o in Christian
Churches, all sorts of matters were not submitted to God or laid bare
before Him, but the prayers serve as a religious ceremony, that is, as
adoration, petition and intercession. [Greek: Su ei ho theos monos kai
Iesous Christos ho pais sou kai hemeis laos sou kai probata tes nomes
sou], (thou art God alone and Jesus Christ is thy son, and we are thy
people and the sheep of thy pasture). In this confession, an expressive
Christian modification of that of the synagogue, the whole liturgical
ceremony is epitomised. So far as we can assume and conjecture from the
scanty remains of Ante-Nicene liturgy, the character of the ceremony was
not essentially altered in this respect. Nothing containing a specific
dogma or theological speculation was admitted. The number of sacred
ceremonies, already considerable in the second century (how did they
arise?), was still further increased in the third; but the accompanying
words, so far as we know, expressed nothing but adoration, gratitude,
supplication, and intercession. The relations expressed in the liturgy
became more comprehensive, copious and detailed; but its fundamental
character was not changed. The history of dogma in the first three
centuries is not reflected in their liturgy.

APPENDIX III.

NEOPLATONISM.

_The historical significance and position of Neoplatonism._

The political history of the ancient world ends with the Empire of
Diocletian and Constantine, which has not only Roman and Greek, but also
Oriental features. The history of ancient philosophy ends with the
universal philosophy of Neoplatonism, which assimilated the elements of
most of the previous systems, and embodied the result of the history of
religion and civilisation in East and West. But as the Roman Byzantine
Empire is at one and the same time a product of the final effort and the
exhaustion of the ancient world, so also Neoplatonism is, on one side,
the completion of ancient philosophy, and, on another, its abolition.
Never before in the Greek and Roman theory of the world did the
conviction of the dignity of man and his elevation above nature, attain
so certain an expression as in Neoplatonism; and never before in the
history of civilisation did its highest exponents, notwithstanding all
their progress in inner observation, so much undervalue the sovereign
significance of real science and pure knowledge as the later
Neoplatonists did. Judged from the stand-point of pure scien