The function of the primitive Christians, so far as the content of their belief was concerned, was to preserve and transmit to their successors an _implicit_ faith. The value of this faith they attempted to show chiefly by practical, ethical demonstration. Thus they preached chiefly by example, and it is on the ground of _life_ rather than that of _thought_ that they made their plea to the Gentiles. In their struggle for existence, threatened on every side by official persecution and popular fury, they had no opportunity for speculation on fundamentals--they pleaded merely to be allowed to live the life to which they were pledged. With the Eastern training, which most of them had had, so foreign to the ideals of Greek philosophy, and so tenacious of the idea of God, and with the person of Christ so near to them as to blind their eyes to the possibility of any other standard of truth than His words, they naturally afford us no material for the question under discussion. Thus we must wait for the rise of Christian philosophy, and take as our _terminus a quo_ the middle of the second century, when first there appears that literature which bears evidence to the conversion of philosophers to the Christian Church, and affords us examples of their attempts to present the new doctrines to the schools which they had abandoned. Our _terminus ad quem_ will be the Council of Nicea. The reason for this is in part the demands of time and space, and in part the fact that it will avoid needless and tedious repetition. The use of the theistic argument for some time after the Nicene period is fairly homogeneous, and presents no important new considerations. The apologetic work of the patristic writers was chiefly done in the ante-Nicene age; after that discussion turned more upon questions within the scope of the Christian Faith. The function of the age of the Councils was the formulation and definition of Christian dogma upon the admitted basis of the revelation of Jesus Christ. This inquiry, therefore, will have to do with that interesting period when the doctrines of the Christian Church were finding their connection with and relation to the speculations of Greek philosophy, and when the Christian philosophers and apologists were determining the attitude which, for many centuries, revealed religion assumed toward the demonstrations of natural theology. FOOTNOTES: [1] _Philosophy and Theology_, p. 176. CHAPTER II GREEK AND ROMAN THEISTIC ARGUMENTS