Christianity popularized an important opinion, already implicit in the teaching of the Stoics, but foreign to the general spirit of antiquity —I mean, the opinion that a man’s duty to God is more imperative than his duty to the State. This opinion—that “we ought to obey God rather than Man,” as Socrates and the Apostles said—survived the conversion of Constantine, because the early Christian emperors were Arians or inclined to Arianism.
