Excerpt from An Introduction to Early Church History: Being a Survey of the Relations of Christianity and Paganism in the Early Roman Empire The following sketch is intended as an introduction to the study of Christianity in its earlier stages of progress up to the accession of Constantine. It makes no preten sion to survey in detail either the history of the Empire or the history of the Church within that period, but rather endeavours by means of a series of impressions to meet the needs of students and others who desire to possess a compact statement of the main features of a development which culminated in the acceptance of Christianity as an imperial religion and, incidentally, transformed its primitive organisation into the ordered and stable system of Catholicism. The writer hopes that such an outline will elucidate the chief factors of a fasci nating historical process, suggesting lines upon which a fuller and closer study may proceed, and indicating the authorities, patristic and Otherwise, for a wider enquiry. It is obvious that some important features can only be incidentally mentioned, as, for example, the tendencies of Christian thought and the growth of dogma with details of heresy and ecclesiastical controversy. Atten tion has rather been concentrated on what perhaps is more generally desired, a survey of the movement in its contact with the empire, its influence, its self-defence and the public verdict. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.