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A CEITICAL HISTORY
OP
CHRISTIAN LITEEATUEE AND DOCTRINE
FROM THE DEATH OF THE APOSTLES TO THE NICENE COUNCIL.
0^
'9 A CRITICAL HISTORY
OF
CHRISTIAN LITERATURE AND DOCTRINE
FROM THE DEATH OF THE APOSTLES TO THE NICENE COUNCIL.
JAMES DONALDSON, M.A.
VOL. XL TIIU APOLOGISTS.
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1866
OXFORD:
BY T. COMBE, M.A., E. PICKAKD HALL, AND H. LATHAM, M.A. PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.
CONTENTS.
BOOK II. THE APOLOGISTS.
Chapter I. — Introduction.
p
General view of the writers. The era Apologetic. Apologies real defences of accused persons. Persecutions not from the supi-eme authorities. No good reason for blaming Marcus Aurelius. Spirit of the Ptoraan government. The causes of persecution. Accusations made against Christians — atheism, licentiousness, eating of human flesh. Defence of Christianity. Treatment of mythology ; the nature of mythology ; disbelief of it by philosophers ; by poets ; belief of the masses. Ancient explanations of mythology. Agreement of Apologists with heathen poets and philosophers. Philosophy the antagonist of Chris- tianity. Christians sj-aiipathized most with Socrates and Plato. The prevalent philosophies Epicurean and Stoic. Neo-Platonism not yet manifest. Evidences of Chris- tianity. Contests with the -Jews ; with heretics. The character of the Gnostics. Doctrines of the Apologists, No scruples in unfolding them to heathens. They know nothing of original sin. No theory of the death of Christ or of the Holy Spirit. They discuss the Logos. Statement in the Gospel of John. Philo's opinions. Divinity of the Logos. Eternity of the Logos. Influence of heathen philosophy on Apologists. Constitution of the Church. Opinions on morals. Works relating to tlie subject .........
CONTENTS.
Chapter II. — Quadratus, etc.
PAGE
Quadnitus ; what is known of him. Aristides ; what is known of him. Aristo Pella3us ; mentioned by three writers. The Dialogue of Papiscus and Jason. Account of the Dialogue . . . . . . . . • 5^
Chapter III. — Justin Martyr.
I. His Life. Birth; conversion; subsequent life; mar- tyrdom ........ 62
II. General account of the Writings of Justin Martyr . 74
III. IVie A-pologies. Genuineness. The so-called second
Apology's claim to be the second. The date of the first Apology . . . . . . .75
IV. Dialogue with Trypho. Its genuineness ; its form ; its
date ......... 86
V. Tlie Discourse to the Greeks. Its genuineness. The
Syriac translation. Abstract of it . . . .90
VI. On the Monarchy of God. Its genuineness. Abstract
of it . . . . , . , -94
VII. Hortatory Address to the Greeks. Its genuineness. Ex- ternal testimony. Internal evidence. References to ancient writings. Its doctrines. Abstract . . 96
VIII. Fragment on the Resurrection. Its genuineness. Ab- stract of it. Doctrines . . . . . .119
IX. The Episth to Diognetus. No external testimony. In- ternal evidence. Abstract. Doctrines. Style. Date. Peculiarities of the letter. Conjectures as to author- ship. Manuscript and editions . . . .126
X. Tlbe spurious loorks . . . . . . .142
XI. Literature. Manuscripts and editions . . -144
CONTENTS. vii
PAGE
XII. Justin s character and merits. His place. His ac-
quaintance with Hebrew. His critical powers. His mistakes. His intense hold of Christianity. His boldness. His defence of Christians. His attacks on heathenism. His liberality. His fondness for Socrates and Plato. His obligations to Plato. His relation to the Stoics, Epicm-eans, Cynics, and poets. His presentation of Chi'istianity. Christ ; his teach- ing ; miracles. Argument from miracles. Expulsion of demons. Argument from prophecy. His mode of dealing with Jews ; with heretics. His position in regard to Christian doctrine. His obligations to Plato. The novelty of his opinions. The doctrine of the Logos. His relation to his fellow-Christians. His liberality i47
XIII. ^6.§<rac<s of the Apologies and Dialogue with Trypho . 190
XIV. The Doctrines of Justin in regard to God. His cha-
i-acter. His immateriality. Creation and Provi- dence ......... 208
Christ : the Logos. His divinity ; his incarnation ; miraculous birth, and earthly life. His descent into Hades. His character. The object of his incax'na- tion. His teaching. His suffering. His death. His sacrificial character. His being accursed. His king- dom. Lawgiver. Priest. His second coming. His personal reign on earth. Judge . . . .218
Holy Spirit. Meaning of term. Difference of Apology from Dialogue with Trypho. The Logos and Spirit. The Spirit worshipped. His subordination. His nature. His work. The Spirit as a gift . . 264
Angels. Their reality. Their habitation and food. Their position. Worship of Angels . . -275
Evil Angels. Devil. Evil Angels. Demons. Their actions. Efforts to defeat Christianity. Caused persecutions. Assisted heretics. Watched the souls of Christians at death . . . . . .280
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Man. A voluntary agent. Terms of freewill. Fall of man. Universal sinfulness. Conversion. Salvation 289
The Church. Its officers. Procedure on Sunday . 303
Baptism. Nature of it. Administration of it . -307
Thanksgiving, or Eucharist. Its main objects. Peculiar statement of Justin . . . . . -311
Future State. State after death . Resurrection. Judg- ment . . . . . . . . .316
Scriptures. Portions quoted. Inspiration. Mode of quoting. Mode of interpretation . . . .322
New Testament. Portions quoted. The Memoirs of the Apostles. Inspiration . . . . 329
Morality. Eternal Principles. Eagerness for Martyr- dom. Suicide. Swearing. Marriage. Polygamy. Self-mutilation. Exposure of children. Payment of taxes. Slavery. . . . . . . 333
/
BOOK IL
THE APOLOGISTS.
