Zach Worden’s Reviews > From Christ to Pre-Reformation: The Rise and Growth of the Church in Its Cultural, Intellectual, and Political Context > Status Update

“Polycarp is especially remembered for his response to the governor's pleas for him to renounce Jesus Christ: ‘For eighty-six years
I have served Christ and he has done me no wrong; how can I blaspheme against my King and Savior?’”

Encouraging to read of the faith of these brothers!

“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?” (p. 31)