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APPENDIX IV 451 led them to take a delight in the study of the philosophical questions which the New Testament, and especially the writings of St. Paul, suggest. To take a keen interest in any metaphysical study is for any people a gain, and it is none the less so when the subject is theology. Now the interest of the population in theological questions was at all times absorbing. When these questions were settled by the Church, the Asiatic influence made itself felt and produced a conservatism, a stubborn refusal to change or abandon any position, which the more fickle- minded or philosophical Greek could never have displayed. Each of the two tendencies exerted its influence upon the conduct of the Orthodox Church. Speaking generally, we may say that all its members were devotedly attached to their faith — or perhaps it would be more exact to say, to their creeds. Of political questions in the modern sense they knew little. In their ignorance of foreign nations, questions of external policy hardly interested them> but the intellectual life of the country — mostly confined to the great cities, to Nicaea, Salonica, Smyrna, and above all the capital — was fully awake to theological questions. While ready to discuss, they maintained every dogma and every article with a persistence which increased as the years rolled on. They took a keen interest in any question whenever any heretic appeared who attempted to throw doubt on what the Church had decided. They were ready to die for their faith. The writers of the Greek Church show by abundant examples that they and the people believed in the existence of a God who lives and rules the world and the conduct of individuals. Their very superstitions afford sufficient evidence of such a belief. He was an avenging God. Black Death and Plague are described as the instruments of His vengeance. Omens and signs in a variety of forms were the means by which He, or some of the Hierarchy of Heaven, intimated to the faithful what was about to happen. The absence of omens was a sign of His displeasure or His abandonment of their cause. The men who discussed the religious questions which arose during the later as well as the earlier centuries of the empire regarded them as tremendous realities. The discussions were not mere exchange of opinions or formulating of phrases : not mere academical disputations, among the learned of the time, of meta- physical abstractions, but were often careful attempts to solve the insoluble. The results were of supreme importance. If you believed aright, you would be saved. - If you disbelieved or believed wrongfully, you would be damned in the next world G g 2