he Divine Providence--these were the points
which the West began to debate as ardently as ever the East had
discussed the articles of its more special creed. Why is it then that
on the two sides of the line which divides the Greek-speaking from the
Latin-speaking provinces there lie two classes of theological problems
so strikingly different from one another? The historians of the Church
have come close upon the solution when they remark that the new
problems were more "practical," less absolutely speculative, than
those which had torn Eastern Christianity asunder, but none of them,
so far as I am aware, has quite reached it. I affirm without
hesitation that the difference between the two theological systems is
accounted for by the fact that, in passing from the East to the West,
theological speculation had passed from a climate of Greek metaphysics
to a climate of Roman law. For some centuries before these
controversies rose into overwhelming importance, all the intellectual
activity of the Western Romans had been expended on jurisprudence
exclusively. They had been occupied in applying a peculiar set of
principles to all the combinations in which the circumstances of life
are capable of being arranged. No foreign pursuit or taste called off
their attention from this engrossing occupation, and for carrying it
on they possessed a vocabulary as accurate as it was copious, a strict
method of reasoning, a stock of general propositions on conduct more
or less verified by experience, and a rigid moral philosophy. It was
impossible that they should not select from the questions indicated by
the Christian records those which had some affinity with the order of
speculations to which they were accustomed, and that their manner of
dealing with them should borrow something from their forensic habits.
Almost everybody who has knowledge enough of Roman law to appreciate
the Roman penal system, the Roman theory of the obligations
established by Contract or Delict, the Roman view of Debts and of the
modes of incurring, extinguishing, and transmitting them, the Roman
notion of the continuance of individual existence by Universal
Succession, may be trusted to say whence arose the frame of mind to
which the problems of Western theology proved so congenial, whence
came the phraseology in which these problems were stated, and whence
the description of reasoning employed in their solution. It must only
be recollected that Roman law which had