[626] The Eleusinian Mysteries in Greece, and some Oriental cults, particularly that of Mithra, imported into the Roman Empire, made the participation in a blessed life beyond the grave dependent upon moral purity of life on earth and through this doctrine exercised a favorable influence upon morality (see p. 254). [627] This thought and conviction of the immortality of the individual was, it is possible, in part the outcome of the decay of the ancient city, whose fancied eternity had satisfied for a time the instinct of immortality. But when some centuries had passed, the “Romans sailed round the Mediterranean and recognized that the cities of the past were not eternal, and with the same waft of conviction came a compensating belief that eternity was the heritage of every son of man. Immortality arose on the horizon of the man, as its last glow faded from the city” (Wedgwood, _The Moral Ideal_, 3d ed., p. 341). It was the same in Judea; as immortality faded from the political horizon of Israel, it arose on that of the individual soul. [628] Though the account of the fall of man forms the prelude of the Hebrew Scriptures, the conception never influenced to an appreciable degree pre-Christian ethics. [629] See Schmidt, _The Prophet of Nazareth_ (1905), p. 322. [630] “L’humanité cherche l’idéal; mais elle veut que l’idéal soit une personne; elle n’aime pas une abstraction.”--RENAN, _Marc-Aurèle_, 5^{me} ed., p. 582. [631] _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. ii, p. 8. [632] On this subject consult Hatch, _The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church_ (1888), lect. xii, “The Transformation of the Basis of Christian Union: Doctrine in the Place of Conduct.” [633] “After the middle of the third century, ... Christianity may be just as truly called a Hellenic religion as an Oriental.”--HARNACK, _The Expansion of Christianity_ (1904), vol. i, pp. 393 f. [634] The change of emphasis from moral life to correct doctrine took place during the last half of the second and the first half of the third century. “Under the influence of contemporary Greek thought, the word faith came to be transferred from simple trust in God to mean the acceptance of a series of propositions, and these propositions, propositions in abstract metaphysics” (Hatch, _The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church_ (1888), p. 310). [635] The Athanasian Creed, which by the end of the ninth century was in use in the churches of the West as an authoritative symbol and exposition of the Roman Catholic faith, says, “Whosoever will be saved, before all things, it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith, which faith, except every one who do keep entire and unviolated, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly” (Philip Schaff, _Bibliotheca Symbolica Ecclesiae Universalis_, vol. ii, p. 66). [636] Lecky, _History of European Morals_, 3d ed., vol. ii, p. 68.