350 
and had enlisted on her side, instead of against her, the whole 
power of Imperial Rome. To what cause is this victory to be 
attributed? I say, without doubt to the moral influence of 
Christianity. It was not so much the attractiveness of Christian 
doctrine, nor the cogency of Christian argument, as the purity 
of Christian life which decided the victory m favour of Christs 
Church. The evident sincerity of the Christians, their fortituc 
under trial, their mutual love, the earnestness with which they 
vindicated the purity of their lives, and the agreement of their 
practice with their professions— not the apologies of Justin a 
Tertullian, nor the laboured treatises of Origen weie t 
weapons with which they conquered the world. It was by 
these that they forced even their adversaries to admit that a 
power had come into existence which could enable mankind 
to rise superior to temptation, and to soar to a flight of puri y 
and virtue which had never before been reached by morta 
man. Justin Martyr has left it on record that it was the 
contempt of death manifested by the Christians which mac e 
him feel that the common report of their impiety and impurity 
must needs be false* Eusebius reminds us how on two several 
occasions the pious care for the sick and suffering exhibited by 
the Christians, as contrasted by the selfish indifference of t 
heathen for anything but their own safety, attracted the atten- 
tion of the heathen, and caused them to glorify the God of the 
Christians, and to acknowledge that these were the on > 
genuine worshippers of God.f The cry, See how these 
Christians love one another,” and its persuasive mfluenc 
upon those who uttered it, has long since passed into a proverb, 
nor could anv heathen deny the truth of the martyrs repeated 
crv “lama Christian, and with us no evil is done. I 
7. It was thus, and thus only, that Christianity conquered 
Imperial Rome. Not by argument and dissertation not by the 
lo-ic and dialectic of the schools, but by the simple argument 
effects, the practical manifestation of the truth that God was 
in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, were the rulers of 
the civilized world constrained to bow their necks to the mild 
voke of the Gospel. But the triumphs of the Christian Church 
‘were far from being at an end when the Roman empire acknow- 
ledged her superiority. Now for the first time did Christianity 
begin on a large scale its work of regeneration. The Church 
of ^Christ set herself in earnest to reform the utterly depraved 
* 2nd Apology, c. xii. 
f Eusebius, Hist. EccL, vii. 22 ; ix. 8. 
+ Ibid., v. 1. 
