e with the
experimental doctrines of grace. Here the central glory of the Cross as
"the power of God unto salvation" suffered some eclipse, although the
passion of Christ was felt to be a transcendent act of Divine Grace in
one way or another. But even more serious was the loss of an adequate
sense of the contrast between "grace" and "works" as conditions of
salvation. There was little or no sense of the danger of the _legal
principle_, as related to human egoism and the instinct to seek
salvation as a reward for merit. The passages in which these things are
laid bare by Paul's remorseless analysis of his own experience "under
Law" seem to have made practically no impression on the Apostolic
Fathers as a whole. Gentile Christians had not felt the fang of the Law
as the ex-Pharisee had occasion to feel it. Even if first trained in the
Hellenistic synagogues of the Dispersion, as was often the case, they
apprehended the Law on its more helpful and less exacting side, and had
not been brought "by the Law to die unto the Law," that they might "live
unto God." The result was too great a continuity between their religious
conceptions before and after embracing the Gospel. Thus the latter
seemed to them simply to bring forgiveness of past sins for Christ's
sake, and then an enhanced moral responsibility to the New Law revealed
in Him. Hence a new sort of legalism, known to recent writers as
Moralism, underlies much of the piety of the Apostolic Fathers, though
Ignatius is quite free from it, while Polycarp and "Barnabas" are less
under its influence than are the _Didache_, Clement, the Homilist and
Hermas. It conceives salvation as a "wages" ([Greek: osthos]) to be
earned or forfeited; and regards certain good works, such as prayer,
fasting, alms--especially the last--as efficacious to cancel sins. The
reality of this tendency, particularly at Rome, betrays itself in
Hermas, who teaches the supererogatory merit of alms gained by the
self-denial of fasting (_Sim_. v. 3. 3 ff.). Marcion's reaction, too,
against the Judaic temper in the Church as a whole, in the interests of
an extravagant Paulinism, while it suggests that Paul's doctrines of
grace generally were inadequately realized in the sub-apostolic age,
points also to the prevalence of such moralism in particular.

(C) In attempting a final estimate of the value of the Apostolic Fathers
for the historian to-day, we may sum up under these heads:
ecclesiastical, theological,