VOL. II.
THE APOLOGISTS.
CHAPTEH I.
INTUODUCTION.
1 HE era embraced in our second division extends fronai the reig-n of Antoninus Pius to that of Commodus. One of the writers included in the previous group^ Poljcarp^ lived far on into this period. But his style and mode of thought, as well as the most active part of his life, belong" to the earlier period. The writer of the Pastor of Hernias may also have lived in the time of the Antonines, but here again in the lack of external evidence we are led by the character of his work to place him in the earliest group of Christian writers. On the other hand, some of the writers included in the second group flourished in the reig-n of Hadrian. The first Apologists presented their apologies to that emperor. But as their writings are lost, and consequently a thoroug-h study of their mode of thought is impossible, we class them along with those who carried out the special work which they had commenced.
This era is justly called the Apologetic. There were many other writers besides the Apologists, and the Apolog-ists wrote other woi'ks besides the apologies. Some wrote exhortatory letters, like Dionysius ; some wrote against heretics ; some dis- cussed the Passover controversy; one recorded his recollections
B 2
4 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
of earlier times; and some, like Melito, spread their investiga- tions over a wide range of interesting subjects. Unfortunately, of these works we know only the names, or, at the best, but a few fragments are all that remain. The literature which lies before us for study is apologetic. The Apologists are Quadratus, Aristides, Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophi- lus, Hermias, and Melito. We have but fragments of the apologies of Quadratus, Aristides, Hermias, and Melito. The apologies of the others arc nearly complete. That of Theophilus was addressed to a private individual, Tatian^s was an appeal to the Greeks, wdiile the other two were pre- sented to the emperors. Yet the difference caused by this circumstance is not so great as might at first sight be sup- posed.
These apologies are not apologies for Christianity. In fact, Christianity had not as yet been attacked in writing. Celsus wrote his work against the Christian religion towards the middle of this period, and his work remained unanswered for upwards of fifty years. These apologies are genuine apologies ; that is, defences of persons who have been accused. The Christians at this time were generally condemned to death without any trial, simply because they confessed that they were Christians, and these apologies are appeals from the subordinate jndg'es who thus treated them to the supreme administrators of the law, the emperors. Their great aim, therefore, is to show that it is unjust to condemn a person without a hearing, and on the ground merely of a name, and to prove that the accusations commonly made against the Christians were utterlj^ unfounded. They were written to avert persecutions which threatened the Chris- tians on every hand.
