Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

io6 Different Interpretations
CHAP. iv.
useful. Some reasons, however, are perhaps discernible in
hhe circumstances of the early Church for the supremacy
of a milder interpretation of the doctrine of original sin.
The writers of that age were, in the first place, more imbued
with gentile thought than those of a later era ; and the
Church, on its first entrance into the world, was both more
dependent on and less suspicious of the world s philosophers.
It was more dependent on them, because it was as yet with
out an established literature of its own ; it was less suspi
cious of them, because it did not stand in so strong an
antagonistic relation to the world without, as it subse
quently did when that world had been longer tried, and
had shown that portion of it which remained without
greater obstinacy in rejecting the Gospel. Earlier Chris
tianity regarded the gentile world more as a field of pro
mise ; and saw in it the future harvest rather than the
present foe. Nor is it to be forgotten, that the principal
writers of that age themselves, Justin Martyr, Clement of
Alexandria, and others, came from the ranks of gentile
philosophy, and retained in their conversion the intellectual
tastes of their former life. The early Church thus adopted
a friendly tone toward gentile philosophy, and acknowledged
sympathies with it. But such sympathies could not but
raise the estimate of the natural state of man; for they were
themselves a tribute of respect to the fruits of human
thought and feeling in that state.
Another reason for the milder interpretation of original
sin in the early Church was the great prominence then
given to the doctrine of the Logos, i.e. to the contempla
tion of our Lord as the wisdom or reason of the Father, and
as such the source of wisdom and enlightenment to the
human mind ; the aspect in which he is set forth in the
opening of St. John s gospel. The early fathers, partly
from a peculiar sympathy with it as philosophers, partly
from an acquaintance with the Platonic doctrine of a Logos,
which bore some resemblance to and appeared to be a hea
then anticipation of the true one,
and partly to fortify a
controversial position against the Gnostics, whose boast of
a peculiar inward illumination imparted by their philosophy