INTRODUCTION.

intelligently understood. No church writer original: "ecclesiastical writer" knows his own mind so well, or expresses that mind so clearly, as Dionysius. No man states an objection so unflinchingly, or accepts the whole Bible as thoroughly as he. No man is so ready to admit that there are some things to be honored by silence, as being beyond the mind of man to conceive. No man realized, or expressed so clearly, the mutual coherence of the Old and New Testament as he. "The one [Old Testament] announced the divine works of Jesus that were to come, and the other [New Testament] fulfilled them" original: ἡ μὲν ἔφη τὰς ἐσομένας Ἰησοῦ θεουργίας, ἡ δὲ ἐτέλεσε (hē men ephē tas esomenas Iēsou theourgias, hē de etelese)—this phrase contains a volume of theology. No man shows such unfailing charity toward those who oppose the truth, or toward himself. No one so clearly presents the Church of Christ, the City of God, as a reflection of the divine order in God. Everything is a Trinity with him. Order is God’s first law. Goodness is the cause and origin of all things, and the mainstay of their continued existence. Evil is the failure to attain some imagined good—a falling from our original state original: "first estate," a reference to the condition of angels or humans before the Fall. Without some inherent good in itself, nothing could continue to exist.

1 Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, chapter 3, section 5.     2 Plato's Republic, book 1, toward the end original: ad finem.