Ramsay MacMullen famous quotes

All Gaza's temples are torn down and burned and the city is cleansed of every belief but the Christian faith. The most stubborn opponents, faute de mieux, are tied up, marched away to the provincial capital, severely tortured, and all killed mala morte, 'a great number.'
-- Ramsay MacMullen

#Christian #Cities #Numbers

Anyone who asserted wrong teachings, anyone serving the devil or his demons, earned instead an equally remarkable antagonism. In their official high meetings together, Christians thus could not keep their own disagreements within the bounds of civil language; their continual quarrels required the intervention of the civil authorities; and all this was well known and noted by friends and foes alike.
-- Ramsay MacMullen

#Christian #Teaching #Devil

It is a very good exercise, at least from a historian's point of view, to imagine oneself a devout pagan while reading various Christian writings.
-- Ramsay MacMullen

#Christian #Reading #Writing

More Christians died for their faith at the hands of fellow Christians than had died before in all the persecutions.
-- Ramsay MacMullen

#Christian #Hands #Persecution

The Christian that is bound by his own horizon, the church that lives simply for itself, is bound to die a spiritual death and sink into stagnancy and corruption. We never can thank God enough for giving us not only a whole Gospel to believe, but a whole world to give it to.

Prayer is the mighty engine that is to move the missionary work.

Perils as well as privileges attend the higher Christian life. The nearer we come to God, the thicker the hosts of darkness in heavenly places. Aggressive Christianity is the world's greatest need.

A Christian home! What a power it is to the child when he is far away in the cold, tempting world, and voices of sin are filling his ears, and his feet stand on slippery places.

If a family is an expression of continuity through biology, a city is an expression of continuity through will amd imagination? through mental choices making artifice, not through physical reproduction.

Chicago seems a big city instead of merely a large place.

I've never had a treehouse because I live in New York City. It would be a little bit hard to fit a treehouse in a New York City apartment.

There are a number of places on marine charts where even the most weathered sailors point and say, "Right there, nothing can go wrong. Everything has to go right." One place is the turbulent passage south of Cape Horn. Another is the dead center of the Indian Ocean.

Acquaintance I would have, but when it depends; not on number, but the choice of friends.

A mathematician's reputation rests on the number of bad proofs he has given.