“The Church first spread in Jerusalem, and when a great number of people in Judea and Samaria had believed, other nations were reached, and the gospel being announced by those whom Christ himself had prepared like lamps, for he had trimmed with his word and set them alight with the Holy Spirit. Now Christ had said to his disciples, ‘Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.’ And to prevent being frozen with fear they burned with the fire of love. Finally, the gospel was proclaimed throughout the whole world, not only by the disciples who had seen and heard him both before his passion and after his resurrection, but also after their death by their successors, amid terrible persecutions and the manifold tortures and deaths of martyrs.”*
*Augustine, City of God Book XVIII. Chap. 50, trans. Henry Bettenson (London, 1972), p. 833.
