Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/149

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 131 school of Alexandria that the christian theology ap- CHAP, pears to have assumed a regular and scientifical form ; ^^ ' and when Hadrian visited Egypt, he found a church composed of jews and of Greeks, sufficiently important to attract the notice of that inquisitive prince ''. But the progress of Christianity was for a long time con- fined within the limits of a single city, which was itself a foreign colony ; and till the close of the second cen- tury, the predecessors of Demetrius were the only pre- lates of the Egyptian church. Three bishops were consecrated by the hands of Demetrius, and the num- ber was increased to twenty by his successor Heraclas^ The body of the natives, a people distinguished by a sullen inflexibility of temper*^, entertained the new doc- trine with coldness and reluctance: and even in the time of Origen, it was rare to meet with an Egyptian who had surmounted his early prejudices in favour of the sacred animals of his country". As soon, indeed, as Christianity ascended the throne, the zeal of those barbarians obeyed the prevailing impulsion ; the cities of Egypt were filled with bishops, and the deserts of Thebais swarmed with hermits. A perpetual stream of strangers and provincials In Rome. flowed into the capacious bosom of Rome. Whatever was strange or odious, whoever was guilty or suspected, might hope, in the obscurity of that immense capital, to elude the vigilance of the law. In such a various conflux of nations, every teacher either of truth or of falsehood, every founder, whether of a virtuous or a TherapeutEB. By proving that, it was composed as early as the time of Augustus, Basnage has demonstrated, in spite of Eusebius, (1. ii. c. 17.) and a crowd of modern catholics, that the Therapeutaj were neither chris- tians nor monks. It still remains probable that they changed their name, preserved their manners, adopted some new articles of faith, and gradually became the fathers of the Egyptian ascetics. •" See a letter of Hadrian, in the Augustan History, p. 245. •^ For the succession of Alexandiian bishops, consult Renaudot's History, p. 24, etc. This curious fact is preserved by the patriarch Eutychius, (Annal. torn. i. p. 334. vers. Pocock,) and its internal evidence would alone be a sufficient answer to all the objections which bishop Pearson has urged in the VindiciiB IgnatiaDJe. ^ Ammian. Marcellin. xxii. 16. " Origen contra Celsuni, I. i. p. 40. K 2