patience and gentleness, from shame and the love of evil. For we can prove this even in the case of many who once were of your way of thinking, but have changed their violent and tyrannical disposition, being overcome either by the constancy which they have witnessed in their neighbours’ lives, or by the extraordinary forbearance they have observed in their fellow-travellers when defrauded, or by the honesty of those with whom they transacted business. (ANCL, altered.) In the second century the Christians
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