Both religions entered the world as missionaries bent upon its conversion, and though Buddhism was afterwards to eclipse Christianity in the superficial extent of its conquests, the annals of the primitive Church record a much more rapid extension. The early development of Christianity, even taking into account the circumstances which helped or facilitated its progress, remains one of the marvels of history. In the New Testament the Church is seen to have gained a footing almost wherever the waves of the Diaspora had reached. St. Paul found Christians not only in Rome, but in little Puteoli, and his letters imply that there were churches in Spain and in southern Gaul. St. Peter wrote from Babylon to a wide circle of Christian communities gathered out of the regions of Asia Minor.[322] There seem to have been even then churches in most of the chief cities, and in a multitude of minor towns all over the Empire; and there is no reason to distrust the tradition, that before the last of the apostles fell asleep, the gospel had called multitudes living far beyond the bounds of the Empire to make good their citizenship in the kingdom of God. The churches may have been small in respect of membership, for the rapid diffusion of Christianity by no means involved the conversion _en masse_ of the people. Facts will hardly bear out the glowing testimony of Gregory Thaumaturgus, who found in the populous metropolis of a large province only seventeen Christians, and in twenty-five years reported that he could find only seventeen heathens.[323] With Gibbon we may have to discount as “splendid exaggeration” the testimony of Tertullian, “Hesterni sumus, et vestra omnia implevimus.” Still the direct testimony of Tacitus as to the multitude of Christians in Rome, the evidence of the Catacombs, and many other indications, point to the conclusion that the rapid numerical increase of Christians was as singular as was the territorial diffusion of their religion. The whole Empire must have been sensibly leavened, and the converts must for long have been gathered from other than the lower classes of society, before the conversion of Constantine became possible. Emperors—even Roman ones—follow in such matters, and do not lead their subjects; and so we may be sure what had at first been glad tidings to the slaves and the poor must for some time have become the consolation of many a noble Pudens and Linus, and of many a Claudia of royal descent, before it could be recognised as the religion of the State.[324]