The apologies themselves are proof that these persecutions did not proceed from the sujireme authorities. They were not sanctioned by laws enacted expresslj^ for the purpose, nor were they the result of temporary decrees issued by the emperors. Historians of the church who flourished long subsequent to the times of persecution, arbitrarily reckoned
I.] INTRODUCTION. 5
the persecutions as ten, and assig-ned each to a particular emperor. But this reckoning is one of those generalizations which have no real basis in fact. From the very first dawn of Christianity Christians were persecuted, and this perse- cution continued without intermission, but with more or less ferocity according as local circumstances stimulated the populace. A considerable time elapsed before Christianity drew upon it the notice and interference of the lawgivers. The violence of Nero against the Christians was a savage outburst of cruelty, not against Christianity, but against men who had become objects of hatred and ridicule to the people, and for whom he expected that nobody would care. It is doubt- ful, moreover, whether he did not confound Christians with Jews. The persecution of Domitian was of a similar nature, but was not more violent against Christians than it was against philosophers. The first genuine notice which the government took of Christians, as far as history has informed us, is made in Pliny^s famous letter to the emperor Trajan. From that letter it appears that Pliny had never been present at the trials of the Christians before his appointment to office, and was therefore in doubt whether to punish those who simply professed the name of Christ, or whether he should not farther inquire as to whether they had committed some crime in addition to bearing the odious name. As preliminary to the settlement of his procedure he had in- quired into the nature of their meetings, and had tortured two maidservants for the purpose of ascertaining the truth. But he had found nothing criminal — nothing but a depraved and immoderate superstition. As a Roman governor, how- ever, he claimed the right of regulating the religion of sub- jects, and he therefore regarded the obstinacy of the Chris- tians as fit cause for punishment in the meantime. As to the future, he writes for more precise directions from his master. The answer of Trajan is conclusive that as yet the law had taken no notice of Christians. No fixed mode of procedure, he says, was possible for all circumstances. The governors must act according to the necessities of the case.
6 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
If Christians were brought up for trial and Avould not yield obedience to the Roman governor by worshipping the gods and the image of the emperor, then they must be punished. But no search was to be made for Christians, and informers were to be discountenanced.
The same course of conduct was pursued in the following reigns. We hear nothing of laws made or carried into force against the Christians^ and the only emperor who is supposed to have interfered unfavourably is Marcus Aurelius. I think that there is not good reason for the charge made against this emperor. Persecution never ceased. It raged in the time of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Commodus, as well as in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. But the generalizing ten- dency of the later historians led them to fix on one point of time, and the most prominent point was unquestionably the time of the persecution of the Gallic Christians, towards the end of the reign of Marcus Aurelius. They, in consequence, set down Marcus Aurelius as instigating a persecution. Most modern writers have given credence to this view, all the more readily that it seems to be supported by a probable theory of the action of the human heart in the circumstances. Marcus Aurelius is regarded as having been very pious, but piety towards the gods would produce intolerance towards the Christians, and the greater the piety the more likely that the intolerance would be shown. Now, that Marcus Aurelius was pious there cannot be a doubt. His own work abun- dantly proves this. But his piety was of a peculiar sort. It was stoical. He could not and did not believe in the common gods. He resolved them into principles. He kept up their worship because he did not know how the religious instinct could be preserved without it. But he stood in relation to these gods in a state of utter unbelief, and he must have regarded the worship of them as an extremely difficult pro- blem. He could not be intolerant in behalf of gods as such. In fact, there would be moi*e reason to expect the superstitious wavering Hadrian or the pious unphilosophieal Antoninus Pius to stand up in defence of the gods than such a sceptic
I-] lyTliODUCTION: 7
as Marcus Auvelius. And when we examine the evidence on which the g-uilt is imputed to Aurelius^ we shall find it to be utterly unsatisfactory. We shall find that it resolves itself into this, that persecutions took place in his reig-n, that these persecutions were especially violent in France, and that it is difficult to suppose that they took place without his sanction. But persecutions were not unknown in the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. Quadratus and Aristides presented their apolog'ies to Hadrian, Justin Martyr presented his to Anto- ninus Pius, and yet these emperors are not accused. In fact, an emperor could not be exj)ected to interfere. There were, no doubt, thousands of cases of judicial injustice throughout the empire. Many of these never came to the emperor''s ears, and many of them came too late. There is this strong proof of the innocence of Marcus Aurelius, that the Christians never blame him, but, on the contrary, appeal to him as either protecting them, or as likely to protect them. The language of Athenagoras prevents us from supposing that he knew anything of the emperor^s too great zeal for the gods. Tatian does not accuse him. Tertullian praises him. The one single statement against him occurs in tlie letter of the Church at Lyons, and the words used no more prove his guilt than the official use of the name of William in any document connected with the Glencoe massacre would prove that that monarch knowingly lent his sanction to that monstrous crime. On the contrary, there is good reason for doubting whether he knew an}'thing at all of the sanction given to the perse=- cution, for the persecution took place at the very time at which the emperor must have been overwhelmed with prepay rations for his war against the Marcomanni. Moreover, at the worst, it was not a persecution of Christians as Christians. Even on the supposition that he did give his sanction person- ally, he merely sanctioned the decisions of liis subordinates, and these decisions, it must be remembered, as presented to him, were no doubt based on the most satisfactory evidence of guilt wrenched by torture and tlie most blinded prejudice. He could not, even if he had wished, inquire personall}^ into
8 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
the innocence or guilt of the Christians accused^ and he could not help believing" his own regularly- appointed officers in preference to Christians^ so long as he remained outside the Christian Church.
