ilitated those of Christianity. In
the second chapter of this work we have attempted to explain in what
manner the most civilized provinces of Europe, Asia, and Africa were
united under the dominion of one sovereign, and gradually connected by
the most intimate ties of laws, of manners, and of language. The Jews of
Palestine, who had fondly expected a temporal deliverer, gave so cold a
reception to the miracles of the divine prophet, that it was found
unnecessary to publish, or at least to preserve, any Hebrew gospel.
[152] The authentic histories of the actions of Christ were composed in
the Greek language, at a considerable distance from Jerusalem, and after
the Gentile converts were grown extremely numerous. [153] As soon as
those histories were translated into the Latin tongue, they were
perfectly intelligible to all the subjects of Rome, excepting only to
the peasants of Syria and Egypt, for whose benefit particular versions
were afterwards made. The public highways, which had been constructed
for the use of the legions, opened an easy passage for the Christian
missionaries from Damascus to Corinth, and from Italy to the extremity
of Spain or Britain; nor did those spiritual conquerors encounter any of
the obstacles which usually retard or prevent the introduction of a
foreign religion into a distant country. There is the strongest reason
to believe, that before the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine, the
faith of Christ had been preached in every province, and in all the
great cities of the empire; but the foundation of the several
congregations, the numbers of the faithful who composed them, and their
proportion to the unbelieving multitude, are now buried in obscurity, or
disguised by fiction and declamation. Such imperfect circumstances,
however, as have reached our knowledge concerning the increase of the
Christian name in Asia and Greece, in Egypt, in Italy, and in the West,
we shall now proceed to relate, without neglecting the real or imaginary
acquisitions which lay beyond the frontiers of the Roman empire.

[Footnote 152: The modern critics are not disposed to believe what the
fathers almost unanimously assert, that St. Matthew composed a Hebrew
gospel, of which only the Greek translation is extant. It seems,
however, dangerous to reject their testimony. * Note: Strong reasons
appear to confirm this testimony. Papias, contemporary of the Apostle
St. John, says positively that Matthew had written the disc