Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/127

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VI] PHILOSOPHY AND DOGMA 109 Christians teaching it in public schools when that in- volved recognition of the imperial religion. But the Church refused to follow him, and subsequently none of Julian's covert attempts against Christianity aroused more anger than his edict prohibiting Christian pro- fessors from teaching the classics. Yet there always remained qualms which disturbed cultured Christians just because they felt how dear to them was all the beautiful pagan literature, the friend and educator of their youth. Augustine was troubled ; V but his disquietude was slight compared with the sense of sinfulness which love of the classics roused in Jerome. Never could he forget them, never could he cease to love them. But what concord has Christ with Belial? What has Horace to do with the Psalter, Virgil with the Gospels, Cicero with Paul ? And Je- rome tells the dream of his stung conscience, how, appearing before the judgment seat of Christ, he heard the words, " Thou a Christian ! Thou art a Ciceronian ! Where the heart is, there is its treasure." ^ Likewise with Greek philosophy. In spite of the ^ early Christian distrust of it,' the tendency to reason and define, and the necessity of reasoning in ways ^ known to the reasoners, was sure to bring philosophy into the church. The attitude of individual Christians depended largely on temperament and race and on the influences under which they had been educated. There would be difference here between the East and West, the Greek and Roman. For the Hellenic mind 1 Jerome, Epist. XXII ad Ewtoehiumt Par. 39, 80l Jerome's dream deeply impressed the Middle Ages, s As with Paal, 1 Cor. ei seq. and Col. 11. 18.