creature into being, was alone: and since all power over both visible and invisible things was with Him, He Himself by the power of His word gave substance to all things with Himself.” This theory is found in another form in Athenagoras:[361] he makes a point in defence of Christianity that, so far from denying the existence of God, it made Him the Author of all existence, He alone being unborn and imperishable. It is found also in Theophilus,[362] who, however, does not lay stress upon it. But its importance was soon seen. It had probably been for a long time the unreasoned belief of Hebrew monotheism: the development of the Platonic conception within the Christian sphere gave it a philosophical form: and early in the third century it had become the prevailing theory in the Christian Church. God had created matter. He was not merely the Architect of the universe, but its Source.[363] But the theory did not immediately win its way to acceptance. It rather set aside the moral difficulties than solved them. It was attacked by those who felt those difficulties strongly. There are two chief literary records of the controversy: one is the treatise of Tertullian against Hermogenes, the other is a dialogue of about the same date which is ascribed to an otherwise unknown Maximus.[364] Both treatises are interesting as examples not only of contemporary polemics, but of the insoluble difficulties which beset any attempt to explain the origin of moral evil on metaphysical grounds. The attempt was soon afterwards practically abandoned. The solution of the moral difficulties was found in the doctrine of Free-will: the solution of the metaphysical difficulties was found in the general acceptance of the belief that God created all things out of nothing. (ii.) How, under any conception of matter, short of its having been created by God, did God come into contact with it so as to give it qualities and form? The difficulty of the question became greater as the tide of thought receded from anthropomorphism. The dominant idea was that of mediation. Sometimes, as in Philo, the mediation was regarded from the point of view of the plurality and variety of the effects, and the agents were conceived as being more than one in number. They were the angels of the Hebrews, the dæmons of the Greeks. Those who appealed to Scripture saw an indication of this in the use of the plural in the first chapter of Genesis, “Let _us_ make man.”[365] Another current of speculation flowed in the channel, which had been first formed by the _Timæus_ of Plato, of supposing a single Creator and Ruler of the world who, in subordination to the transcendent God, fashioned the things that exist. In some schools of thought this theory was combined with the theory of creation by the Son.[366] The uncontrolled play of imagination in the region of the unknown constructed more than one strange speculation which it is not necessary to revive.