The Apostasy That Wasn't Quotes

“Christians ended up compromising even more than they had already; learning to “play ball,” as it were, to live and let live, to keep silent when they ought to have spoken, to render unto Caesar the things that were God’s. Yes, the third-century Church had found a way to make peace with paganism—and it was proving deadly.”
― Rod Bennett, The Apostasy That Wasn't: The Extraordinary Story of the Unbreakable Early Church

“And Eusebius Pamphilus, writing in 325, had this to say about the Church of his youth: As always happens when there is abundance of liberty, our lives became indolent and careless; we envied one another and did harm to our brethren; any wretched excuse was sufficient to start a war of arms—as it were—with a spearthrust of words; leaders poured ill fame on other leaders; nation rose against nation; pretense and damned hypocrisy seemed to reach the limits of their evil height. . . . Like senseless people we did not trouble to make our God propitious and benevolent toward us but like certain atheists who consider that human affairs are neither guarded nor watched over (by God) we piled wickedness on wickedness. Those who were supposed to be our pastors disdained the paths of divine piety and inflamed their hearts in contests one with another, only adding thus to the quarrels and threats, the rivalry, the envies and hates of the times. They filled their time in striving for position in no different a manner than from the princes of this world.12”
― Rod Bennett, The Apostasy That Wasn't: The Extraordinary Story of the Unbreakable Early Church

“Nicaea really was, after all, a sort of “coming of age” for the Church—and like many adolescents, she hesitated to leave childhood behind.”
― Rod Bennett, The Apostasy That Wasn't: The Extraordinary Story of the Unbreakable Early Church

“Christianity made people unpatriotic, made them intolerant and dogmatic, willing to criticize other people’s gods and alternative lifestyles.”
― Rod Bennett, The Apostasy That Wasn't: The Extraordinary Story of the Unbreakable Early Church

“The explosion of grotesque immorality we associate with imperial Rome—open prostitution and perversion, the bloody gladiatorial combats, and so forth—is best understood as a response to this religious collapse: a mass of hopeless, worn-out cynics trying to shock themselves awake whether with pleasure or pain. Yet deep inside, they were hungering for something higher. What the Romans needed, and in the worst way, was a religion worthy of them—something they had always had to do without.”
― Rod Bennett, The Apostasy That Wasn't: The Extraordinary Story of the Unbreakable Early Church

“G.K. Chesterton put it well: “It was the best thing the world had yet seen, all things considered and on any large scale, that ruled from the wall of the Grampians to the garden of the Euphrates. It was the best that conquered; it was the best that ruled; it was the best that began to decay. . . . the Roman Empire was recognized as the highest achievement of the human race; and also the broadest. [But] a dreadful secret seemed to be written as in obscure hieroglyphics across those mighty works of marble and stone, those colossal amphitheaters and aqueducts. Man could do no more.”
― Rod Bennett, The Apostasy That Wasn't: The Extraordinary Story of the Unbreakable Early Church

“Irenaeus, writing even earlier, puts it more beautifully still: “By the wood of the Cross the work of the Word of God was made manifest to all: his hands are stretched out to gather all men together. Two hands out-stretched, for there are two peoples scattered over the whole earth. One sole head in the midst, for there is but one God over all, among all, and in all.” This is”
― Rod Bennett, The Apostasy That Wasn't: The Extraordinary Story of the Unbreakable Early Church