The accusation would be historically valueless in any case, for in history
we are not concerned with the claims of the supernatural, but with a
sequence of proved events in the natural order. But if we leave the
province of history and consider that of theology, the argument is equally
baseless. Every manifestation of divine influence among men must have its
human circumstance of place and time. The Church might have risen under
Divine Providence in any spot: it did, as a fact, spring up in the high
_Greek_ tide of the Levant and carries to this day the noble Hellenic
garb. It might have risen at any time: it did, as a fact, rise just at
the inception of that united Imperial Roman system which we are about to
examine. It might have carried for its ornaments and have had for its
sacred language the accoutrements and the speech of any one of the other
great civilizations, living or dead: of Assyria, of Egypt, of Persia, of
China, of the Indies. As a matter of historical fact, the Church was so
circumstanced in its origin and development that its external accoutrement
and its language were those of the Mediterranean, that is, of Greece and
Rome: of the Empire.

Now those who would falsify history from a conscious or unconscious bias
against the Catholic Church, will do so in many ways, some of which
will always prove contradictory of some others. For truth is one, error
disparate and many.

The attack upon the Catholic Church may be compared to the violent,
continual, but inchoate attack of barbarians upon some civilized fortress;
such an attack will proceed now from this direction, now from that, along
any one of the infinite number of directions from which a single point
may be approached. Today there is attack from the North, tomorrow an
attack from the South. Their directions are flatly contradictory, but the
contradiction is explained by the fact that each is directed against a