persecutions at the commencement of the fourth century, the last
effort of the empire to return to its former principles, which denied
to religious association any place in the State. Lastly, I would only
foreshadow the change of policy which, under Constantine, reversed the
position, and made of the most free and spontaneous religious movement
an official worship, subject to the State, and persecutor in its turn.

I know not whether I shall have sufficient life and strength to
complete a plan so vast. I shall be satisfied if, after having written
the _Life of Jesus_, I am permitted to relate, as I understand it, the
history of the apostles, the state of the Christian conscience during
the weeks which followed the death of Jesus, the formation of the
cycle of legends concerning the resurrection, the first acts of the
Church of Jerusalem, the life of Saint Paul, the crisis of the time of
Nero, the appearance of the Apocalypse, the fall of Jerusalem, the
foundation of the Hebrew-Christian sects of Batanea, the compilation
of the Gospels, and the rise of the great schools of Asia Minor
originated by John. Everything pales by the side of that marvellous
first century. By a peculiarity rare in history, we see much better
what passed in the Christian world from the year 50 to the year 75,
than from the year 100 to the year 150.

The plan followed in this history has prevented the introduction into
the text of long critical dissertations upon controverted points. A
continuous system of notes enables the reader to verify from the
authorities all the statements of the text. These notes are strictly
limited to quotations from the primary sources; that is to say, the
original passages upon which each assertion or conjecture rests. I
know that for persons little accustomed to studies of this kind many
other explanations would have been necessary. But it is not my