Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/122

 ;00 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. I guage of conversation and literature of the new Roman Empire between the Adria and the Eu- phratus had become the language of the Church, and this circumstance contributed largely in giv- ing the new capital, Constantinople, a Greek phy- siognomy. The Christian religion took root on Greek soil. It was embraced not only by the poor and humbler classes, but also by the edu- cated Greeks with their acute intellect, inclined especially to dialectic activity regarding the dogmatics of the new religion. They had in- herited philosophic speculation and dialectic cunning from the antique Greek philosophers, and this inheritance which they now applied to theological questions became subsequently dangerous to them since it led to religious dis- sensions. Montreuil says: "The Greeks are by their very nature philosophical and speculative. The search for abstract truth is to them more attrac- tive than the pursuit of reforms or the regulation of manners. They are a race eminently liter- ary. They have always been thinkers rather than statesmen. They accordingly seized upon that side of theology which appealed most strongly to their natural genius. The heresies which arose among them were begotten by the