e it for granted that the works of Bishop
Bull, which at this time I read, were my chief introduction to this
principle. The course of reading, which I pursued in the composition of
my volume, was directly adapted to develope it in my mind. What
principally attracted me in the ante-Nicene period was the great Church
of Alexandria, the historical centre of teaching in those times. Of Rome
for some centuries comparatively little is known. The battle of Arianism
was first fought in Alexandria; Athanasius, the champion of the truth,
was Bishop of Alexandria; and in his writings he refers to the great
religious names of an earlier date, to Origen, Dionysius, and others,
who were the glory of its see, or of its school. The broad philosophy of
Clement and Origen carried me away; the philosophy, not the theological
doctrine; and I have drawn out some features of it in my volume, with
the zeal and freshness, but with the partiality, of a neophyte. Some
portions of their teaching, magnificent in themselves, came like music
to my inward ear, as if the response to ideas, which, with little
external to encourage them, I had cherished so long. These were based on
the mystical or sacramental principle, and spoke of the various
Economies or Dispensations of the Eternal. I understood these passages
to mean that the exterior world, physical and historical, was but the
manifestation to our senses of realities greater than itself. Nature was
a parable: Scripture was an allegory: pagan literature, philosophy, and
mythology, properly understood, were but a preparation for the Gospel.
The Greek poets and sages were in a certain sense prophets; for
"thoughts beyond their thought to those high bards were given." There
had been a directly divine dispensation granted to the Jews; but there
had been in some sense a dispensation carried on in favour of the
Gentiles. He who had taken the seed of Jacob for His elect people had
not therefore cast the rest of mankind out of His sight. In the fulness
of time both Judaism and Paganism had come to nought; the outward
framework, which concealed yet suggested the Living Truth, had never
been intended to last, and it was dissolving under the beams of the Sun
of Justice which shone behind it and through it. The process of change
had been slow; it had been done not rashly, but by rule and measure, "at
sundry times and in divers manners," first one disclosure and then
another, till the whole evangelical doctrine