Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

2 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMof such a mental state, and the voice of the wholecentury in which he lived, and well-nigh of thatwhich succeeded him, fluctuated between contendingsystems whose variety and inconsistency were to himan argument against the existence of any absolutetruth. The society of all this period in its intensemoral corruption attested the bad effect of this philosophicalcollapse on the higher thinking minds. Theeighty years succeeding Cicero's death form a periodwhich, far either from, improving the philosophicalstanding-point or arresting the dissolution of manners,was conspicuous for its barrenness in the realm ofabstract thought, and its descent into the lowestabysses of sensuality.The greater part of this period was also conspicuousfor its unexampled prosperity. We have an unimpeachableeye-witness of this in a contemporary.Since he was a man of leisure and wealth, occupyinga very high position in the second city of the empire,and was moreover a provincial, and one of the subjectraces, and at the same time a man of great piety andlarge capacity, he furnishes the most unsuspicious andtelling testimony which we could have on such apoint. It was just severity years after the battle ofActiurn when Philo described his legation to theEmperor Caius ; he reckoned himself at this time anelderly man, and was probably sixty years of age.Thus he would have been born just as that pacificationtook effect with which Augustus had closed the periodof the civil wars. And he speaks of it with a sort oftransport as a time like none that had been seenbefore. His past life fell entirely under the two reignsof Augustus and Tiberius. Of the first he says: 11 Legation to Caius, sec. 21.