CHAPTER I.
THE AGE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS.
A.D. 70—120.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.
Wordsworth.
The sub-apostolic age conservative,condition of the Church immediately after the Apostolic age was not such as to create or require literature of its own. Men were full of that anxious expectation which always betokens some critical change in the world; but the elements of the new life were not yet combined and brought into vigorous operation[1]. There was nothing either within or without to call into premature activity the powers and resources which were still latent in the depths of Christian truth. The authoritative teaching of Apostles was fresh in the memories of their hearers. That first era of controversy, in which words are fitted to the ideas for which they are afterwards substituted, had not yet passed by. The struggle between Christianity and Paganism had not yet assumed the form of an internecine war[2]. The times were conservative, not creative.
- ↑ The well-known passages of Virgil (Ecl. iv.), Tacitus (Hist. v. 13), and Suetonius (Vesp. c. 4), express this feeling in memorable words. Percrebuerat Oriente toto, says the last writer, vetus et constans opinio esse in fatis ut eo tempore Judæâ profecti rerum potirentur. The year of which he speaks is A.D. 67, the most probable date of the martyrdom of St Paul.
- ↑ Christianity as yet appeared to strangers only as a form of Judaism, even where St Paul preached, and consequently was a religio licita. Cf. Gieseler, Kirchengeschichte, i. 106, and his references.
