ans after the middle of the second century.]

[Footnote 32: Athanasius, tom. i. p. 808. His expressions have an
uncommon energy; and as he was writing to monks, there could not be any
occasion for him to affect a rational language.]

I. A chosen society of philosophers, men of a liberal education and
curious disposition, might silently meditate, and temperately discuss
in the gardens of Athens or the library of Alexandria, the abstruse
questions of metaphysical science. The lofty speculations, which
neither convinced the understanding, nor agitated the passions, of the
Platonists themselves, were carelessly overlooked by the idle, the busy,
and even the studious part of mankind. [33] But after the Logos had been
revealed as the sacred object of the faith, the hope, and the religious
worship of the Christians, the mysterious system was embraced by a
numerous and increasing multitude in every province of the Roman world.
Those persons who, from their age, or sex, or occupations, were the
least qualified to judge, who were the least exercised in the habits
of abstract reasoning, aspired to contemplate the economy of the
Divine Nature: and it is the boast of Tertullian, [34] that a Christian
mechanic could readily answer such questions as had perplexed the wisest
of the Grecian sages. Where the subject lies so far beyond our
reach, the difference between the highest and the lowest of human
understandings may indeed be calculated as infinitely small; yet the
degree of weakness may perhaps be measured by the degree of obstinacy
and dogmatic confidence. These speculations, instead of being treated as
the amusement of a vacant hour, became the most serious business of the
present, and the most useful preparation for a future, life. A theology,
which it was incumbent to believe, which it was impious to doubt, and
which it might be dangerous, and even fatal, to mistake, became the
familiar topic of private meditation and popular discourse. The cold
indifference of philosophy was inflamed by the fervent spirit of
devotion; and even the metaphors of common language suggested the
fallacious prejudices of sense and experience. The Christians, who
abhorred the gross and impure generation of the Greek mythology, [35]
were tempted to argue from the familiar analogy of the filial and
paternal relations. The character of Son seemed to imply a perpetual
subordination to the voluntary author of his existence; [36] but as the
act of generat