[[108]] It is regrettable that Clement should have flung one of these against the school of Carpocrates, Strom. iii, 10.
CHAPTER IX
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
Viderint qui Stoicum et Platonicum et dialecticum Christianismum protulerunt.—TERTULLIAN, de præscr. hæret. 7.
No one can allege that the Bible has failed to win access for want of metaphysics being applied to it.—MATTHEW ARNOLD, Literature and Dogma, p. 121.
Though Celsus had much to say upon the vulgar and servile character of the members of the Christian community, he took the trouble to write a book to refute Christianity; and this book, as we have seen, was written from a more or less philosophical point of view. He professed himself doubtful as to whether his opponents would understand his arguments; but that he wrote at all, and that he wrote as he did, is evidence that the new faith was making its way upward through society, and was gaining a hold upon the classes of wealth and education.
The rise of the Church
It is not hard to understand this. Though conditions of industry were not what they are to-day, it is likely that conversion was followed by the economic results with which we are familiar. The teaching of the church condemned the vices that war against thrift; and the new life that filled the convert had its inevitable effect in quickening insight and energy. The community insisted on every man having a trade and working at it. With no such end in view, the church must have numbered among its adherents more and more people of wealth and influence in spite of all defections, just as to-day Protestantism in France has power and responsibility out of all proportions to mere numbers. The Emperor Hadrian, is said to have made the observation that in Egypt, whether men worshipped Christ or Serapis, they all worshipped money.[[1]] The remark had probably as much truth as such sayings generally have, but we may probably infer that many Christians were punctual in their observance of the duty laid on them to be "not slothful in business."