Justin Martyr, who wrote about thirty years after Pliny, and one hundred and six after the ascension, has these remarkable words:  “There is not a nation, either of Greek or barbarian, or of any other name, even of those who wander in tribes, and live in tents, amongst whom prayers and thanksgivings are not offered to the Father and Creator of the universe by the name of the crucified Jesus.” (Dial cum Tryph.) 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. c. 7.) and, which is more material than the extent of the institution, the number of Christians in the several countries in which it prevailed is thus expressed by him:  “Although so great a multitude, that in almost every city we form the greater part, we pass our time modestly and in silence.” (Ad Scap. c. iii.) A Clemens Alexandrinus, who preceded Tertullian by a few years, introduced a comparison between the success of Christianity and that of the most celebrated philosophical institutions:  “The philosophers were confined to Greece, and to their particular retainers; but the doctrine of the Master of Christianity not remain in Judea, as philosophy did in Greece, but is throughout the whole world, in every nation, and village, and city, both of Greeks and barbarians, converting both whole houses and separate individuals, having already brought over to the truth not a few of the philosophers themselves.  If the Greek philosophy he prohibited, it immediately vanishes; whereas, from the first preaching of our doctrine, kings and tyrants, governors and presidents, with their whole train, and with the populace on their side, have endeavoured with their whole might to exterminate it, yet doth it flourish more and more.” (Clem.  Ai.  Strora. lib. vi. ad fin.) Origen, who follows Tertullian at the distance of only thirty