Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/130

 112 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. philosophy ; that no one could be truly pious who did not philosophize. But beyond this, Origen's benevo- lent mind inspired us with the love of the Word and of our teacher himself. Afterwards he assailed us in the Socratic fashion, purged us by argumentations, then sowed the good seed. He taught us also physics, geometry, and astronomy, and ethics not only by word but by deed, and constrained us to practise righteous- ness. He had us study all philosophers, except the atheists, that we might not attribute undue importance to one doctrine through ignorance of the rest. But above all he taught us to devote ourselves to the teaching of God and the prophets in Scripture. Christianity gave to Christian students of philoso- phy a definite purpose and a point of view. Thus Origen writes to Gregory : " Good natural parts help one toward any end, and yours might make you a good Roman lawyer or a Greek philosopher. But I advise you to use the strength of your natural parts with Christianity as an end (reXiKois els XpLo-TULvCa-fiov) and to seek from Greek philosophy what may serve as preparation for Christianity, and from geometry and astronomy what may serve to explain the Holy Scriptures, so that, as students of philosophy speak of geometry, music, grammar, rhetoric, and astronomy as fellow-helpers to philosophy, we may speak of phi- losophy itself in relation to Christianity.^' ^ Irenaeus had said : " True knowledge, yv(o(nq dXrjO^s, which is opposed to the fallacies of the Gnostics, is the doctrine of the apostles, the constitution of the Church according to the succession of bishops, and 1 Epiatola ad Oregorium.