Those who lived in the midst of this great movement fully recognised its wonderful character. Thus Clement of Alexandria, in his address to the Greeks, exclaimed: "The power of God casting its beams upon the earth with incredible rapidity and most attractive kindness has filled everything with the seed of salvation. For the Lord could not have brought about so great a work in so small a time without a divine goodwill and affection; despicable in appearance, worshipped in deed; purifier, Saviour, propitious, the Divine Word, the most manifest truly God, equal to the Lord of the universe, for He was His Son, 'and the Word was in God.' Nor was He disbelieved when first announced; nor when He took upon Him human form and fashioned Himself after the flesh, and acted the saving drama of the manhood, was He ignored. For He was a lawful combatant and a fellow-combatant with His creature; and when swifter than the sun He dawned upon us at the Father's will. He was communicated most speedily to all men, and with the utmost ease caused God to shine upon us; showing whence He was Himself, and who He was by what He taught and by what He did; bearer to us of the treaty and the reconciliation, our Saviour Word, a fountain of life and of peace, poured over the whole face of the earth; through whom the world has become a very sea of blessings."[196] No less were eye-witnesses struck with the impotence of philosophy in comparison with the doctrine of the cross. Thus the same Clement in another place says: "The heaven-taught wisdom is that alone which is with us, from which spring all the sources of wisdom; such, I mean, as lead to the truth. For certainly when the Lord who was to teach us came to men He had innumerable pointers of His way, to announce, to prepare, to precede Him, from the very foundation of the world. They pre-signified Him by action and by word, they prophesied His coming, the where and the when, and His signs. From afar off the Law provides for Him, and Prophecy; then His precursor declares His presence; then the heralds teaching the power of His appearance signify it. [But philosophers[197]] pleased their own only, and not all these, for Socrates pleased Plato, and Plato Xenocrates, and Aristotle Theophrastus, and Zeno Cleanthes. They persuaded those only who embraced their own sect. But the word of our Teacher did not remain in Judea alone, as philosophy did in Greece. It was poured over the whole world, persuading from nation to nation, village to village, city to city, whole houses of Greeks at once and of barbarians, and each one of the hearers by himself, and bringing over to the truth not a few of the philosophers themselves. Now, as for the Greek philosophy, if any one in authority offers it hindrance, forthwith it disappears; whereas our doctrine, from its very first announcement, has been thwarted by kings and tyrants, and magistrates, and governors, with all their satellites and men innumerable, who make war upon us, and do