republic, but it is the whole world; they constitute one body,
worship one God, and all look forward to eternal happiness. Not
only do they pray for the emperor and the magistrates, but also
for peace. They read the Scriptures to nourish their faith, lift
up their hope, and strengthen the confidence they have in God.
They assemble to exhort one another; they remove sinners from
their societies; they have bishops who preside over them,
approved by the suffrages of those whom they are to conduct. At
the end of each month every one contributes if he will, but no
one is constrained to give; the money gathered in this manner is
the pledge of piety; it is not consumed in eating and drinking,
but in feeding the poor, and burying them, in comforting children
that are destitute of parents and goods, in helping old men who
have spent the best of their days in the service of the faithful,
in assisting those who have lost by shipwreck what they had, and
those who are condemned to the mines, or have been banished to
islands, or shut up in prisons, because they professed the
religion of the true God. There is but one thing that Christians
have not in common, and that one thing is their wives. They do
not feast as if they should die to-morrow, nor build as if they
should never die. The objects of their life are innocence,
justice, patience, temperance, chastity.

To this noble exposition of Christian belief and life in his day,
Tertullian does not hesitate to add an ominous warning to the
magistrates he is addressing-- ominous, for it was a forecast of
a great event soon to come to pass: "Our origin is but recent,
yet already we fill all that your power acknowledges--cities,
fortresses, islands, provinces, the assemblies of the people, the
wards of Rome, the palace, the senate, the public places, and