But in that case we must either reject the testimony of the same Hegesippus that up to their death, and that of Symeon son of Clopas, successor in the Jerusalem see of James the Lord's brother, " who suffered martyrdom at the age of one hundred and twenty years while Trajan was emperor and Atticus governor," " the church (universal) had remained a pure and uncorrupted virgin " free from " the folly of heretical teachers "; or else we must reject the superscription, which presents the grandfather in vehement conflict with the very heresies in question.
It had been believed that it was property owners and intellectuals who placed the question of nationality above all others, while behind them stood a solid mass of workingpeople who were uncorrupted by nationalist chauvinism.
The idea of a heavenly model would in itself have suggested such a course and, only in an inferior degree to this, the necessity of setting a new and uncorrupted document of the divine will over against the sacred scriptures of the Jews and Christians, the people of the Book, as the Koran calls them.
For even in the physical or non-rational man, as originally constituted, we may see clear indications of the divine design, which it belongs to his rational will to carry into conscious execution; indeed, in the first stage of human life, before reason is fully developed, uncorrupted natural impulse effects what is afterwards the work of reason.
France there had not been as yet any overt revolt against the Church of Rome, but multitudes were in sympathy with any attempt to improve the church by education, by purer morals, by better preaching and by a return to the primitive and uncorrupted faith.