iscovered appeal by
Eusebius of Dorylaeum to Leo I. (Neues Archiv., Vol. XI., part 2, p. 364
f.) are no mere flattery, and the fifth century is not the first to
which they are applicable: "Curavit desuper et ab exordio consuevit
thronus apostolicus iniqua perferentes defensare et eos qui in
evitabiles factiones inciderunt, adiuvare et humi iacentes erigere,
secundum possibilitatem, quam habetis; causa autem rei, quod sensum
rectum tenetis et inconcussam servatis erga dominum nostrum Iesum
Christum fidem, nec non etiam indissimulatam universis fratribus et
omnibus in nomine Christi vocatis tribuitis caritatem, etc." See also
Theodoret's letters addressed to Rome.]

II. FIXING AND GRADUAL HELLENISING OF CHRISTIANITY AS A SYSTEM OF
DOCTRINE

CHAPTER IV.

ECCLESIASTICAL CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY.
THE APOLOGISTS.

1. _Introduction._[340]

The object of the Christian Apologists, some of whom filled
ecclesiastical offices and in various ways promoted spiritual
progress,[341] was, as they themselves explained, to uphold the
Christianity professed by the Christian Churches and publicly preached.
They were convinced that the Christian faith was founded on revelation
and that only a mind enlightened by God could grasp and maintain the
faith. They acknowledged the Old Testament to be the authoritative
source of God's revelation, maintained that the whole human race was
meant to be reached by Christianity, and adhered to the early Christian
eschatology. These views as well as the strong emphasis they laid upon
human freedom and responsibility, enabled them to attain a firm
standpoint in opposition to "Gnosticism," and to preserve their position
within the Christian communities, whose moral purity and strength they
regarded as a strong proof of the truth of this faith. In the endeavours
of the Apologists to explain Christianity to the cultured world, we have
before us the attempts of Greek churchmen to represent the Christian
religion as a philosophy, and to convince outsiders that it was the
highest wisdom and the absolute truth. These efforts were not rejected
by the Churches like those of the so-called Gnostics, but rather became
in subsequent times the foundation of the ecclesiastical dogmatic. The
Gnostic speculations were repudiated, whereas those of the Apologists
were accepted. The manner in which the latter set forth Christianity as
a philosophy met with approval. What were the conditions under which
eccles