by instinct. Even the imperial religion provided
a framework to facilitate the organization of that still more imperial
religion which it found indeed absolutely incompatible with its
prerogatives, but in which it might have found an efficient substitute
to accomplish its own best ends. Thus the early Christian apologist
Tatian pleads that Christianity alone could supply what was manifestly
needed for a united world, a universal moral law and a universal
gratuitous education or philosophy, open to rich and poor, men and
women, alike[19]. So strong in fact was in many respects the affinity
of the Empire and the Church that the apologists are not infrequently
able to claim, and that plausibly, that if the Roman authorities were
ready to recognize it, they would find in the Church their most
efficient ally.

And there is no doubt that all this tendency to use the empire as the
ally and instrument of the Church began with St. Paul. The closer St.
Paul's evangelistic travels are examined the {28} more apparent does it
become that he, the apostle who was also the Roman citizen, was by the
very force of circumstances, but also probably deliberately, working
the Church on the lines of the empire. 'The classification adopted in
Paul's own letters of the churches which he founded, is according to
provinces--Achaia, Macedonia, Asia, and Galatia; the same fact is
clearly visible in the narrative of Acts. It guides and inspires the
expressions from the time when the apostle landed at Perga. At every
step any one who knows the country recognizes that the Roman division
is implied[20].' Nor can we fail to be struck with the regularity with
which St. Paul, wherever he mentions the Empire, takes it on its best
side and represents it as a divine institution whose officers are God's
ministers for justice and order and peace[21]. It is from this point
of view alone that he will have Christians think of it and pray for
it[22]. There is the confidence of the true son of the empire in his
'I appeal unto Caesar[23].'

Further than this, when St. Paul is addressing himself to Gentiles who
had received no leavening of Jewish monotheism, it is most striking
{29} how he throws himself back on those common philosophical and
religious ideas which were permeating the thought of the Empire. 'The
popular philosophy inclined towards pantheism, the popular religion was
polytheistic, but Paul starts from the simplest platform common to
both.