Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

22 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMsuch as Cornelius Pudens, here and there a highbornlady, such as Pomponia Grascina, but manyfreedmen and slaves from the household of Narcissus,from the imperial palace itself, from hundreds ofother houses, whose domestics were like a nation,women of all ranks, the unlearned and the poor.Add to these the foreigners of all nations and allreligions, of all climates and of every temperamentfrom the extreme of Eastern superstition to that ofWestern barbarism, who were to be found at Rome,and from whom the preaching of the Apostle wouldselect the recipients of divine grace. The populationof Rome at this time represented all the diversitiesof human nature, and all the various trials which thevitality of the Gospel-seed was to experience in futuretimes and distant regions were collected here, so thatits Church would be an epitome of the Church in thewhole world. These were they who had been all intheir natural condition "common and unclean," sunkin the impurities of heathenism, though diverse intheir qualities, but whom the mouth of Peter was tocleanse by the word and the power following on thatword, and then to offer up in mystical sacrifice toGod. Then the Holy Ghost came down visibly tosignify and begin a work which had had noparallel since the beginning of the world. Thehighest effort of philosophy had been to lay hold ofchoice minds: it never dreamed of admitting themultitude into its lecture-rooms, of associating theslave with the free-born, of setting down the richand poor to feed at one table, of raising women tothe utmost height of its precepts. The hetsera indeedwas at times seen at an Epicurean feast, but withoutputting off the reproach of her life. It is only in the