At the age of sixteen, the lad Arius was very thoroughly informed in knowledge of the kingdom of heaven as that knowledge had been taught in the Church from the very days of Jesus and the twelve. In those days the only written authorities relied upon by Christians were the four gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. The letters of Paul, especially those written against Judaism, the epistles of Peter, of John, of Jude, of Hermas, Irenæus, Polycarp, and others, were held in high esteem as the deliberate utterances of wise and pious men; but even the humblest Christian never hesitated to quote the gospels and the Acts against any of them with whose opinions he was dissatisfied. The wilderness of creeds and dogmas which in later times grew up out of these epistles was entirely unknown to primitive Christianity; yet the perusal of them was advantageous to the young man in many ways. The journeys of Paul aroused in his active mind a keen desire to know more of the world, and of the religion, manners, and customs of other nations; and the knowledge that Ammonius had acquired of different lands and peoples, both by his sea-faring observations and by such reading and conversation as circumstances had rendered possible to him, seemed to have been absorbed by his son in the long years of constant and affectionate intercourse between them; and this was no small stock of information, for the Mediterranean was then in every sense the "middle" sea, the highway of the world; and it was impossible for a shrewd, intelligent ship-owner and sailor like Ammonius to navigate its waters for years without being brought into personal contact with men out of every nation under heaven. In the same way the lad had almost unconsciously acquired an intimate knowledge of the fauna and flora of Cyrenaica, and in fact of Northern Libya, and could name almost every plant, animal, bird, and insect in the vicinity of Baucalis; so that even at this early age he had laid the foundations of future acquisitions in every department of knowledge that was in any way accessible unto him, and had acquired a sturdy habit of independent thought and examination about everything that came within the range of his observation. On Sabbath evenings (the word Sunday was then unknown to the Christian world) he loved to wander along the sea-shore, or through the wooded mountains that everywhere around Baucalis rose up from the water’s edge and rolled away like gigantic and immovable billows high and higher southwardly toward the great Barcan plateau.