directing their studies, and opening their eyes to distinguish those sparks of truth which are to be found scattered in the writings of the pagans, however overlaid by a mass of fable. And then at last he presented them with the Sacred Scriptures, in which alone the true knowledge of God is to be found. In one of his letters to St. Gregory he explains in what way he wishes him to regard the profane sciences. “They are to be used,” he says, “so that they may contribute to the understanding of the Scriptures; for just as philosophers are accustomed to say that geometry, music, grammar, rhetoric, and astronomy all dispose us to the study of philosophy, so we may say that philosophy, rightly studied, disposes us to the study of Christianity. We are permitted when we go out of Egypt to carry with us the riches of the Egyptians wherewith to adorn the tabernacle; only let us beware how we reverse the process, and leave Israel to go down into Egypt and seek for treasure: that is what Jeroboam did in old time, and what heretics do in our own.” In addition, therefore, to the elements of education which have been named before, we see that, at the beginning of the third century, Christians were expected to teach and study the liberal arts, profane literature, philosophy, and the Biblical languages. Their teachers commented on the Scriptures, and devoted themselves to a critical study of its text; positive theology, as it is called, had established itself in the schools, together with a certain systematic science of Christian ethics, and, we may add, many branches of physical science also. It matters very little that these latter were but imperfectly known; the real point worth observing is, that every branch of human knowledge, in so far as it had been cultivated at that time, was included in the studies of the Christian schools; and, considering that this had been the work of scarcely more than two centuries, and those centuries of bloody persecution, it must be acknowledged to have been a tolerably expansive growth.