Cyprian … to Felix, the presbyter, and to the peoples abiding in Legio [Leon] and Asturica [Astorga], also to Lælius, the deacon, and the people abiding in Emerita [Merida], brethren in the Lord, greeting. When we had come together, dearly beloved brethren, we read your letters, which, according to the integrity of your faith and your fear of God, you wrote to us by Felix and Sabinus, our fellow-bishops, signifying that Basilides and Martial, who had been stained with the certificates of idolatry and bound with the consciousness of wicked crimes, ought not to exercise the episcopal office and administer the priesthood of God. Wherefore, since we have written, dearly beloved brethren, and as Felix and Sabinus, our colleagues, affirm, and as another Felix, of Cæsar-Augusta [Saragossa], a maintainer of the faith and a defender of the truth, signifies in his letter, Basilides and Martial have been contaminated by the abominable certificate of idolatry. (_d_) Origen, _Contra Celsum_, III, 9. (MSG, 11:951.) With the following should be compared the statements of Pliny, more than a hundred years earlier, relative to Bithynia. See above, § 7. Celsus says that “if all men wished to become Christians, the latter would not desire it.” That this is false, is evident from this, that Christians do not neglect, as far as they are able, to take care to spread their doctrines throughout the whole world. Some, accordingly, have made it their business to go round about not only through cities, but even villages and country houses, that they may persuade others to become pious worshippers of God.… At present, indeed, when because of the multitude of those who have embraced the teaching, not only rich men, but also some persons of rank and delicate and high-born ladies, receive the teachers of the Word, there will be some who dare to say that it is for the sake of a little glory that certain assume the office of Christian teachers. In the beginning, when there was much danger, especially to its teachers, this suspicion could have had no place. Chapter II. The Internal Development Of The Church In Doctrine, Custom, And Constitution