pirit.

No less resolute was the effort of Ambrose in resisting the errors of
Arianism, and he also adapted himself to the work in hand. He had not
been afraid of Platonism. On the other hand, we are told that Plato,
next to his Bible, constituted a part of his daily reading, and that,
too, in the period of his ripest Christian experience, and when he
carried his studies and his prayers far into the hours of the night. But
in dealing with Arianism he needed a special understanding of all its
intricacies, and when among its advocates and supporters he encountered
a powerful empress as well as her ablest advocates, he had need of all
the powers within him--that power of moral earnestness which had led him
to give all his property to the poor--that power of strong faith, which
prepared him, if need be, to lay down his life--the power of a
disciplined intellect, and a thorough knowledge of the whole issue.

5. The early Fathers not only studied the heathen philosophies of Plato
and Aristotle, but they learned to employ them, and their successors
continued to employ them, even to the Middle Ages, and the period of the
Reformation. As an intellectual framework, under which truth should be
presented in logical order, it became a strong resource of the early
Christian teachers. Let me refer you on this point to the clear
statements of Professor Shedd.[33] He has well said that "when
Christianity was revealed in its last and beautiful form by the
incarnation of the Eternal World, it found the human mind already
occupied by human philosophy. Educated men were Platonists, or Stoics,
or Epicureans. During the age of Apologetics, which extended from the
end of the apostolic age to the death of Origen, the Church was called
to grapple with these systems, to know as far as possible what they
contained, and to discriminately treat their contents, rejecting some
things, utilizing others." "We shall see," he continues, "that Plato,
Aristotle, and Cicero exerted more influence than all other philosophic
minds united upon the greatest of Christian Fathers, upon the greatest
of the School men, and upon the greatest of the theologians of the
Reformation, Calvin and Melancthon; and if we look at European philosophy,
as it has been unfolded in England, Germany, and France, we can perceive
that all the modern philosophic schools have discussed the principles
of human reason in very much the same manner in which Plato and
Aristotle discussed th