ic
meaning, because they have not penetrated to the full religious
experience which gave to the words, often words with long and varied
history both in the Septuagint and in ordinary Greek usage, their
specific meaning to each apostle and especially to Paul. This phenomenon
was noted particularly by E. Reuss, in his _Histoire de la theologie
chretienne an siecle apostolique_ (3rd ed., 1864). Take for instance
Clement. Lightfoot, indeed, dwells on the all-round "comprehensiveness"
with which Clement, as the mouthpiece of the early Roman Church, utters
in succession phrases or ideas borrowed impartially from Peter and Paul
and James and the Epistle to Hebrews. He admits, however, that such mere
co-ordination of the language of Paul and James, for instance, as
appears in his twice bracketing "faith and hospitality" as grounds of
acceptance with God (the cases are those of Abraham and Rahab, in chs.
x. and xii.), is "from a strictly dogmatic point of view" his weakness.
But the weakness is more than a dogmatic one; it is one of religious
experience, as the source of spiritual insight. It is not merely that
"there is no _dogmatic system_ in Clement" or in any other of the
Apostolic Fathers; that may favour, not hinder, religious insight. There
is a want of depth in Christian experience, in the power of realizing
relative spiritual values in the light of the master principle involved
in the distinctively Christian consciousness, such as could raise
Clement above a verbal eclecticism, rather than comprehensiveness, in
the use of Apostolic language. As R.W. Dale remarks, in a note on
Reuss's too severe words (Eng. trans. ii. 295): "The vital force of the
Apostolic convictions gave to Apostolic thought a certain organic and
consistent form." It is lack of this organic quality in the thought, not
only of Clement but also of the Apostolic Fathers generally--with the
possible exception of Ignatius, who seems to share the Apostolic
experience more fully than any other, to which Reuss rightly directs
attention. In virtue of this defect, due largely to the failure to enter
into the Apostolic experience of mystic union with Christ, he can
rightly speak of "an immense retrogression" in theology visible "at the
end of the century, and in circles where it might have been least
expected" (ii. p. 294, cf. 541).

In fact the perspective of the Gospel was seriously changed and its most
distinctive features obscured. This was specially the cas