Four Periods in the Life of the Church - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894. Excerpt: ... LECTURE H. THE CHURCH OP THE CHRISTIAN EMPIRE. There is always some disappointment even in the greatest triumphs; the attainment is never quite equal to the anticipation. The history of the Christian Church in its hour of victory forms no exception to this general rule. As a great modern writer has said: "This is a world of conflict, and of vicissitude amid the conflict. The Church is ever militant; sometimes she gains, sometimes she loses; and more often she is at once gaining and losing in different parts of her territory. What is Ecclesiastical History but a record of the ever-doubtful fortunes of the battle, though its issue is not doubtful? Scarcely are we singing Te Deum, when we have to turn to our Misereres: scarcely are we in peace, when we are in persecution: scarcely have we gained a triumph, when we are visited by a scandal. Nay, we make progress by means of reverses; our griefs are our consolations; we lose Stephen to gain Paul, and Matthias replaces the traitor Judas." The seeming success of Christianity was accompanied by serious corruption both in faith and practice; its gains in numbers and in power were at the expense of much of its ancient strictness of discipline and simplicity of life and worship. Its history is not as inspiring as that of the first three centuries; there is much more to tell of error and weakness, of sin and of folly, than in those early ages of heroic contest. The Church had passed the period of its childhood, with its simple virtues and simple faults; the errors of its adolescence are more repellent, its very virtues less attractive, than those of its early days. Yet it would be a great mistake to fancy that this was a period of apostasy, or devoid of much that was true and noble. As in Newman, Historical Sketche...