“The threat of the Christians in the early days of Rome and subsequently was enormous; they were a bare handful and they were shaking up the entire Roman empire, to the point that Rome was concerned for about three centuries with this problem of the Christians. How in the world were they to deal with these people? Because they were threatening to take over the empire simply by their governmental ways. They were creating a higher obedience. Just as the apostles had said at the beginning "we must obey God rather than men" so again and again men in one area of Roman life after another were exercising dominion. Asserting the priority of their Allegiance to God.”

— Rousas John Rushdoony

Audio lectures, Dominion (n. d.)

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Rousas John Rushdoony 99

American theologian 1916–2001

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“The organization in which this movement was embodied, after three centuries of obscurity and oppression, rose triumphant to be the dominant power of the civilized world. Christian churches were scattered broadcast over the Roman Empire. …Its churches were endowed with the ancient properties and rights of the temples. Its clergy were given immunity from the taxes and exactions which crushed all other classes. Its members filled the civil service. Its great bishops had the ear of the men in power.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 143-144

“Upon Christmas-day, the people of Rome, who had hitherto elected their Bishop, and reckoned that they and their Senate inherited the rights of the ancient Senate and people of Rome, voted Charles their Emperor, and subjected themselves to him in such manner as the old Roman Empire and their Senate were subjected to the old Roman Emperors. The Pope [Leo III] crowned him, and anointed him with holy oil, and worshiped him on his knees after the manner of adoring the old Roman Emperors… The Emperor, on the other hand, took the following oath to the Pope: In nomine Christi spondeo atque polliceor, Ego Carolus Imperator coram Deo & beato Petro Apostolo, me protectorem ac defensorem fore hujus sanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ in omnibus utilitatibus, quatenùs divino fultus fuero adjutorio, prout sciero poteroque. The Emperor was also made Consul of Rome, and his son Pipin crowned King of Italy: and henceforward the Emperor styled himself: Carolus serenissimus, Augustus, à Deo coronatus, magnus, pacificus, Romæ gubernans imperium [Charles, most serene Augustus crowned by God, the great, peaceful emperor ruling the Roman empire], or Imperator Romanorum [Emperor of the Romans]; and was prayed for in the Churches of Rome. His image was henceforward put upon the coins of Rome: while the enemies of the Pope, to the number of three hundred Romans and two or three of the Clergy, were sentenced to death. The three hundred Romans were beheaded in one day in the Lateran fields: but the Clergymen at the intercession of the Pope were pardoned, and banished into France. And thus the title of Roman Emperor, which had hitherto been in the Greek Emperors, was by this act transferred in the West to the Kings of France.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Vol. I, Ch. 7: Of the Eleventh Horn of Daniel's Fourth Beast
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733)

“The Apostles were put to death; they were hunted from nation to nation; they wandered about in sheep skins and goat skins in the dens and caves of the earth, of whom the world was unworthy. Their followers were put to death by hundreds, by thousands, by tens of thousands; and after a while there sprang up a people that pretended to be Christians--followers of the meek and lowly Jesus, having no apostles, no inspired men, no revelation, no ministration of angels, none of the characteristics, except a few forms, of the Christian Church as it existed in the first century of the Christian era. This class of men, calling themselves Christian, uniting with the various forms of the pagan religion, adopting many of their ceremonies and institutions, became very popular, and finally some of the pagans embraced Christianity and were placed, as it were, upon the throne, and what they termed Christianity became very popular indeed.”

Orson Pratt (1811–1881) Apostle of the LDS Church

Journal of Discourses 14:346 (March 10, 1872).
Apostacy

“Long before the empire had reached its greatest extent, the Romans were bored by it.”

Pierre Stephen Robert Payne (1911–1983) British lecturer, novelist, historian, poet and biographer

The Roman Triumph, p. 121
The Corrupt Society - From Ancient Greece To Present-Day America (1975)

“Besides the fact of the Christians rejecting all the heathen ceremonies, we must not forget that they plainly maintained that all the heathen religions were false. The Christians thus declared war against the heathen rites, and it is hardly necessary to observe that this was a declaration of hostility against the Roman government, which tolerated all the various forms of superstition that existed in the empire, and could not consistently tolerate another religion, which declared that all the rest were false and all the splendid ceremonies of the empire only a worship of devils.”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

M. Aurelius Antoninus

“We knew our days were numbered. We had fouled up our lives and we were getting ready for a shake-up.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Source: Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

“I can understand J. Edgar Hoover, because he wasn't inaccurate.… He said that we were the main threat. We were trying to be the main threat. We were trying to be the vanguard organization. J. Edgar Hoover was an adversary, but he had good information. We were plugged into all of the revolutionary groups in America, plus those abroad. We were working hand-in-hand with communist parties here and around the world, and he knew that.”

Eldridge Cleaver (1935–1998) American activist

Interview by Reason magazine (1986)
1980s

“There is a history of Christianity: the first three centuries of Christianity, it was a radical pacifist religion, which is why it was persecuted. It was the religion of the poor and the suffering, and Jesus was the symbol of the poor and the suffering. …
In the fourth century, it was taken over by the Roman Empire. Emperor Constantine turned the church into the religion of the persecutors.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Chomsky on Religion (2010) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNDG7ErY-k4&feature=related.
Quotes 2010s, 2010

“In the beginning of the Jewish war in Nero's reign, the Apostles fled out of Judea with their flocks; some beyond Jordan to Pella and other places, some into Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia minor, and elsewhere. Peter and John came into Asia, and Peter went thence by Corinth to Rome; but John staying in Asia, was banished by the Romans into Patmos, as the head of a party of the Jews, whose nation was in war with the Romans. By this dispersion of the Christian Jews, the Christian religion, which was already propagated westward as far as Rome, spread fast into all the Roman Empire, and suffered many persecutions under it till the days of Constantine the great and his sons: all which is thus described by Daniel.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Vol. I, Ch. 12: Of the Prophecy of the Scripture of Truth
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733)
Context: In the beginning of the Jewish war in Nero's reign, the Apostles fled out of Judea with their flocks; some beyond Jordan to Pella and other places, some into Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia minor, and elsewhere. Peter and John came into Asia, and Peter went thence by Corinth to Rome; but John staying in Asia, was banished by the Romans into Patmos, as the head of a party of the Jews, whose nation was in war with the Romans. By this dispersion of the Christian Jews, the Christian religion, which was already propagated westward as far as Rome, spread fast into all the Roman Empire, and suffered many persecutions under it till the days of Constantine the great and his sons: all which is thus described by Daniel. And such as do wickedly against the covenant, shall he, who places the abomination, cause to dissemble, and worship the heathen Gods; but the people among them who do know their God, shall be strong and act. And they that understand among the people, shall instruct many: yet they shall fall by the sword, and by flame, and by captivity, and by spoil many days. Now when they shall fall, they shall be holpen with a little help, viz. in the reign of Constantine the great; and at that time by reason of their prosperity, many shall come over to them from among the heathen, and cleave to them with dissimulation. But of those of understanding there shall still fall to try God's people by them and to purge them from the dissemblers, and to make them white even to the time of the end: because it is yet for a time appointed.

“There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

L 16
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook L (1793-1796)

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Rousas John Rushdoony 99

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