Article vii.
Thus the Christians made progress among the people by a device that invariably seduces ignorant folk. But they had a still more powerful means. They declaimed against the rich. They preached community of goods; in their secret meetings they enjoined their neophytes to give them the little money they had earned; and they quoted the alleged instance of Sapphira and Ananias (Acts v., 1-11). whom Simon Barjona, called Cephas, which means Peter, caused to die suddenly because they had kept a crown to themselves—the first and most detestable example of priestly covetousness.
But they would not have succeeded in extorting the money of their neophytes if they had not preached the doctrine of the cynic philosophers—the idea of voluntary poverty. Even this, however, was not enough to form a new flock. The end of the world had been long announced. You will find it in Epicurus and Lucretius, his chief disciple. Ovid had said, in the days of Augustus:
Esse quoque in fatis meminisceret adfore tempus,
Quo mare, quo tellus, correptaque regio coeli
Ardeat, et mundi moles operosa laboret.[1]
According to others, the world had been made by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, and would be de-
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A time by fate appointed was to come,
When sea, and earth, and all the realm of heaven
Should flame, and ruin seize the world's great mass.
J. M.
