similar succession: so did one universal order spring from its beginning and pass through its appointed period to the end which was like the beginning in that after it all things began anew. Origen’s theory was a modification of this: it recognized an absolute beginning and an absolute end: both the beginning and the end were God: poised as it were between these two divine eternities were the worlds of which we are part. In them, all rational creatures were originally equal and free: they are equal no longer because they have variously used their freedom: and the hypothesis of more worlds than one is a complement, on the one hand of the hypothesis of human freedom, on the other hand of the hypothesis of the divine justice, because it accounts for the infinite diversities of condition, and gives scope for the discipline of reformation. Large elements of this theory dominated in the theology of the Eastern Churches during the fourth century. But ultimately those parts of it which distinguished it from the theory of Irenæus faded away. The mass of Christians were content with a simpler creed. More than one question remained unsolved; and the hypothesis of creation by a rival God was part of the creed of a Church which flourished for several centuries before it faded away, and it also left its traces in many inconsistent usages within the circle of the communities which rejected it. But the belief in the unity of God, and in the identity of the one God with the Creator of the world, was never again seriously disturbed. The close of the controversy was marked by its transference to a different, though allied, area. It was no longer Theological but Christological. The expression “Monarchy,” which had been used of the sole government of the one God, in distinction from the divided government of many gods, came to be applied to the sole government of the Father, in distinction from the “economy” of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In this new area of controversy the old conceptions re-appear. The monistic and dualistic theories of the origin of the world lie beneath the two schools of Monarchianism, in one of which Christ was conceived as a mode of God, and in the other as His exalted creature. In the determination of these Christological controversies Greek philosophy had a no less important influence than it had upon the controversies which preceded them: and with some elements of that determination we shall be concerned in a future Lecture. * * * * *