace the foundation of a community absorbing graduallythe Gentiles into its bosom, and imparting tothem the worship of one God, while it ceased to be