Excerpt from The Church and the Gentile World at the First Promulgation of the Gospel, Vol. 2: Considerations on the Catholicity of the Church Soon After Her Birth Secondly, it is again beyond contradiction that in consequence of the conquests of Alexander, and on account of the centralized power of the Seleucidae in Syria, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor, all those countries formerly powerfully influenced by the Persians, who had for many centuries held sway over them, became then totally infused with what has just been called Hellenism. It must certainly be maintained with justice that enough of powerful ethnical differences remained in all those regions to create a real difficulty for the dis semination of a universal religion over them all; and in our opinion this obstacle would have been really insurmountable, had it not been for the grace of God. Still, the gradual and very remarkable spread of the Greek idiom, manners, art, and civilization, under the Seleucidae, over the central part of their dominion, cannot possibly be denied, and we are not aware that any one has endeavored to do so. This power lasted in those countries during several centuries, and exerted a powerful influence over Palestine, Syria proper, Upper and Lower Mesopotamia, as well as in almost the whole of Asia Minor. And when Rome put an end to the political sway of the dynasty, she did not attempt to interfere with the continuance, or even further spread of the Greek peculiarities just mentioned. On the contrary, Rome herself had become half-greek, and her best and most eminent men found an element congenial to their nature in everything that savored of Greek culture. 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.