h Clement of Alexandria and other Greeks held it
fast, and the Gnostics by their AEon "Church" brought it into discredit.
Augustine was the first to return to it.

The importance attached to morality is shewn in _Didache_ cc. 1-6, with
parallels[173]. But this section and the statements so closely related
to it in the pseudo phocylidean poem, which is probably of Christian
origin, as well as in Sibyl, II. v. 56, 148, which is likewise to be
regarded as Christian, and in many other Gnomic paragraphs, shews at the
same time, that in the memorable expression and summary statement of
higher moral commandments, the Christian propaganda had been preceded by
the Judaism of the Diaspora, and had entered into its labours. These
statements are throughout dependent on the Old Testament wisdom, and
have the closest relationship with the genuine Greek parts of the
Alexandrian Canon, as well as with Philonic exhortations. Consequently,
these moral rules, the two ways, so aptly compiled and filled with such
an elevated spirit, represent the ripest fruit of Jewish as well as of
Greek development. The Christian spirit found here a disposition which
it could recognise as its own. It was of the utmost importance, however,
that this disposition was already expressed in fixed forms suitable for
didactic purposes. The young Christianity therewith received a gift of
first importance. It was spared a labour in a legion, the moral, which
experience shews, can only be performed in generations, viz, the
creation of simple fixed impressive rules, the labour of the Catechist.
The sayings of the Sermon on the Mount were not of themselves sufficient
here. Those who in the second century attempted to rest in these alone
and turned aside from the Judaeo-Greek inheritance, landed in Marcionite
or Encratite doctrines.[174] We can see, especially from the Apologies
of Aristides (c. 15), Justin and Tatian (see also Lucian), that the
earnest men of the Graeco-Roman world were won by the morality and active
love of the Christians.

Sec. 2. _The Foundations of the Faith._

The foundations of the faith--whose abridged form was, on the one hand,
the confession of the one true God, [Greek: monos alethinos theos],[175]
and of Jesus, the Lord, the Son of God, the Saviour[176] and also of the
Holy Spirit, and on the other hand, the confident hope of Christ's
kingdom and the resurrection--were laid on the Old Testament interpreted
in a Christian sense together w