atural
circumstance has been improved into a very odious imputation, which
seems to be less strenuously denied by the apologists, than it is urged
by the adversaries, of the faith; that the new sect of Christians was
almost entirely composed of the dregs of the populace, of peasants and
mechanics, of boys and women, of beggars and slaves, the last of whom
might sometimes introduce the missionaries into the rich and noble
families to which they belonged. These obscure teachers (such was the
charge of malice and infidelity) are as mute in public as they are
loquacious and dogmatical in private. Whilst they cautiously avoid
the dangerous encounter of philosophers, they mingle with the rude and
illiterate crowd, and insinuate themselves into those minds, whom their
age, their sex, or their education, has the best disposed to receive the
impression of superstitious terrors.

This unfavorable picture, though not devoid of a faint resemblance,
betrays, by its dark coloring and distorted features, the pencil of an
enemy. As the humble faith of Christ diffused itself through the world,
it was embraced by several persons who derived some consequence from the
advantages of nature or fortune. Aristides, who presented an eloquent
apology to the emperor Hadrian, was an Athenian philosopher. Justin
Martyr had sought divine knowledge in the schools of Zeno, of Aristotle,
of Pythagoras, and of Plato, before he fortunately was accosted by the
old man, or rather the angel, who turned his attention to the study of
the Jewish prophets. Clemens of Alexandria had acquired much various
reading in the Greek, and Tertullian in the Latin, language. Julius
Africanus and Origen possessed a very considerable share of the learning
of their times; and although the style of Cyprian is very different from
that of Lactantius, we might almost discover that both those writers had
been public teachers of rhetoric. Even the study of philosophy was at
length introduced among the Christians, but it was not always productive
of the most salutary effects; knowledge was as often the parent of
heresy as of devotion, and the description which was designed for the
followers of Artemon, may, with equal propriety, be applied to the
various sects that resisted the successors of the apostles. "They
presume to alter the Holy Scriptures, to abandon the ancient rule of
faith, and to form their opinions according to the subtile precepts of
logic. The science of the church i