(i.) The Christian conception of God on its ethical side was dominated by the idea of the forgiveness of sins. God was a Sovereign who had issued commands: He was a Householder who had entrusted His servants with powers to be used in His service. As Sovereign, He could, at His pleasure, forgive a breach of His orders: as Householder, He could remit a debt which was due to Him from His servants. The special message of the Gospel was, that God was willing to forgive men their transgressions, and to remit their debts, for the sake of Jesus Christ. The corresponding Greek conception had come to be dominated by the idea of order. The order was rational and beneficent, but it was universal. It could not be violated with impunity. The punishment of its violation came by a self-acting law. There was a possibility of amendment, but there was none of remission. Each of these conceptions is consistent with itself: each by itself furnishes the basis of a rational theology. But the two conceptions are apparently irreconcilable with each other; and the history of a large part of early Christian theology is the history of endeavours to reconcile them. The one conception belonged to a moral world, controlled by a Personality who set forces in motion; the other to a physical world, controlled by a force which was also conceived as a Personality. Stated in Christian terms, the one resolved itself into the proposition, God is good; the other into the proposition, God is just. The two propositions seemed at first to be inconsistent with each other: on the one hand, the infinite love of God excluding the idea of punishment; on the other hand, His immutable righteousness excluding the idea of forgiveness.[421] The difficulty seemed insoluble, except upon the hypothesis of the existence of two Gods. The ditheism was sometimes veiled by the conception that the second God had been created by the first, and was ultimately subordinate to Him. In the theology of Marcion, which filled a large place in the Christianity of both the second and the third centuries, ditheism was presented as the only solution of this and all the other contrasts of which the world is full, and of which that of Law and Grace is the most typical example.[422] The New Testament was the revelation of the good God, the God of love; the Old Testament was that of the just God, the God of wrath. Redemption was the victory of forgiveness over punishment, of the God who was revealed by Jesus Christ over the God who was manifested in the Law.