Excerpt from The History of Christianity, Vol. 1You cannot understand the history of the first centuries of Christianity, the phases through which it passed, the heresies which sprang up around it, the changes which 1t underwent, unless you first make yourself acquainted with the anterior or contemporaneous doctrines and religions. Nothing is insulated in the destinies of our race it is by the past that the present is explained and the future un veiled. Most Of the ancient forms of worship seem to be derived from a common origin. You find in that common origin, with some slight exceptions, the same theogonies, the same cosmogonies, the same religious institutions.Mosaism, although distinguished from the rest by the purity Of its conceptions, nevertheless took from them divers ceremonies and ordinances. In the last ages preceding the Christian era the Israelites, brought into contact with other nations by the captivity and by voluntary dispersion, adopted, under the in¿uence of traditions and commentaries of old unknown, opinions which their sacred books do not contain, or at least do not declare in an explicit manner.Christianity in its turn coming, in its earliest days, forth from J udea to establish itself in the midst of polytheistic populations, failed to keep itself free from the in¿uence of that medium, in the degree in which it Spread abroad it borrowed more or less according to the position of each Church or each group of Churches, from their philosophy, their rites, their superstitions.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.