* Baldwin:  Dictionary of Philosophy.

These efforts naturally came from two sides.  On the one hand, the Jews tried to accommodate their faith to the results of Western culture, in which Greek culture predominated.  On the other hand, thinkers whose main impulse came from Greek philosophy attempted to accommodate their doctrines to the distinctively religious problems which the Eastern nations had brought with them.  From whichever side the consequences be viewed, they are to be characterised as theosophical rather than purely philosophical, purely religious, or purely theological.

The reign of Constantine the Great, who became sole ruler of the East and West in 323, after ten years’ joint government with Licinius, is remarkable for the change which was then wrought in the religion and philosophy of the empire by the emperor’s embracing the Christian faith.  His conversion occurred in 312, and on his coming to the united sovereignty the Christians were at once released from every punishment and disability on account of their religion, which was then more than tolerated; they were put upon a nearly equal footing with the pagans, and every minister of the Church was released from the burden of civil and military duties.  Whether the emperor’s conversion arose from education, from conviction, or from state policy, we have no means of knowing; but Christianity did not reach the throne before it was the religion of a most important class of his subjects, and the Egyptian Christians soon found themselves numerous enough to call the Greek Christians heretics, as the Greek Christians had already begun to designate the Jewish.

The Greeks of Alexandria had formed rather a school of philosophy than a religious sect.  Before Alexander’s conquest the Greek settlers at Naucratis had thought it necessary to have their own temples and sacrifices; but since the building of Alexandria they had been smitten with the love of Eastern mysticism, and content to worship in the temples of Serapis and Mithra, and to receive instruction from the Egyptian priests.  They had supported the religion of the conquered Egyptians without wholly believing it; and had shaken by their ridicule the respect for the very ceremonies which they upheld by law.  Polytheism among the Greeks had been further shaken by the platonists; and Christianity spread in about equal proportions among the Greeks and the Egyptians.  Before the conversion of Constantine the Egyptian church had already spread into every city of the province, and had a regular episcopal government.  Till the time of Heraclas and Dionysius, the bishops had been always chosen by the votes of the presbyters, as the archdeacons were by the deacons.  Dionysius in his public epistles joins with himself his fellow-presbyters as if he were only the first among equals; but after that time some irregularities had crept into the elections, and latterly the Church had become more monarchical.  There was a patriarch in Alexandria, with a bishop in every other large city, each assisted by a body of priests and deacons.  They had been clad in faith, holiness, humility, and charity; but Constantine robed them in honour, wealth, and power; and to this many of them soon added pride, avarice, and ambition.