come near this God though they are called Gods. See the testimony of
Hippolytus c. Noet. 11; [Greek: kai gar pantes apekleisthesan eis touto
akontes eipein hoti to pan eis hena anatrechei ei oun ta panta eis hena
anatrechei kai kata thualentinon kai kata Markiona, Kerinthon te kai
pasan ten ekeinon phluarian, kai akontes eis touto periepesan, hina ton
hena homologesosin aition ton panton houtos oun suntrechousin kai autoi
me thelontes te aletheia hena theon legein poiesanta hos ethelesen].]

[Footnote 155: Continence was regarded as the condition laid down by God
for the resurrection and eternal life. The sure hope of this was for
many, if not for the majority, the whole sum of religion, in connection
with the idea of the requital of good and evil which was now firmly
established. See the testimony of the heathen Lucian, in Peregrinus
Proteus.]

[Footnote 156: Even where the judicial attributes were separated from
God (Christ) as not suitable, Christ was still comprehended as the
critical appearance by which every man is placed in the condition which
belongs to him. The Apocalypse of Peter expects that God himself will
come as Judge (see the Messianic expectations of Judaism, in which it
was always uncertain whether God or the Messiah would hold the
judgment).]

[Footnote 157: Celsus (Orig. c. Celsum, V. 59) after referring to the
many Christian parties mutually provoking and fighting with each other,
remarks (V. 64) that though they differ much from each other, and
quarrel with each other, you can yet hear from them all the
protestation, "The world is crucified to me and I to the world." In the
earliest Gentile Christian communities brotherly love for reflective
thought falls into the background behind ascetic exercises of virtue, in
unquestionable deviation from the sayings of Christ, but in fact it was
powerful. See the testimony of Pliny and Lucian, Aristides, Apol. 15,
Tertull Apol. 39.]

[Footnote 158: The word "life" comes into consideration in a double
sense, viz., as soundness of the soul, and as immortality. Neither, of
course, is to be separated from the other. But I have attempted to shew
in my essay, "Medicinisches aus der aeltesten Kirchengesch" (1892), the
extent to which the Gospel in the earliest Christendom was preached as
medicine and Jesus as a Physician, and how the Christian Message was
really comprehended by the Gentiles as a medicinal religion. Even the
Stoic philosophy gave itself out as a