Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

368 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMvarious races of whom it was composed, the differentclasses, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, a multitudeof slaves, and a mass of the female sex which had lainfor centuries enthralled and degraded by the strongersex, all these in themselves, and still more in theattempt to weld them together, portended dissolution.The society was maintained not by force of them butin spite of them. Again, it was maintained withoutbreak or failure amid a multitude of sects which usedthe same liberty of internal belief that itself possessedto break away from it: which successively rose likebubbles and dissolved. Again, this society had beenformed and attained full effect in the ten generationsduring which it had never been legally tolerated, andwas often actually persecuted. What that persecutioncould be none could tell so well as an emperor, andConstantine had indeed witnessed the full force in theEast of the last and worst himself. And it had beenformed right in the teeth of the cultured classes, whichturned from it with aversion, and gave themselves inpreference to philosophy, that is, to the unaided effortsof human reason. These were the antecedents whenConstantine saw it, and no human ingenuity couldhave suggested any adequate reason for its subsistenceexcept a divine power: and this he recognised,and therefore he set the Cross upon his diadem.He saw the whole society as based upon the Person 4of the Son of God Incarnate. This alone was itsreason for existence ; this alone the adequate supportof its existence. The whole teaching, pastoral, andsacerdotal office in all its parts was simply a derivationfrom Christ. It was He who created the teaching,named the pastors, and invested them with His ownpriesthood after the order of Melchisedech. They