e horses, Christ with eyes as a flame of fire,
hellish beasts, conflict and victory.[301] In this [Greek: gnosis],
which attached itself to the Old Testament, many began to see the
specific blessing which was promised to mature faith, and through which
it was to attain perfection. What a wealth of relations, hints, and
intuitions seemed to disclose itself, as soon as the Old Testament was
considered allegorically, and to what extent had the way been prepared
here by the Jewish philosophic teachers! From the simple narratives of
the Old Testament had already been developed a theosophy, in which the
most abstract ideas had acquired reality, and from which sounded forth
the Hellenic canticle of the power of the Spirit over matter and
sensuality, and of the true home of the soul. Whatever in this great
adaptation still remained obscure and unnoticed, was now lighted up by
the history of Jesus, his birth, his life, his sufferings and triumph.
The view of the Old Testament as a document of the deepest wisdom,
transmitted to those who knew how to read it as such, unfettered the
intellectual interest which would not rest until it had entirely
transferred the new religion from the world of feelings, actions and
hopes, into the world of Hellenic conceptions, and transformed it into a
metaphysic. In that exposition of the Old Testament which we find, for
example, in the so-called Barnabas, there is already concealed an
important philosophic, Hellenic element, and in that sermon which bears
the name of Clement (the so-called second Epistle of Clement),
conceptions such as that of the Church, have already assumed a bodily
form and been joined in marvellous connections, while, on the contrary,
things concrete have been transformed into things invisible.

But once the intellectual interest was unfettered, and the new religion
had approximated to the Hellenic spirit by means of a philosophic view
of the Old Testament, how could that spirit be prevented from taking
complete and immediate possession of it, and where, in the first
instance, could the power be found that was able to decide whether this
or that opinion was incompatible with Christianity? This Christianity,
as it was, unequivocally excluded all polytheism, and all national
religions existing in the Empire. It opposed to them the one God, the
Saviour Jesus, and a spiritual worship of God. But, at the same time, it
summoned all thoughtful men to knowledge, by declaring itself t