on of the Church--"Even to the
consummation of the world."

Hence it follows that the true Church must have existed from the
beginning; it must have had not one day's interval of suspended animation,
or separation from Christ, and must live to the end of time.

None of the Christian Communions outside the Catholic Church can have any
reasonable claim to _Perpetuity_, since, as we have seen in the preceding
chapter, they are all(104) of recent origin.

The indestructibility of the Catholic Church is truly marvellous and well
calculated to excite the admiration of every reflecting mind, when we
consider the number and variety, and the formidable power of the enemies
with whom she had to contend from her very birth to the present time; this
fact alone stamps divinity on her brow.

The Church has been constantly engaged in a double warfare, one foreign,
the other domestic--in foreign war against Paganism and infidelity; in
civil strife against heresy and schism fomented by her own rebellious
children.

From the day of Pentecost till the victory of Constantine the Great over
Maxentius, embracing a period of about two hundred and eighty years, the
Church underwent a series of ten persecutions unparalleled for atrocity in
the annals of history. Every torture that malice could invent was resorted
to, that every vestige of Christianity might be eradicated.
_"__Christianos ad leones,__"__ the Christians to the lions_, was the
popular war-cry.

They were clothed in the skins of wild beasts, and thus exposed to be
devoured by dogs. They were covered with pitch and set on fire to serve as
lamp-posts to the streets of Rome. To justify such atrocities, and to
smother all sentiments of compassion, these persecutors accused their
innocent victims of the most appalling crimes.

For three centuries the Christians were obliged to worship God in the
secrecy of their chambers, or in the Roman catacombs, which are still
preserved to attest the undying fortitude of the martyrs and the enormity
of their sufferings.

And yet Pagan Rome, before whose standard the mightiest nations quailed,
was unable to crush the infant Church or arrest her progress. In a short
time we find this colossal Empire going to pieces, and the Head of the
Catholic Church dispensing laws to Christendom in the very city from which
the imperial Caesars had promulgated their edicts against Christianity!

During the fifth and sixth centuries the Goths and Vandals, t