xpression among them also, had not the task of _proof_, which could be
best discharged by the aid of the Stoic philosophy, demanded religious
rationalism. But, admitting this, the determination of the highest good
itself involved rationalism and moralism. For immortality is the highest
good, in so far as it is perfect knowledge--which is, moreover,
conceived as being of a rational kind,--that necessarily leads to
immortality. We can only find traces of the converse idea, according to
which the change into the immortal condition is the _prius_ and the
knowledge the _posterius_. But, where this conception is the prevailing
one, moralistic intellectualism is broken through, and we can now point
to a specific, supernatural blessing of salvation, produced by
revelation and redemption. Corresponding to the general development of
religious philosophy from moralism into mysticism (transition from the
second to the third century), a displacement in this direction can also
be noticed in the history of Greek apologetics (in the West it was
different); but this displacement was never considerable and therefore
cannot be clearly traced. Even later on under altered circumstances,
apologetic science adhered in every respect to its old method, as being
the most suitable (monotheism, morality, proof from prophecy), a
circumstance which is evident, for example, from the almost complete
disregard of the New Testament canon of Scripture and from other
considerations besides.

2. In so far as the possibility of virtue and righteousness has been
implanted by God in men, and in so far as--apart from trifling
exceptions--they can actually succeed in doing what is good only through
prophetic, i.e., divine, revelations and exhortations, some Apologists,
following the early Christian tradition, here and there designate the
transformation of the sinner into a righteous man as a work of God, and
speak of renewal and regeneration. The latter, however, as a real fact,
is identical with the repentance which, as a turning from sin and
turning to God, is a matter of free will. As in Justin, so also in
Tatian, the idea of regeneration is exhausted in the divine call to
repentance. The conception of the forgiveness of sins is also determined
in accordance with this. Only those sins can be forgiven, i.e.,
overlooked, which are really none, i.e., which were committed in a state
of error and bondage to the demons, and were well-nigh unavoidable. The
blotting