t soul an
old-fashioned Christian, to whom the Gospel was _conscientia religionis,
disciplina vitae_ and _spes fidei_, and who found no sort of edification
in Neoplatonic notions, but rather dwelt on the ideas "command,"
"performance," "error," "forgiveness." In Irenaeus also, moreover, the
ancient idea of salvation, supplemented by elements derived from the
Pauline theology, is united with the primitive Christian eschatology.]

[Footnote 10: On the significance of Clement and Origen see Overbeck,
"Ueber die Anfaenge der patristischen Litteratur" in d. Hist. Ztschr, N.
F., Vol, XII. p. 417 ff.]

[Footnote 11: Information on this point may be got not only from the
writings of Origen (see especially his work against Celsus), but also
and above all from his history. The controversy between Dionysius of
Alexandria and the Chiliasts is also instructive on the matter.]

[Footnote 12: The three or (reckoning Methodius) four steps of the
development of church doctrine (Apologists, Old Catholic Fathers,
Alexandrians) correspond to the progressive religious and philosophical
development of heathendom at that period: philosophic moralism, ideas of
salvation (theology and practice of mysteries), Neoplatonic philosophy,
and complete syncretism.]

[Footnote 13: "Virtus omnis ex his causam accipit, a quibus provocatur"
(Tertull., de bapt. 2.)]

[Footnote 14: The plan of placing the apologetic theology before
everything else would have much to recommend it, but I adhere to the
arrangement here chosen, because the advantage of being able to
represent and survey the outer ecclesiastical development and the inner
theological one, each being viewed as a unity, seems to me to be very
great. We must then of course understand the two developments as
proceeding on parallel lines. But the placing of the former parallel
before the latter in my presentation is justified by the fact that what
was gained in the former passed over much more directly and swiftly into
the general life of the Church, than what was reached in the latter.
Decades elapsed, for instance, before the apologetic theology came to be
generally known and accepted in the Church, as is shown by the long
continued conflict against Monarchianism.]

[Footnote 15: The origin of Catholicism can only be very imperfectly
described within the framework of the history of dogma, for the
political situation of the Christian communities in the Roman Empire had
quite as important an inf