e never did, private salvation by supernatural
means to all who were willing to accept it.

Such Christianity became, and such in some districts, notably in Rome,
it remained for one or two generations. But in Ephesus and possibly
elsewhere a further synthesis was accomplished. {9} This
sacramentalised Christianity began to come to terms with Greek
philosophy, as the other mystery religions tried to do. It asked what
was the philosophic explanation of its Lord, and it hit on the device
of identifying him with the Logos--a phrase common to several types of
philosophy though used in quite different meanings.

The development of this second synthesis was comparatively slow.
Probably some of the systems which are loosely described as gnostic
were unsuccessful attempts at its accomplishment; but in the end the
Alexandrian theologians Clement and Origen followed the lead given them
by the Fourth Gospel and some of the apologists to the triumphant
construction of a system which really reconciled in part and seemed to
reconcile entirely the Christian cult and the later Platonic
metaphysics.

Although the general fabric of the Christian philosophy which was thus
built up was in the main Platonic, not a little was borrowed also from
the system of the Stoics, especially on the border ground between
metaphysics and ethics. This paved the way for a further synthesis,
accomplished more easily, more thoroughly, and with less perceptible
controversy than had attended either of the others. Probably the
culmination of this conquest of the Christian Church by the ethics of
the Stoa was reached by Ambrose, who gave to the Christian world
Cicero's popularisation of Panaetius and Posidonius in a series of
sermons which extracted the {10} ethics of Rome from the scriptures of
the Christians. The ethics of the Stoics were almost wholly adopted by
the leaders of Christian thought, especially in the West, and the
teaching of Jesus as represented in the Gospels was interpreted in the
interests of this achievement, which, like the other syntheses, was
largely effective in proportion as it was unconscious.

Probably it was the early stages of this movement which had rendered
possible the acceptance by one another of Christianity and the Empire.
Certainly there is still much need of study, even if it produce only
the statement of problems, as to the changed character of Christianity
between the time of Tertullian and Eusebius.

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