) Tertullian, who
comes about fifty years after Justin, appeals to the governors of the
Roman empire in these terms: "We were but of yesterday, and we have
filled your cities, islands, towns, and boroughs, the camp, the senate,
and the forum. They (the heathen adversaries of Christianity) lament
that every sex, age, and condition, and persons of every rank also, are
converts to that name." (Tertull. Apol. c. 37.) I do allow that these
expressions are loose, and may be called declamatory. But even
declamation hath its bounds; this public boasting upon a subject which
must be known to every reader was not only useless but unnatural, unless
the truth of the case, in a considerable degree, corresponded with the
description; at least, unless it had been both true and notorious, that
great multitudes of Christians, of all ranks and orders, were to be
found in most parts of the Roman empire. The same Tertullian, in another
passage, by way of setting forth the extensive diffusion of
Christianity, enumerates as belonging to Christ, beside many other
countries, the "Moors and Gaetulians of Africa, the borders of Spain,
several nations of France, and parts of Britain inaccessible to the
Romans, the Sarmatians, Daci, Germans, and Scythians;" (Ad Jud.
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