employing it as a means of education, yet he did so with regret, and would forbid Christians to teach it in the public schools, where some recognition of Paganism would be implied. The general practice of the Christians, however, did not conform to Tertullian's exhortations. Indeed, many of the cultivated Christians of the 3rd and 4th centuries were little more than nominal adherents to the Faith, and the intercourse between Christian and Pagan was often close and friendly. The general attitude of Christians towards the traditional education is evidenced by the protest raised against the edict of Julian, which forbade them to teach in the public schools. The ultimate outcome seems to be fairly expressed in the writings of St Augustine (354-430) and St Jerome (346-420), who held that literary and rhetorical culture is good so long as it is kept subservient to the Christian life. In another way Greek philosophy exercised an abiding influence over the culture of future ages. The early centuries of Christianity felt the need of formulating the Faith to preserve it from disintegration into a mass of fluid opinions, and such formulation was of necessity made under the influence of the philosophy in which the early Fathers had been trained--that Neo-platonism which was the last effort of Paganism to attain a conception of life and of God. In the West, this formulation had to be translated into Latin, for Greek was no longer generally understood in Italy, and thus the juristic trend of Roman thought also became a factor in the exposition of Christian doctrine. This formulation of the Faith was one of the chief legacies the transition centuries passed on to the middle ages.