History of the Catholic Church (Volume 1); For Use in Seminaries and Colleges (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. PERIOD I. FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST TO THE EMPEROR CONSTANTINO THE GREAT. A. HISTORY OF THE EXTERIOR CONDITION OF THE CHURCH. I. SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY. 3. State of Religion and Morality among the Jewish People. IN virtue of the covenant made by God with Abraham, the great ancestor of this race, ? a covenant which was afterwards renewed and confirmed with Isaac and Jacob, ? the Israelites were the bearers of the high commission, to preserve among the nations of the earth the knowledge of the one, true, and only God, by keeping the faith in him untainted by idolatry, by observing his commandments, and by the offering up of sacrifices. In this way they were to prepare the whole human race for the coming of the Messias. It is unfortunately true that these Israelites were not always faithful in acting up to this their high vocation, on which moreover the very existence of their independence as a nation was founded. Yet, when chastised by Divine Providence, as at the time of the Judges, or more severely as at the time of the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, they listened to the warnings and admonitions of their prophets and penitently returned to the God of their fathers, they then became again by their teaching, by their social, political, and religious institutions, and above all by their exemplary mode of worship, a brilliant star, shining luminously amid the darkness ofthe shadow of death, cast over the world by Paganism; a bright light in the deep religious gloom of moral dissolution, in which mankind at large were enveloped. Yet at no time did the Israelites seem to be more conscious of their high vocation; never were they better prepared for the reception of the Messias than immediately before the coming of Jesus Christ. ...