Lectures on Ecclesiastical History; Delivered in Norwich Cathedral (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: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUSTIN MARTYR. I Have to speak to you of Justin Martyr and his times. The world was changing. The Roman emperors were no longer such as Nero and Domitian. Men thought that a new era had begun with Nerva. Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, whatever were their faults, had at least lifted the imperial purple out of the slough and filth of gross licentiousness; and now Antoninus Pius was on the throne, a man whom the fortune of his position and the amiability of his character enabled to dispense happiness to a larger portion of mankind than has fallen to the lot of any other sovereign. Nor was this all. Antoninus had adopted as his heir Marcus Aurelius, and the world was to witness what would be the effect of a philosopher on the imperial throne. Plato had taught that the one condition of the happiness of a state was that the king should be a philosopher, or that a philosopher should be king. His condition was fulfilled in Marcus Aurelius, and that not in the case of a single city such as Athens, but in an empire which was conterminous with the civilised world. The Roman people, which imitated the morals and manners of theimperial court, could no longer exhibit the picture of unblushing corruption and vice which Juvenal denounces. If the vice and corruption were there, they had for very shame to hide themselves. The Roman Church had changed also. Some seventy years ago Christianity had begun in Rome as the religion of a few foreign settlers, Greeks and Orientals, scorned by Romans as a petty Eastern superstition, and employing the Greek language for its services and for the communication of its adherents with each other. It used the Greek language still Justin's Apologies are Greek; but its reputation was enormously grown. Many Romans had joined the foreign Church, an...