human indulgences that they have praised in heathens.
The same arts and allegories, the same phraseologies and philosophies,
which appear first as proofs of heathen health turn up later
as proofs of Christian corruption. It was noble of pagans to
be pagan, but it was unpardonable of Christians to be paganised.
They never tire of telling us of the glory that was Greece,
the grandeur that was Rome, but the Church was infamous because it
satisfied the Greek intellect and wielded the Roman power.

Now on the first example of the attempt of theology to meet
the claims of philosophy I will not here dwell at length.
I will only remark in passing that it is an utter fallacy
to suggest, as for instance Mr. Wells suggests in his fascinating
_Outline of History_, that the subtleties of theology were
a mere falling away from the simplicities of religion.
Religion may be better simple for those who find it simple;
but there are bound to be many who in any case find it subtle,
among those who think about it and especially those who doubt about it.
To take an example, there is no saying which the humanitarians
of a broad religion more commonly offer as a model of simplicity
than that most mystical affirmation "God is Love." And there is
no theological quarrel of the Councils of the Church which they,
especially Mr. Wells, more commonly deride as bitter and barren than
that at the Council of Nicea about the Co-eternity of the Divine Son.
Yet the subtle statement is simply a metaphysical explanation
of the simple statement; and it would be quite possible even to
make it a popular explanation, by saying that God could not love
when there was nothing to be loved. Now the Church Councils
were originally very popular, not to say riotous assemblies.
So far from being undemocratic, they were rather too democratic;
the real case against them was that they passed by uproarious votes,
and not without violence, things that had ultimately to be considered
more calmly by experts. But it may reasonably be suggested, I think,
that the concentration of the Greek intellect on these things did
gradually pass from a popular to a more professional or official thing;
and that the traces of it have finally tended to fade from the
official religion of the East. It was far otherwise with the more
poetical and therefore more practical religion of the West.
It was far otherwise with that direct appeal to pathos and affection
in the highly coloured pictu