But this political success was the result and not the cause of the growth of Christianity. It could never have conquered so intrenched a government as Rome, if it had not first been victorious over the more persistent civilization of Greece. It made itself inherently strong by Hellenizing itself――strong both for polemical and for constructive purposes. But it is obvious that little philosophical originality may be expected during this period. When the church fathers began to employ Hellenistic philosophy, they took it on the whole as they found it. They varied it only to suit their own legitimate purposes. Christianity entered the religious controversies of the time when victory would belong to the sect which could use Greek civilization most effectively in defending itself against the hostility of other religions, and in constantly renewing the confidence of its devotees. But in the adoption of Hellenistic culture the church created a new danger to itself. It must guard its own conceptions lest they be smothered by this same Hellenism. It must keep its fundamental beliefs in their integrity. Greek philosophy must be a servant so constrained as to bring out only the implicit meaning of the fundamental Christian doctrines. Philosophy must not corrupt these doctrines and transmute them into Hellenism. The simple faith of the first century and its doctrines must be so formulated by Hellenic wisdom that it would be stated for all time. The church needed a dogmatic system, a creed that could forestall any future innovations. The long series of œcumenical councils of the church, beginning with the Council of Nicæa in 325, were united efforts in this direction. After that first council, dogma became more gradually fixed and, from time to time, this and that group of men were separated from the church as heretical. Patristics is this philosophical secularizing of the Gospel which accompanied the internal and external development of the church body during the two or three centuries after the year 150 A. D.