exactness of method and sublimity of expression. This difference in method and choice of subjects was due chiefly to the fact that Theology was treated in the East by men trained in Greek metaphysics, whereas in the West it was treated by men trained in Roman Law. Greek metaphysics supplied ideas and expressions capable of conveying some notion of the Divine Substance, the Divine Persons, and the Divine Nature. On the other hand, the nature of Sin and its transmission by inheritance, the debt owed by man and satisfied by Jesus Christ, were worked out on the lines of the Roman theory of obligations arising out of Contract or Delict, the Roman view of Debts, and the modes of incurring, extinguishing, and transmitting them, and the Roman notion of the continuance of individual existence by universal succession.
The Greek Fathers most highly esteemed for their dogmatic writings are:—The chiefs of the Catechetical School at Alexandria, Clement, Origen, and Didymus, from whom the subsequent writers drew their inspiration; Athanasius; the three great Cappadocians, Gregory of Nazianzum, Basil, and Gregory of Nyssa; Cyril of Alexandria, Leontius of Byzantium, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and lastly, John Damascene. In the West may be mentioned Tertullian, Ambrose, Leo, Hilary of Poictiers, Fulgentius, and the great St. Augustine. The works of the last-named form a sort of encyclopædia of theological literature. The early Schoolmen, such as Hugh of St. Victor, did little more than develop and systematize the material supplied by him. After a time the influence of the Greek Fathers began to be felt, especially in the doctrine of Grace, and hence, long afterwards, the Jansenists accused both the Schoolmen and the Greek Fathers of having fallen into Pelagianism.
