her developments, sought for one special religion with which it
could agree or through which it could at least attain certainty. The
meagre cults of the Greeks and Romans were unsuited for this. So men
turned their eyes towards the barbarians. Nothing more clearly
characterises the position of things in the second century than the
agreement between two men so radically different as Tatian and Celsus.
Tatian emphatically declares that salvation comes from the barbarians,
and to Celsus it is also a "truism" that the barbarians have more
capacity than the Greeks for discovering valuable doctrines.[347]
Everything was in fact prepared, and nothing was wanting.

About the middle of the second century, however, the moral and
rationalistic element in the philosophy and spiritual culture of the
time was still more powerful than the religious and mystic; for
Neoplatonism, which under its outward coverings concealed the aspiration
after religion and the living God, was only in its first beginnings. It
was not otherwise in Christian circles. The "Gnostics" were in the
minority. What the great majority of the Church felt to be intelligible
and edifying above everything else was an earnest moralism.[348] New and
strange as the undertaking to represent Christianity as a philosophy
might seem at first, the Apologists, so far as they were understood,
appeared to advance nothing inconsistent with Christian common sense.
Besides, they did not question authorities, but rather supported them,
and introduced no foreign positive materials. For all these reasons, and
also because their writings were not at first addressed to the
communities, but only to outsiders, the marvellous attempt to present
Christianity to the world as the religion which is the true philosophy,
and as the philosophy which is the true religion, remained unopposed in
the Church. But in what sense was the Christian religion set forth as a
philosophy? An exact answer to this question is of the highest interest
as regards the history of Christian dogma.

2. _Christianity as Philosophy and as Revelation_.

It was a new undertaking and one of permanent importance to a tradition
hitherto so little concerned for its own vindication, when Quadratus and
the Athenian philosopher, Aristides, presented treatises in defence of
Christianity to the emperor.[349] About a century had elapsed since the
Gospel of Christ had begun to be preached. It may be said that the
Apology of Arist