e history of philosophy,
and of the utmost importance as regards its effects on subsequent
thought.

And of this antagonism and subsequent reconciliation, the early
Christian Apologists were concrete examples. They had most of them,
before they became Christians, been adherents of one or the other of the
different philosophical sects, and several of them had tried all in
turn.[33] They exemplified well the prevailing restless distrust of the
results and methods of the older schools, but in Christianity--the
belief in a Person, who was for them "the Way, the Truth and the
Life"--they finally found the certainty for which they had so long
sought in vain. The effect of this process, and of this result upon the
attitude of the early Christian philosophers, could be none other than
an increased distrust of the arguments for the existence of God, and an
inclination to ignore them completely. These already suspected processes
of reasoning by which the Greeks had been able to attain only to an
abstract principle, or force, or mechanical cause, or arranger of the
world, must be of very small importance to these men, upon whose sight
had burst all at once, in the height of their despair, the vision of the
Christian doctrine of God, certified to by one whom they believed to be
the veritable Son of God, "of one substance with the Father," and whose
testimony to the truth of any fact brought a certainty which was
infinitely superior to that which could be attained by any rational
argument on other grounds. The transcendent authority of the teaching of
Jesus Christ for these men, suddenly rescued by a belief in His claims
from an absolute scepticism which was rapidly overflowing their minds,
needs to be thoroughly appreciated before one can understand the
position which they assumed, especially with reference to such a
question as the one under discussion.

But though this basis of belief was sufficient for them, yet, as the
primary mission of the Christian was to "go, disciple all nations," they
were soon brought, in their endeavors to fulfil this command, into
contact with those who not only denied the authority of their Teacher,
but who were sceptical about the very fundamentals of religious belief.
For the sake of these, then, and occasionally for the further
confirmation of the faith of believers, and for purposes of
illustration, the patristic writers return again to the discussion of
those elements of belief for which they t