This brings us to another point in which Christianity and Stoicism were a contrast, yet at first sight not very far removed one from the other. Both allowed and taught an universal law, by which all nature and all events are regulated; but while the one teaches that this universal law is the wisdom of an infallible Lord constantly superintending and ordering all things well, the other held that all things were arranged according to the decrees of a blind and unalterable fate. The Apostle of Christ taught the Athenians that there was no truth in the wild speculation of the Epicurean, who held that all things happened by chance: but he brought before them, as a ruler, a being full of intelligence and constantly superintending the course of events; not some inexorable fate. He told them of one who, having created of one blood all nations that dwell on the face of the earth, arranged the period of their existence and fixed the bounds of their habitation. And He did this all in wisdom, with the intention that all men might seek Him, and find their happiness in the knowledge of His goodness and by participating in His love. Contrasted with this was the doctrine of fatalism which the Stoics taught. All things proceeded, they said, from destiny, which was omnipotent. To its decrees both gods and men must bow. From its power not the highest even were exempt. This destiny was “the law according to which what has been, has been; what is, is; and what shall be, shall be[19].” Instead of an overruling Providence constantly superintending the affairs of the universe, there was a law binding the highest God, as well as the lowest in creation. So we read in Seneca (_De Providentia_, cap. VI.): “Eadem necessitas et Deos alligat. Irrevocabilis divina pariter atque humana cursus vehit. Ille ipse omnium conditor ac rector scripsit quidem Fata, sed sequitur. Semper paret, semel jussit.” The Stoical doctrine then was that GOD himself is a servant to the necessity of the material scheme; that He is bound by eternal decrees; that he could not have created an atom different from what it is, and cannot change anything merely according to what He may will in the future. So Cicero quotes a Greek poet, and puts these words as his meaning, “Quod fore paratum est, id summum exuperat Jovem.” Indeed the first Stoics adopted this fatalism as their belief, and seem to have held firmly as a truth, what Herodotus states, δοῦλος Θεὸς ἀνάγκης. We shall see that this necessitarian scheme had an influence, of no small extent, on certain parts of the Church of Christ in after ages.