circuit of its walls encloses the peaks of three mountains. That mountain, indeed, which it has to the north, is separated from the others by a great precipice; so that between it and them there is no means, or very difficult means, of communication. The town is two miles in length, and so fortified with walls and towers and outworks, that it fears no force of machines, and no assault of men, even if the whole human race should come against it."]
Christianity soon took root in this city. "The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch." But by whom was the seed first sown? Ecclesiastical tradition here refers to St. Peter; and Chrysostom, Jerome, Leo, Innocent, and others, having so delivered it, the opinion that this apostle was the founder and bishop, or, rather, as they would have it believed, the patriarch, of the church of Antioch, has been extensively considered as indisputable. But there is another writer who, in coming to a decision on this point, should not have been overlooked, but consulted and deferred to as having an authority against which there is no appeal: St. Luke, the contemporary of the apostles, the evangelist personally commissioned by Christ, and the divinely-inspired historian of the first planting of his churches. St. Luke, then, in the Acts of the Apostles, gives (chapter xi.) a plain statement of the earliest beginnings of this community. "Now they that were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose" (in Jerusalem) "about Stephen, travelled as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to none but unto the Jews only. And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which, when they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned unto the Lord." The names of these devoted
