Excerpt from The History of Woman, and Her Connexion With Religion, Civilization, and Domestic Manners, From the Earliest Period, Vol. 2 of 2 But the great mass of the world was not to be easily penetrated by such a leaven; and so early as the age of the Apostles, we meet, in the eloquent epistles of St. Paul, with but too many instances of its incor rigible depravity. It is the characteristic of all human societies that some are ever inclined to fall back, some are eager for change, and continually thirst for novelty, and some are carried away by every wind of doctrine; and hence, in course of time, arise the most deplorable errors, diversities of opinion, discord, dissensions, and schisms, which rend the nearest and dearest ties. But the pure flame of Christianity con tinued to burn unclouded for four hundred years: it survived the three great perse outions; and was only obscured, or rather corrupted, by the blighting protection of Constantine. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.