Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/239

 vm] CHRISTIAN PROSE 221 The notion of four great monarchies set the plan according to which the Middle Ages divided ancient history; and to mediaeval men, chronological corre- spondences, which never existed in fact, were to be evidences of God's providential guidance of history, as they were to Orosius. It has been said that Orosius finds for history a new principle of organic unity in the thought that all events occur within the purpose and control of God's providence.^ He discerns most interesting evidence of this in the providential bringing of all nations beneath one rule and into one great peace, under Augustus, in order that when Christ was born the gospel might readily spread among mankind.^ The chief argument of Orosius' presentation of his- tory, as against the opponents of Christianity, lay in the long pre-Christian tale of slaughter, pestilence, and calamity. His story is confined to war, seen in its carnage, and to other ill-fortunes of mankind. He had no eye for human progress, for the growth of insti- tutions or culture, nor had he any conception of such development. His main apologetic contention is that the world in his time was less infelicitous than in the periods covered by his histories.^ His work was the Christian argumentative summary of history, a true 1 Ebert. For the earliest Christian reference to Providence, Ebert citee from Minucius Felix's Octaviics, Chap. 25, sec. 12: Et tamen ante eos (sc. Romanos) Deo dispensante diu regna tenemnt Assyrii, Medii, Persae, Graeci, etiam et Aegyptii. The Stoics had developed an idea of Providence. See Zeller, PMlosophie der Griechen, III», pp. 157 et seq. (.'ki ed., 1880). a Hist., VI, 1 and 22, and VU, 1. » lb., V, 1, 2, and 24.