The earliest missionaries, the Apostles, preached to three sorts of men: to Jews, to those Judaising Gentiles who were technically called metuentes, and to Pagans. In all three classes they could count on certain predispositions which we cannot count on in our audience. All three classes believed in the supernatural (even the Epicureans, though they thought the gods inoperative). All were conscious of sin and feared divine judgement. Epicureanism, by the very fact that it promised liberation from that fear, proves its prevalence—a patent medicine can succeed only by claiming to cure a
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