Whatever the explanation, in any case the hand of God was to be traced in it--Providence foreknew all, and so designed that the wickedness of fallen angels and men should promote righteousness and truth.[72] So much for those who quote the text "All that ever came before me were thieves and robbers,"[73] or who say that the devil is the author of {282} Philosophy[74] (though we may admit Epicureanism to have been sown by the sower of tares).[75] We might look far for a more vivid illustration of the contrast between sound instinct and absurd theory. [Sidenote: The _Protrepticus_] Thus he vindicates the right of the Christian to claim Philosophy as the manifestation of the Divine Logos, and as a fore-runner of the Gospel, and in his _Protrepticus_ he shows how the Christian thus re-inforced can deal with paganism. If the _Stromateis_ weary even the sympathetic reader with their want of plan, their diffuseness and repetition, and their interminable and fanciful digressions--faults inherent in all works of the kind--the _Protrepticus_ makes a different impression. It is written by the same hand and shows the same tendencies, but they are under better control. Allegories, analogies and allusions still hinder the development of his thought--like Atalanta he can never let a golden apple run past him. He is not properly a philosopher in spite of all his love of Philosophy, and he thinks in colours, like a poet. Yet he is not essentially a man of letters or a poet; he is too indolent; his style is not inevitable or compulsive. It is too true a confession when he says that he does not aim at beauty of language. His sentence will begin well, and then grow intricate and involved--in breaks an allusion, not always very relevant, and brings with it a quotation that has captured his fancy and paralyses his grammar--several perhaps--some accommodation is made, and the sentence straggles on, and will end somehow--with a pile of long words, for which others have been patiently waiting since before the quotation, in pendent genitives, accusatives and so forth. But in the _Protrepticus_--in the better parts of it--something has happened to his style, for (to speak after his own manner) Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. He is no longer arguing; he surrenders to a tide of emotion, and is borne along singing, and as he sings, he seems to gather up all the music of the ancient world; we catch notes that come from Greek and Hebrew song, and the whole is woven together {283} into a hymn to "the Saviour," "my Singer," "our new Orpheus," that for sheer beauty, for gladness and purity of feeling is unmatched in early Christian literature. One comes back to it after years and the old charm is there still. That it can survive in a few translated fragments is hardly to be expected.