Primitive Catholicism

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The publisher of this book utilises modern printing technologies as well as photocopying processes for reprinting and preserving rare works of literature that are out-of-print or on the verge of becoming lost. This book is one such reprint. Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: " Proselytes are as painful for Israel as is leprosy for the skin,"l and Helbo's view was not solitary. At the same time it cannot be doubted that these proselytes who were drawn to Judaism by its teaching about God and its ethical doctrine, formed a class well prepared- although they were not the only class so prepared-and disposed to esteem the Church: the Puritan exclusivism of Judaism contributed to make the Church the more desirable, precisely because it was not itself a Church. Tacitus has gathered and summed up in a few lines the history of the beginnings of Christianity: " Auctor nominis eius Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pon- tium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat; repressaque in prae- sens exitiabilis superstitio rursum erumpebat. non modo per ludaeam originem eius mali, sed per Urbem etiam, quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda conftuunt celebran- turque ".2 Christus, after whom the Christians are called, was condemned to death, under Tiberius, by the procurator Pontius Pilate. Repressed then, this execrable superstition was again overflowing-about the year 64, under Nero-not only in Judaea where it had arisen, but in Rome itself, where all forms of wickedness and infamy flow in and find adepts. We cannot take in its strict meaning this statement of Tacitus, who, because of his great artistic taste, is always to be suspect of artificial composition and presentation. In this particular instance, he describes the facts as though, from the death of Jesus to the burning of Rome in 64, Christianity had passed through a protracted period in which it was apparently crushed, and then, a short while before the year 64, had suddenly begun to expand, not only in Judaea but even at Rome. That Christianity suddenly expanded, is not correct; what is correct is...

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