uld pass into
practice, and command the will as well as the intellect of men. It was
necessary not only to restore the image of God in man, but to establish
the divine order in the world. Religion had to transform the public as
well as the private life of nations, to effect a system of public right
corresponding with private morality and without which it is imperfect
and insecure. It was to exhibit and confirm its victory and to
perpetuate its influence by calling into existence, not only works of
private virtue, but institutions which are the product of the whole life
of nations, and bear an unceasing testimony to their religious
sentiments. The world, instead of being external to the Church, was to
be adopted by her and imbued with her ideas. The first, the doctrinal or
intellectual part of the work, was chiefly performed in the Roman
empire, in the midst of the civilisation of antiquity and of that
unparalleled intellectual excitement which followed the presence of
Christ on earth. There the faith was prepared for the world whilst the
world was not yet ready to receive it. The empire in which was
concentrated all the learning and speculation of ancient times was by
its intellectual splendour, and in spite, we might even say by reason,
of its moral depravity, the fit scene of the intellectual establishment
of Christianity. For its moral degradation ensured the most violent
antipathy and hostility to the new faith; while the mental cultivation
of the age ensured a very thorough and ingenious opposition, and
supplied those striking contrasts which were needed for the full
discussion and vigorous development of the Christian system. Nowhere
else, and at no other period, could such advantages have been found.

But for the other, equally essential part of her work the Church met
with an insurmountable obstacle, which even the official conversion of
the empire and all the efforts of the Christian emperors could not
remove. This obstacle resided not so much in the resistance of paganism
as a religion, as in the pagan character of the State. It was from a
certain political sagacity chiefly that the Romans, who tolerated all
religions,[305] consistently opposed that religion which threatened
inevitably to revolutionise a state founded on a heathen basis. It
appeared from the first a pernicious superstition ("exitiabilem
superstitionem," Tacit. _Annal._ xv. 44), that taught its followers to
be bad subjects ("exuere patriam," Ta