s very literary, but literary only in the literature of rhetoricians.
The beauty of works of art and the infinite charm of nature prevented
this moral degradation from sinking entirely into hideousness and
vulgarity.

The Church of Antioch owed its foundation to some believers originally
from Cyprus and Cyrene, who had already been much engaged in preaching.
Up to this time they had only addressed themselves to the Jews. But in a
city where pure Jews--Jews who were proselytes, "people fearing God"--or
half-Jewish pagans and pure pagans, lived together, exclusive preaching
restricted to a group of houses became impossible. That feeling of
religious aristocracy on which the Jews of Jerusalem so much prided
themselves did not exist in those large cities, where civilization was
altogether of the profane sort, where the scope was greater, and where
prejudices were less firmly rooted. The Cypriot and Cyrenian
missionaries were then constrained to depart from their rule. They
preached to the Jews and to the Greeks indifferently.

The success of the Christian preaching was great. A young, innovating,
and ardent Church, full of the future, because it was composed of the
most diverse elements, was quickly founded. All the gifts of the Holy
Spirit were there poured out, and it was easy to perceive that this new
Church, emancipated from the strict Mosaism which erected an insuperable
barrier around Jerusalem, would become the second cradle of
Christianity. Assuredly, Jerusalem must remain forever the capital of
the Christian world; nevertheless, the point of departure of the Church
of the Gentiles, the primordial focus of Christian missions, was, in
truth, Antioch. It was there that for the first time a Christian church
was established, freed from the bonds of Judaism; it was there that the
great propaganda of the apostolic age was established; it was there that
St. Paul assumed a definite character. Antioch marks the second
halting-place of the progress of Christianity, and, in respect of
Christian nobility, neither Rome nor Alexandria nor Constantinople can
be at all compared with it.

The foundation of Christianity, from this point of view, is the greatest
work that the men of the people have ever achieved. Very quickly,
without doubt, men and women of the high Roman nobility joined
themselves to the Church. At the end of the first century, Flavius
Clemens and Flavia Domitilla show us Christianity penetrating almost
into the