here must be no force laid upon it, but the
force of reason and the appeal of divine truth. All that we ask or want
in Rome is the liberty of speech--the free allowance to offer to men
the truth in Christ, and persuade them to consider it. With that we will
engage to reform and save the whole world. We want not to meddle with
affairs of state, nor with the citizen's relations to the state; we have
naught to do with the city, or its laws, or government, beyond what was
just now stated. We desire but the privilege to worship God according to
our consciences, and labor for the moral welfare of all who will hear
our words.

'And if you would know what the truth is we impart, and by which we
would save the souls of men, and reform the empire and the world, be it
known to you that we preach Jesus Christ and him crucified, whom God
raised up and sent into the world to save it by his doctrine and life,
and whom--being by the Jews hung upon a cross--God raised again from the
dead. We preach him as the Son of God with power, by whom God has been
revealed to mankind in his true nature and perfections, and through
whom, he and he only is to be worshipped. In the place of Jupiter, we
bring you a revelation of the God and Father of Christ Jesus our
Lord--creator of the universe, who will call all men into judgment at
last, rewarding or punishing according to what they have done. Through
Jesus, we preach also a resurrection from the dead. We show, by
arguments which cannot be refuted, that this Jesus, when he had been
crucified and slain, and had lain three days in the tomb, was called
again to life, and taken up to Heaven, as an example of what should
afterwards happen to all his followers. Through him has immortality been
plainly brought to light and proved, and this transporting truth we
declare wherever we go. Through Jesus, we preach also repentance; we
declare to men their wickedness; we show them what and how great it is;
and exhort them to repentance, as what can alone save them from the
wrath to come.

'This, O Emperor, is the great work which we, as apostles of Jesus, have
to do, to convince the world how vile it is; how surely their
wickedness, unrepented of, will work their misery and their ruin, and so
lead them away from it, and up the safe and pleasant heights of
Christian virtue. We find Rome sunk in sensuality and sin; nor only
that, but ignorant of its own guilt, dead to the wickedness into which
it has fallen, and