known to the men of their age, as a man among men, while yet the incarnation of God, they accomplished that mightiest of tasks, — the conversion of the Roman Empire.

In the course of the fourth century a change set in a change so great as to amount to a revolution when its results became finally apparent. There are many elements in the process which wrought this revolution which cannot be even alluded to here; only the barest outlines can be mentioned. To put the situation in the largest, most general, way, the causes leading to the deterioration in Church life as well as in thought and in worship were the necessary evils involved in so great a victory as the Church had achieved, when, out of dire persecution, it emerged victorious and became the established religion of the empire under Constantine. A reaction immediately began against the worldliness wherein the Church was now involved, and more particularly a reaction from the vices which stained and defaced the pagan character. This led to the growing and ever more widely prevailing conviction that celibacy (virginity) was the one highest virtue, constituting the angelic life, the imitation of God. The effect of the great Council of Nicæa, which had proclaimed the

co-equality of Christ with the Father, induced a tendency to dwell more exclusively on the divinity of Christ than on His humanity. An able and distinguished bishop, Apollinaris of Laodicea, denied the complete humanity of Christ, holding that He possessed only a human body (σῶμα with ψυχὴ ἄλογος) and that the Divine mind had taken the place of the human mind or reason (ỏ voûs). He was condemned as a heretic (A.D. 381), but, as the subsequent history showed, He was not forgotten, His argument carried weight, in reality He had only given expression to the tendency of His own and the following generations. His exact statement was avoided, but approximation was made to His teaching as far as words would allow.

Under these circumstances the Virgin Mary came to the forefront in the popular mind and in the writings of professed theologians. She now became known in common parlance as the Mother of God (EOTÓKOS) and as "ever Virgin." It became a matter of faith to main

1 For the definition of the phrase "ever Virgin" (deтaρlévos: semper virgo), which the Greek and Roman churches invariably add as a gloss to the clause in the Creed, "born of the Virgin Mary," cf. Augustine, “Ep. (137) ad Volus.," c. 8: "The body of the infant Jesus was brought forth from the womb of His mother, still a virgin, by the same power which afterwards introduced His

tain that she had no other children, reversing the opinion of the earlier Church, thenceforth designated as the Helvidian heresy. The Virgin-birth passed from an incident into a sacrosanct doctrine, to be held as essentially related to the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity, and without which they could not be maintained.

But all this could not have been apart from the strange concurrence with that feature of old heathen religion, which shows peoples as yearning after female deities. The worship of Isis, which had achieved wide popularity in the empire, was now transferred to Mary, and the transition of the heathens into the Church became easy and natural. Other female deities there were, popular in the East, - Demeter, Ceres, or great Diana of the Ephesians, and from these the worship now fell away to a better, more attractive substitute. Mary was now supplanting her Son; the Father and the Son retreat into the background of the people's consciousness; Mary reigns as

body, when He was a man, through the closed doors into the upper chamber." How rigidly Augustine connected this notion of the virginity in partu with the clause in the Creed, "born of the Virgin Mary," is evident from "Enchir.," c. 34, and also is it evident how wide his departure from the original sense of the Creed.

the Queen of heaven; the great truth of the fatherhood of God, which Christ proclaimed as the mission of His life, became inoperative.

Asia Minor seems to have been the place where the transition was accomplished. It was a famous workshop of religions, from whence the influence spread into other countries. Here, as is probable, the materials were worked over, of which other lands contributed the germs. From the Western Church was imported into the East the festival of the birth of Christ (360–386 A.D.) on the twenty-fifth of December. How early it was observed in the West is not known, the first allusion to it being as late as 336 a.D.1 Another contemporaneous change was the combination or fusion of what was characteristic of the Roman Creed (Apostles') with the essential features of the Creed of Nicæa. Under what circumstances this notable result was accomplished is still a question which needs elucidation,' but the fact remains that the Creed

1 Cf. Duchesne, "Origines du Culte Chrétienne," pp. 247 ff. Augustine does not mention Christmas among the festivals universally observed on the authority of the apostles or plenary councils - "the Lord's passion, resurrection and ascension, and the descent of the Holy Spirit from heaven," Ep. 54 (400 A.D.).

2 Cf. Swainson, "The Nicene and Apostles' Creeds," pp. 85 ff. and 155 ff. See also Hort, "Two Dissertations" on the creeds.

now designated and recited as the Nicene Creed was probably the work of Epiphanius, in whose treatise, "The Anchored One" (c. 374 A.D.), it first appears. Cyril, the bishop of Jerusalem, who was suspected of heresy, presented this Creed to the so-called second General Council in 381 A.D., and on the ground of this confession was acquitted. This new creed grew in popular use, till it supplanted the Nicene Creed; and it gained the approval of the Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.), under the misapprehension that it was the work of the Council of Constantinople. The new Creed, as Dr. Hort has remarked, had "sung itself" into the heart of the Church, before it received conciliar sanction. From the East it travelled back into the West and supplanted for generations the old Roman (Apostles') Creed.

These facts are mentioned here because of their relation to the process going on in Asia Minor during the fourth century, which was revolutionizing the thought and belief of the Church. Germs, when they are transplanted, may change their character or gain a new vitality. Enough remains in the way of literary débris to show the process of the transformation. Thus, for example, the pseudo Ignatius (c. 340 A.D.), revised the Ignatian Epistles, and brought