95 
a literature ; and might amuse them ; but it had (Cicero’s 
no influence on thought. After the Christian era, Tugc * 
it was of necessity re-examined. 
The Neo-Platonicians soon felt the impossibility of separating, 
as the Eleatics did, the Divine Being, or Supreme, from the 
universe of existence and thought, and for some xeo-piato- 
relief recurred to the Platonic doctrine of a Trinity, nicians - 
though modifying Plato in a way we must not here stay 
to explain. They attributed Energy, Intellect, (c. Morgan 
and Creative Power to the Second Hypostasis of on the Trinity 
their Triad, the “ Demiurge,” as they said, who ° f Plat °' ) 
had Unity with the Supreme, essentially, but also had in 
common with us the attributes of intellectual existence. This, 
however, was but removing the difficulty a step further back ; 
for if movement, thought, and action were inconsistent with 
the Supreme Perfection, how could this Demiurge have pro- 
ceeded from the Infinite One, or Supreme ? Would they sup- 
pose the Demiurge came into action or being without the 
knowledge and will of the Supreme ? This they must have 
been reluctant to say, because it would destroy the Supreme 
Unity. 
67. The early Christian doctors found the difficulty at this 
point. The field of speculation was occupied by the Heathen theo- 
sophists, Plotinus and his friends, before the exacter Christian 
statements of the relation of man to the Supreme The Christian 
(through the Incarnation) had been formulated, and doctor before 
during the second and third centuries the struggle comp, with the 
between the Church and the Philosophers was Enneades - 
an earnest one. 
These Christian doctors did not gain the mastery without 
accepting much of that philosophy of the old world. They 
appropriated, and tried to consecrate some of the terms of the 
Alexandrian School, and (at the frequent risk of Arianizing) 
they at length attained, though imperfectly, some philosophy of 
Dogma. The Greek language which they used became at a 
later day the medium of Athanasian thought, as no other 
language could be ; and the Church thus effected the conquest 
of Pagan Philosophy, by the time of Justinian,* # A ^ ^ 
who closed the old schools for ever. 
68. But during the preceding century the Latin Church and 
the Latin language had further predominated in the West, after 
the transfer of the Greek to the East in the time of Constantine. 
The Latin fathers necessarily accepted the Ecclesiastical philo- 
sophy of the Greek doctors in a somewhat hard and mechani- 
cal way. Even the genius of St. Jerome or St. Th0 ogU 
Augustine availed nothing to avert the conse- Nicene 0 Chris- 
