Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

102 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMbeen remarked. But their differing standing-pointsbeing on the one hand bare reason, and on the otherreason penetrated with grace, the analogy betweenthe natural and the supernatural standard is to beexpected. In all this view, which the later Stoics,Seneca, M. Aurelius, Epictetus, present with suchdetail, reiteration, and pathos, the law of nature, accordingto which they spoke, would carry them up tothe very threshold of the Christian Faith. St. Paul,in expressing the struggle of the regenerate managainst sin, falls almost upon the words of the heathenpoet: but as his standard is far higher, and his scalemore minute, and his vision of sin more clear andterrible, so his language exceeds in intensity. " Isee and approve the better and follow the worse,"says the one; " 0 wretched man that I am, says theother, " who shall deliver me from the body of thisdeath ? "The Stoic then made the mass of men as muchsinners against the law of nature, as the Christianmakes them against the law of God.9. The points hitherto noted belong to Stoicismfrom its beginning, though the last one, the generalcorruption of mankind, is enforced by Seneca with anintensity unexampled before, and the great humanrepublic, in its full and practical development, appearsonly in him and his successors.1 But we nowFriedlaender, Sittcngcschichte Roms,\i\. 610, observes, " In fact anunprejudiced consideration must reach the conclusion that Stoicismand Cynicism raised themselves at this time by their own strength toa height and purity in the moral conception of human rights andhuman duties which had not been reached in an earlier antiquity.It was the Stoics of this time who first carried out in its whole rangeand to its last consequences the Stoic principle of all men belonging toeach other, who, according to the expression of Epictetus, have allGod for their Father, and so are brethren." The admission that theStoics of this time were the first to do this I take to be much more