Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

206 E FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMpudiated as the invention of poets, partly interpretedin a physical or moral sense, partly again attributedto an inferior and intermediate class of deities, demonsas w jre called. Tl tered wd in thmeantime, that is, the vai t majority of mankind, heldto their ancestral belief in its crudity hipped Jupiterd Venus in the temples and by imitating heir con-duct, and were re dy to tear pieci th atheists."who denied them Meanwhile Traj d HadAnt P nd Marcus A B patronised anddedEpictetus and Plutarch, and Diod M ttended th r lect d dmiredtheir concept of " the dh being PontifexM mus of the State religion, zealoush DractisinL' anddefending its rights.dance with that religthey put to death on d t hers of tlUnity of God as St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Symph d li th ph ph Justin, andthi martyr bishops, against whom the theat fSmy th crowd cried out, " Away withth e t "P