persecuted him even unto death; even as the ruling classes at Rome, and throughout the world, have done until the triumph of Constantine over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge. Ye know that our Lord set up a kingdom that was good news, a gospel, to the poor of the earth, because its purpose and effect were to abolish war, slavery, polygamy, and all unjust distinctions between men and classes of men, based upon the idolatry of mammon. Ye know that all of these parables were spoken with reference to this kingdom in which communion of saints, partnership of all believers, should secure liberty, equality, fraternity, for all Christians. Ye know that, while the apostles remained on earth, the believers had all things common, except wives and children, disowned all government except that of Jesus, obeyed all laws for the sake of peace except such as conflicted with conscience, and so builded up the Christian communes that governed themselves by the laws of Christ alone, inflicting no temporal punishment except that they refused to fellowship the obdurately wicked. Ye know that they commonly wrought miracles to prove the divinity of Jesus and the right of the Church to preach and to teach in his name. We learn from Philo the Egyptian, and from many others, that ’those who entered upon the Christian life divested themselves of their property, and gave it to those legally entitled thereto or to the common Church,’ and that ’the disciples of that time, animated by more ardent love of the divine word, first fulfilled the Saviour’s precept by distributing their substance to the needy; and that the Holy Spirit wrought many wonders through them, so that, as soon as the gospel was heard, men voluntarily and in crowds eagerly embraced the true faith.’ Ye know that three bishops were ordained by the apostles, even Lucius, Evodius, and Polycarp, all of whom consecrated their property to the common Church, as did the apostolical fathers Clemens, Ignatius, Barnabas, Hermas, as also did Paulinas, Cyprian, Hilary, and countless other well-known and notable Christians; and ye know that such were the law and the practice of the Church until very recent times! Ye know that thaumaturgy remained with the Church until this divine ordinance was neglected. Ye know, brethren, that there were no slaves, no war, no rich, no poor, no kings, no rulers, in the kingdom of our Lord, but liberty, fraternity, equality for all; and that war, slavery, mammon-worship, which had ever been the curse of human life, were abolished by the gospel of Christ. Brethren, already in the Western Empire (and from this day in the East) all this is changed. ’The kingdom of heaven’ is utterly subverted. Even the bishops came hither with slaves; many of you are ’rich men,’ that could not enter into the kingdom of heaven. The Church conformeth in all things to the imperial laws: for that man Constantine hath such unbounded ambition and unbelief