Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

1/2 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMupon is avoided. "Fori this first and most perfectarchitect took for that in which his art should workthe universal matter of the whole." All power, wisdom,and jroodness, which can be assigned to a Godho is not a Creator, are assigned to him by DAgain, the kinship between God and man-thesharing, that is, of the divine reason, which distinguishesthe divine and the human race, and italone-is strongly dwelt upon, and that on its twodes; on the side of the deity as a reason for theunfailing divine solicitude about all men, on the sideof man as a reason for reciprocal philanthropy betweenall men without regard to national distinctions. Forthe contracted view of nationalism is entirely over-leapt by Dio. The divine2 polity is a communion ofods and men sharing law and citizenship betweenall who possess reason and prudence, and Zeus presidesover hospitality by his name Xenios, becausewe must esteem no man strange to us, and he drawstogether all men and wills them to be friends to eachother, 7 and no one an enemy. d In short, * the wholehumanitarian doctrine is as completely the possessionof Dio as of Epictetus and Plutarch. It is a pointhich the Stoic, the Platonist. and the Eclectttogether of one mind, and which forms a basis ofO *Now whence did Dio derive the conception of thispreme architect of the universe who put the worldether by His moulding art out of universal matter,d who rules it with equity and unfailing care ? Heeges that all men by an intuitive judgment accept1OUTOJ yap drj Tr/xDros /octi reXfioraros drj/j.iorp'yos \opTyybv\afiuv TT?Seai-roi' rvT}^ . . . TT]V Trdcrav TOV iravTos v\r)i'. Orat. xii. p. 217.- Orat. xxxvi. p. 448 ; xii. p. 216.