From this survey it will be seen that, in the view of the Ante-Nicene Christian authors, the theistic argument was valuable merely as a propædeutic to Christianity, but was superfluous for the believer in Jesus Christ; the use of it cannot, as it had not in Greek thought, bring proof, but only probability; even this uncertain result is only vague and fragmentary in character, and was never unified and made significant by the Greeks; its office in Christian evidences was merely of an _ad hominem_ sort, and this only in its simpler and more practical forms, in which the senses as well as reason had their testimony to bear; and, lastly, the argument was used much more frequently by the Western than by the Alexandrian and other Eastern Fathers. FOOTNOTES: [60] _Stromata_, V, 12. [61] _De Spectaculis_, II. [62] _Against Marcion_, I, 17. [63] _Ibid._, V, 16. This is to justify his doctrine of the punishment of the heathen. [64] _Scapula_, II. [65] _Against Celsus_, I, 23. [66] _Plea for the Christians_, XV, XVI. [67] I, 5 and 6. [68] _Exhortation to the Heathen_, X. [69] _Divine Institutes_, III, 20. [70] Chap. II. [71] _Treatise on the Anger of God_, X. [72] E.g., Stirling: _Philosophy and Theology_, p. 179. [73] _Trypho_, III, IV. [74] _Stromata_, V, 14. [75] _The Soul's Testimony_, I. [76] _Of the Resurrection of the Flesh_, III. [77] _Octavius_, XVIII. [78] _Against Celsus_, II, 40. [79] _De Trinitate_, VIII. [80] _Divine Institutes_, I, 2. [81] E.g., Irenaeus: _Against Heresy_, II, 9, 1; Tertullian: _Against Marcion_, I, 10; Origen: _De Principiis_, I, 3, 1; Tertullian: _Apology_, XVII; Lactantius: _Divine Institutes_, I, 2. [82] E.g., Minucius Felix: _Octavius_, XVII, XVIII; Novatian: _De Trinitate_ VIII; Dionysius the Great: _Fragments_, II, 1. [83] E.g., "Justin, in Philosopher's garb, preached the word of God." Eusebius, IV, 11. [84] The mere list of Greek authors _quoted_ by St. Clement of Alexandria occupies over fourteen quarto pages in Fabricius' _Bibliotheka Graeca_. [85] _Divine Institutes_, V. 4. [86] _Acts_, XVII, 23. [87] _Stromata_, I, 13. [88] E.g., _Stromata_, VI, 5: "The one and only God was known by the Greeks in a Gentile way, by the Jews Judaically, and in a new and spiritual way by us." In I, 5, he says: "For this (philosophy) was a schoolmaster to bring "the Hellenic mind," as the law the Hebrews, to Christ." [89] _Stromata_, V, 14. [90] _Ibid._, VI, 5. See also, e.g., I, 19; V, 13. [91] See Stirling: _Philosophy and Theology_, p. 35. CHAPTER V ECLECTIC THEISM