Thursday, January 26:
The first form of Christianity did not worry about the improvement of society as the philosophically instructed jurists of Roman rule did, and as nowadays seems incumbent on wise rulers: it believed in the complete destruction of this whole civilization as founded on unkindness and injustice, which, on the other hand, every law-giver, however wise, must leave intact in its original stock. Anyone to whom it suddenly occurs how all that came about, can also have nothing more to do with this which has come about: he is obliged wholly to abandon seeking out on the way of improvement that which may lead to a new genesis.