Ards the conversion of the populace who still adhered, at l

Ir writings, and the certainty which they thought they had found, and their consequent attitude toward all arguments of this nature, which we have tried to depict, is the key to the explanation

of a new phase in the history of thought which was to last for several centuries. In our examination of these examples of the theistic argument in the Fathers, it cannot escape our notice that they occur much more frequently, and in more developed
and conventional form in the West than in the East--under the influence of Rome than under that of Alexandria and the Orient.

The reason for this is not
far to seek, and is one that throws light also on the motive with which the patristic writers
made use of these arguments. In Alexandria and the East there was no incentive for the Christians to try to prove the existence of God, for the philosophy of that portion of the world was essentially religious in its character,
and based its speculation on the existence of God as a
fundamental postulate of revelation and of reason as well. In the combination of Judaism and Hellenic
philosophy made by t he "Hellenizing Jews" and by the "Judaizing Hellenes," the existence of God was admitted quite as freely, and maintained quite as zealously, as by the Chri