rovinces 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. 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. 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.

Chapter XV: Progress Of The Christian Religion.--Part VIII.

The rich provinces that extend from the Euphrates to the Ionian
Sea, were the principal theatre on which the apostle of the Gentiles
displayed his zeal and piety. The seeds of the gospel, which he
had scattered in a fertile soil, were diligently cultivated by his
disciples; and it should seem that, during the two first centuries, the
most considerable body of Christians was contained within those limits.
Among the societies which were instituted in Syria, none were more
ancie