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And these persons, having only laid the foundations of faith in remote and barbarous places and constituted other pastors, committed to them the culture of those they had perfectly introduced to the faith, and departed again to other regions."
Thus churches were founded and the evangelists pressed further afield, and that, not only within the wide bounds of the Roman Empire, but within the borders of its greatest neighbour, thePersian Empire - see glossary , and beyond. A writer in the third century says:
"That new power which has arisen from the works wrought by the Lord and His Apostles has subdued the flame of human passions and brought into the hearty acceptance of one faith a vast variety of races and nations the most different in their manners. For we can count up in our reckoning things achieved in India, among the Seres, Persians and Medes; in Arabia, Egypt, Asia and Syria; among the Galatians, the Parthians and the Phrygians; in Achaia, Macedonia and Epirus; in all the islands and provinces which time rising or the setting sun looks down upon."
The churches which spread so rapidly in Syria and the Persian Empire were shut off from many of the influences which affected time Western churches by difference of language and by political circumstances, Aramaic - see glossary being spoken in Palestine - see glossary and Palmyra - see glossary and used as the commercial language down theEuphrates valley - see glossary , and the mutual jealousy and mistrust of the Roman and Persian Empires acting as a further bar to intercourse.
The Eastern churches kept thier simple and Scriptural character longer than those of time West. * Even in the third century there was no definite organization of the separate churches into one system, the country was not divided into dioceses (there might be several bishops in one church at the same time), and the churches were active and successful in spreading the testimony continually into new regions.
{* "Le Christianisme dans l'Empirc Perse sous ma Dynastic Sassanide" (224-632). J. Labourt.}
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