version of the
Gentiles, to dissemble, and wink at many things, and yield to the times;
and not to use force against customs which the people were so
obstinately fond of.[409:1]

Melito (a Christian bishop of Sardis), in an _apology_ delivered to the
Emperor Marcus Antoninus, in the year 170, claims the patronage of the
emperor, for the _now_ called Christian religion, which he calls "_our
philosophy_," "on account of its _high antiquity_, as having been
_imported_ from countries lying beyond the limits of the Roman empire,
in the region of his ancestor Augustus, who found its _importation_
ominous of good fortune to his government."[409:2] This is an absolute
demonstration that Christianity did _not_ originate in Judea, which was
a Roman province, but really was an exotic oriental fable, _imported_
from India, and that Paul was doing as he claimed, viz.: preaching a God
manifest in the flesh who had been "believed on in the world" centuries
before his time, and a doctrine which had already been preached "unto
every creature under heaven."

Baronius (an eminent Catholic ecclesiastical historian) says:

"It is permitted to the Church to use, _for the purpose of
piety_, the ceremonies which the pagans used _for the purpose
of impiety_ in a superstitious religion, after having first
expiated them by consecration--to the end, that the devil
might receive a greater affront from employing, in honor of
Jesus Christ, that which his enemy had destined for his own
service."[409:3]

Clarke, in his "Evidences of Revealed Religion," says:

"Some of the ancient writers of the church have not scrupled
expressly to call the Athenian _Socrates_, and some others of
the best of the _heathen moralists_, by the name of
_Christians_, and to affirm, as the law was as it were a
schoolmaster, to bring the Jews unto Christ, so true moral
philosophy was to the Gentiles a preparative to receive the
gospel."[409:4]

Clemens Alexandrinus says:

"Those who lived according to the _Logos_ were really
_Christians_, though they have been thought to be atheists; as
Socrates and Heraclitus were among the Greeks, and such as
resembled them."[409:5]

And St. Augustine says:

"_That_, in our times, is the _Christian religion_, which to
know and follow is the most sure and certain health, called
according to that name, but not according to the