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Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

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166 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMin following His precepts, in imitating His life, andtually practising that b ?rly love which Epic-tetus rnly mm ends ? e cannot answer thisquest 'ith tainty. Epictetus lived t > the df Trajan's reig d bv that time t i a Chtian g y great t H mindP ) he subject <strong>of</strong> religion, and spformed, and since he would turally examine everyrm f belief day exist th Pw ;an by no means conclude from his gb t Christians that they were unknown < "b v dby him. Moreover, if there are resemblances in himto Christian tones <strong>of</strong> thought which no Greek he* thhowed him. t i to say th tfair that we see in these resemblances a working <strong>of</strong>that leaven which touched numberless bosoms amongthe heathen, in whom desertion <strong>of</strong> the heathen standing-ground did not follow.T ystem f Epictet d have transformedthe existing heathen worship, but could never htored it It h d the niytholgod t th t as P f phc w he It is convenient to Epictetus t ve hpt t usu al P Th h.tinually entGod, Zeus. In thissense his ) i t ed a reconciliationbet philosophy i g Yet h thep re 111 Cod nor the subordinate, gods w Psonai beings at all in the mind <strong>of</strong> Epictet S ateach d not b y i p th mass<strong>of</strong> m kind Could have rooted itself mminds, the worship and its deities must have droppedaway, silently absorbed in the all-embracing and all-consuming whole <strong>of</strong> which they had been partial and

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