Church History, Volume One: From Christ to the Pre-Reformation

Marcus Aurelius (the latter also served as the Roman emperor, 161–80) disapproved of the Christians’ readiness for martyrdom.

Could anything be more improbable than that a religion following a man born of an unwed mother among a widely despised people in an out-of-the-way part of the world—a man then crucified by the ruling authorities on a charge of treason—should become the official religion of the Roman world, the formative influence on Western civilization, and a significant influence in other parts of the world?

Roman, the Greek, and the Jewish