blations.
The splendor and dignity of the queen of the East, the acknowledged
populousness of Caesarea, Seleucia, and Alexandria, and the destruction
of two hundred and fifty thousand souls in the earthquake which
afflicted Antioch under the elder Justin, are so many convincing proofs
that the whole number of its inhabitants was not less than half a
million, and that the Christians, however multiplied by zeal and
power, did not exceed a fifth part of that great city. How different
a proportion must we adopt when we compare the persecuted with the
triumphant church, the West with the East, remote villages with populous
towns, and countries recently converted to the faith with the place
where the believers first received the appellation of Christians! It
must not, however, be dissembled, that, in another passage, Chrysostom,
to whom we are indebted for this useful information, computes the
multitude of the faithful as even superior to that of the Jews and
Pagans. But the solution of this apparent difficulty is easy and
obvious. The eloquent preacher draws a parallel between the civil
and the ecclesiastical constitution of Antioch; between the list of
Christians who had acquired heaven by baptism, and the list of citizens
who had a right to share the public liberality. Slaves, strangers,
and infants were comprised in the former; they were excluded from the
latter.

The extensive commerce of Alexandria, and its proximity to Palestine,
gave an easy entrance to the new religion. It was at first embraced by
great numbers of the Theraputae, or Essenians, of the Lake Mareotis,
a Jewish sect which had abated much of its reverence for the Mosaic
ceremonies. The austere life of the Essenians, their fasts and
excommunications, the community of goods, the love of celibacy, their
zeal for martyrdom, and the warmth though not the purity of their faith,
already offered a very lively image of the primitive discipline. It was
in the school of Alexandria that the Christian theology appears to have
assumed a regular and scientific form; and when Hadrian visited Egypt,
he found a church composed of Jews and of Greeks, sufficiently important
to attract the notice of that inquisitive prince. But the progress of
Christianity was for a long time confined within the limits of a single
city, which was itself a foreign colony, and till the close of the
second century the predecessors of Demetrius were the only prelates
of the Egyptian church. Thre