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[ Sir Henry Sumner Maine, "Ancient Law," p. 354. The following is profound in a remarkable degree: "Greek metaphysical literature contained the sole stock of words and ideas out of which the human mind could provide itself with the means of engaging in the profound controversies as to the Divine Persons, the Divine Substance, and the Divine Natures. The Latin language and the meager Latin philosophy were quite unequal to the undertaking, and accordingly the western or Latin-speaking provinces of the Empire adopted the conclusions of the East without disputing or reviewing them.">[
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[ Maine, "Ancient Law," p.357 "The difference between the two theological systems is accounted for by the fact that, in passing from the East to the West, theological speculation had passed from a climate of Greek metaphysics to a climate of Roman law." Out of this arose the Western controversies on the subject of Free-will and Divine Providence. "The problem of Free-will arises when we contemplate a metaphysical conception under a legal aspect.">[
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[ Ibid. "The nature of Sin and its transmission by inheritance; the debt owed by man and its vicarious satisfaction; the necessity and sufficiency of the Atonement; above all the apparent antagonism between Free-will and the Divine Providence-these were the points which the West began to debate as ardently as ever the East had discussed the articles of its more special creed." This juridical fashion of conceiving theology appears in the works of the oldest Latin theologians, Tertullian and Saint Cyprian.]
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[ Ibid. Among the technical notions borrowed from law and here used in Latin theology we may cite "the Roman penal system, the Roman theory of the obligations established by Contract or Delict," the intercession or act by which one assumes the obligation contracted by another, "the Roman view of Debts and of the modes of incurring, extinguishing and transmitting them, the Roman notion of the continuance of individual existence by Universal Succession,">[
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[ Cf. Fustel de Coulanges, "La Gaule Romaine," p.96 and following pages, on the rapidity, facility and depth of the transformation by which Gaul became Latinized.]