The Stoic wise man, who had adopted with faith that doctrine, forthwith rose to a condition differing _in kind_ from the rest of the world, who were set down as moral fools, whose highest efforts at doing right were mere senseless blundering, mere filthy rags, without value or merit. The wise man, on the contrary, was justified in the sight of God, and could commit no sin; the commission of one fault would be a violation of his election, and would make him guilty of all, and as subject to punishment as the vilest criminal. For all faults were equally violations of the moral law, and therefore equally proofs that the true light was not there. Whether one of the elect could fall away, was a matter of dispute, but in general was thought impossible[203:1]. Whether conversion was a gradual change of character, or a sudden inspiration, was an anxious topic of discussion. The wise man, and he alone, enjoyed absolute liberty, boundless wealth, supreme happiness; nothing could take from him the inestimable privileges he had attained. [Sidenote: The Stoic Providence.] Can any one fail to recognize these remarkable doctrines, not only in the spirit, but in the very letter, of Saint Paul's teaching? Does he not use even the language of the Stoic paradoxes, 'as, sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all things'? Is not his so-called sermon at Athens a direct statement of Stoic views against the Epicureans, taking nothing away, but adding to their account of the moral world the revelation of Jesus Christ and of the Resurrection? Will any one venture to assert in the face of these facts that the most serious and religious of Greek systems was the offspring of children in morals, or that it failed to exert a powerful influence through the greatest teacher of Christianity upon all his followers? It is of course idle to weigh these things in a minute balance, and declare who did most, or what was the greatest advance made in our faith beyond the life and teaching of its Founder. But the more we compare Greek Stoicism with Pauline Christianity, the more distinctly their general connection will be felt and appreciated. [Sidenote: Saint John's Gospel.] § 88. Let us now come to the more obvious and better acknowledged case of Saint John. It has been the stock argument of those who reject the early date and alleged authorship of the Fourth Gospel that the writer is imbued with Hellenistic philosophy; that he is intimate with that fusion of Jewish and Platonic thought which distinguished the schools of Alexandria; that in particular the doctrine of the _Word_, with which the book opens, is quite strange to Semite thought, doubly strange to Old Testament theology, not even hinted at in the early apocryphal books. In other words, the Greek elements in the Fourth Gospel are so strong that many critics think them impossible of attainment for a man of Saint John's birth and education!