Читать книгу A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Joseph Cullen Ayer - Страница 170

With the following should be compared the statements of Pliny, more than a hundred years earlier, relative to Bithynia. See above, § 7.

Celsus says that “if all men wished to become Christians, the latter would not desire it.” That this is false, is evident from this, that Christians do not neglect, as far as they are able, to take care to spread their doctrines throughout the [pg 159] whole world. Some, accordingly, have made it their business to go round about not only through cities, but even villages and country houses, that they may persuade others to become pious worshippers of God. … At present, indeed, when because of the multitude of those who have embraced the teaching, not only rich men, but also some persons of rank and delicate and high-born ladies, receive the teachers of the Word, there will be some who dare to say that it is for the sake of a little glory that certain assume the office of Christian teachers. In the beginning, when there was much danger, especially to its teachers, this suspicion could have had no place.