The relations of Christianity to the sentiment of patriotism were from the first very unfortunate. While the Christians were, for obvious reasons, completely separated from the national spirit of Judea, they found themselves equally at variance with the lingering remnants of Roman patriotism. Rome was to them the power of Antichrist, and its overthrow the necessary prelude to the millennial reign. They formed an illegal organisation, directly opposed to the genius of the Empire, anticipating its speedy destruction, looking back with something more than despondency to the fate of the heroes who adorned its past, and refusing resolutely to participate in those national spectacles which were the symbols and the expressions of patriotic feeling. Though scrupulously averse to all rebellion, they rarely concealed their sentiments, and the whole tendency of their teaching was to withdraw men as far as possible both from the functions and the enthusiasm of public life. It was at once their confession and their boast, that no interests were more indifferent to them than those of their country.(308) They regarded the lawfulness of taking arms as very questionable, and all those proud and aspiring qualities that constitute the distinctive beauty of the soldier’s character as emphatically unchristian. Their home and their interests were in another world, and, provided only they were unmolested in their worship, they avowed with frankness, long after the Empire had become Christian, that it was a matter of indifference to them under what rule they lived.(309) Asceticism, drawing all the enthusiasm of Christendom to the desert life, and elevating as an ideal the extreme and absolute abnegation of all patriotism,(310) formed the culmination of the movement, and was undoubtedly one cause of the downfall of the Roman Empire.