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By using his knowledge, skill, and persuasiveness to convince others of God’s presence and importance, and by example of his genuine belief and faith in God, St. Augustine’s arguments in City of God reflect the status of Christianity in the year 410 and also serve as an attempt to convert people to Christianity.
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Decent, but it’s a little wordy! It would help if the thesis statement was broken up into two sentences.

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The seventeenth century was an evolutionary one in which the beliefs that people held went from one extreme to another in fewer than one hundred years. The beginning of the century marked the high point in the persecution of witches and the respective faith people had in whatever they were told by the church. Witchcraft, the practice of harmful magic, was believed to have existed since the middle of the fifteenth century, and by the middle of the seventeenth century, the scientific and natural views on life occurrences had begun to come into play as well. Rene Descartes wrote his Discourse on Method, the basic idea of scientific theory to explain things, in 1637, while Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger wrote The Malleus Maleficarum, the basic ideas of witchcraft, in 1486. Witchcraft had been in existence a lot longer than scientific theory, but it began to be overshadowed by the new ideas presented by the elite class of the seventeenth century. The point of impact of new beliefs on the learned elite was such that it spurned the ultimate evolution of beliefs that included an orderly, predictable universe being in existence as opposed to life existing in a world where occult, good and evil forces were in control. The Church became questionable as a source of authority for information on the cosmos, and people began to depend on the human mind and scientific inquiry instead. The seventeenth century served as a bridge for beliefs and ideas to cross. The Malleus Maleficarum and Descartes' Discourse on Method serve as examples for the basis of both extremes of the evolving beliefs at hand.

This thesis statement makes sense when the whole paragraph is taken into context. This is an example of breaking a statement up into more than one sentence.

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The relationship between the pope and emperor, or more generally between the church and state, has been a fragile, fickle one throughout much of history. Back in the year 800 A. D., when Pope Leo III appointed Charlemagne emperor, the relationship was solidified by an alliance between the two leaders. At this point in history there was a mutual trust and reliance on both the sides of the church and the state. However, two hundred eighty years later, when Pope Gregory VII excommunicated King Henry V in 1076 and 1080, the relationship between church and state was extremely different. Not only did they have opposing viewpoints, but they refused to cooperate or compromise their stubborn, biased views for the benefit of the church and state. The political circumstances surrounding the coronation of Charlemagne by Pope Leo and the depositions of King Henry by Pope Gregory were relevant to the church-state relationships, as well as were the aims and intentions of each of the four political leaders involved. The coronation and depositions had varying impacts on the church-state relations in Western Europe.

This thesis statement is quite a three story one, if not twelve or twenty stories! Although I rather like this thesis, it made for quite a complicated paper for which I had to prepare lists upon lists of prewriting. (By the way, if you take History 11, I recommend Professor McIntosh.)

Ok, so most of these aren't even from English class! For those, check out my unit papers (<-click).

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