felt themselves to be perfect only through dependence on God, then, in
spite of their Hellenism, they unquestionably came nearer to the Gospel
than Irenaeus with his slavish dependence on authority.

The setting up of a scientific system of Christian dogmatics, which was
still something different from the rule of faith, interpreted in an
Antignostic sense, philosophically wrought out, and in some parts proved
from the Bible, was a private undertaking of Origen, and at first only
approved in limited circles. As yet, not only were certain bold changes
of interpretation disputed in the Church, but the undertaking itself, as
a whole, was disapproved.[11] The circumstances of the several
provincial churches in the first half of the third century were still
very diverse. Many communities had yet to adopt the basis that made them
into Catholic ones; and in most, if not in all, the education of the
clergy--not to speak of the laity--was not high enough to enable them to
appreciate systematic theology. But the schools in which Origen taught
carried on his work, similar ones were established, and these produced a
number of the bishops and presbyters of the East in the last half of the
third century. They had in their hands the means of culture afforded by
the age, and this was all the more a guarantee of victory because the
laity no longer took any part in deciding the form of religion. Wherever
the Logos Christology had been adopted the future of Christian Hellenism
was certain. At the beginning of the fourth century there was no
community in Christendom which, apart from the Logos doctrine, possessed
a purely philosophical theory that was regarded as an ecclesiastical
dogma, to say nothing of an official scientific theology. But the system
of Origen was a prophecy of the future. The Logos doctrine started the
crystallising process which resulted in further deposits. Symbols of
faith were already drawn up which contained a peculiar mixture of
Origen's theology with the inflexible Antignostic _regula fidei_. One
celebrated theologian, Methodius, endeavoured to unite the theology of
Irenaeus and Origen, ecclesiastical realism and philosophic spiritualism,
under the badge of monastic mysticism. The developments of the following
period therefore no longer appear surprising in any respect.

As Catholicism, from every point of view, is the result of the blending
of Christianity with the ideas of antiquity,[12] so the Catholic
dogmati