The emperorsj then, had nothing to do with the persecu- tion of Christians. On the contrary, the whole tendency of the government during the reigns of Trajan, Hadrian, An- toninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, was eminently favourable to the spread of the new religion. The empire was a vast advance on the republic in a political point of view, as Congrevea has well shown. In the times of the republic the government was conducted solely for the interests of the Romans, and this narrow policy continued during the reigns of the family of Csesar. But the circumstances of imperial government necessitated attention to the interests of a much wider class. And when a provincial, as Trajan was, received the purple, his feelings led him to identify the interests of the great masses of men throughout the Roman empire with his own. Henceforward the policy of the rulers was no longer to flatter the senate, but to ingratiate themselves with the people. And so strikingly was this policy carried out in the reign of Antoninus Pius, that the senate on his death ■were for refusing him the honours which were paid to de- ceased emperors. The imperial government was, therefore, government for the people; for the many, and not for the few. This very extension of the aim of the governors had a humanizing influence on them. And accordingly we find that the general tendency of their policy was much superior to that of the days of the Roman Republic. Many af the barbarous practices which had been then legalized were now abolished; the ferocity of some institutions was miti- gated, and new institutions were formed of a noble and benevolent character. Thus slaves were treated with mach greater kindness by the law. Hadrian prohibited masters from killing their slaves, on penalty of being tried for the
* In his Roman Empire of the West. jFour Lectures, bj' Richard Con- greve, M. A.
I] INTRODUCTION. 9
crime; and Antoninus went further^ and gave instructions that in the case of slaves who took refuge at altars or the statues of the emperors their masters should be compelled to sell them if their cruelty was proved to be iutoleraljle^. The same humanity was seen in the attempts to moderate the ferocity of the gladiatorial fights^ Marcus Aurelius having made a law that the combatants were to fight with blunt weapons ''.
jNIany arrangements were made for the sake of morality, such as the establishment of separate baths for the sexes. And benevolent institutions now for the first time make their appearance. Trajan mnintained five thousand children of the free-born at his own expense^ and Hadrian continued the work, spending still more money on it, while he also helped to support destitute women. These arrangements, there is reason to believe, were kept up by their immediate successors. Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius farther turned their bounty into memorials of women to wdiom they were attached; for we are told that Antoninus Pius supported a number of girls, whom he called Faustinianse, in honour of Faustina ; and Cajiitolinus says that Marcus Aurelius in- stituted new Faustinian girls in honour of his deceased wife**. Both these emperors, moreover, seem to have felt it their duty to provide for the instruction of the people, at least to a certain extent, for they paid handsome salaries to the rhetors and philosophers.
All these arrangements are in evident harmony with the spirit of Christianity; and some of them, such as the insti- tution of what we may call orphan asylums, have often been set down as the peculiar fruits of Christ^s religion. It seems absurd to attribute them to attempts to revive the old Koman spirit, or to revive and give lustre to the old Roman poly- theism®. There is, in the first place, no proof that any of
'' Gaii Inst. i. 53. " Epit. Dion Cass. 1. Ixxi. c. 29. "^ o. 26.
• Thiersch has done this in an interesting lecture called Politik und Phi- losophic, in ihrem Verhiiltniss zur Religion unter Traj.aniis, Hadrianns, und den beiden Antoninen. ^Marbui'g 1853.
10 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
tlie emperors attempted eitlier the one or tlie other ; and in the second j)lace, their mode of procedure would have been totally different if these had been their aims. Moreover, we know that the emperors were particularly tolerant of all national religions. Their earnest endeavours to gain the goodwill of the provincials made them look on the religions of all nations with favour, and they allowed Rome to become the receptacle of all forms of worship. As philosophers, likewise, they could not prefer one system , of g'ods to another. All that they demanded was, that there should be some system ; believing, as they did, that a religion was the most powerful restraint l)ossible on the great masses of the uneducated people. If there was a religious system, it was a matter of no con- sequence to them whether it was Roman, Greek, or Persian ; and as to one of them, Hadrian, we know that he had a greater liking for what he found abroad than for what he found at home. The explanation of the humanizing spirit that pervades many of the imperial regulations is to be sought in the circumstances of the case : the necessities of imperial government ; the moral feeling produced by the various phi- losophies, especially the Stoic; the unconscious influence of Christianity, and the general good character of the emperors. The persecutions, then, of the Christians were for a long time private and not public. They had their origin in the disturbances of the social system which the new religion was calculated to produce. At first, indeed, the Christians were confounded in many quarters with the Jews, and the hatred which that obstinate race brought upon themselves followed those who were supposed to belong to them. But this mis- take must have been soon dissipated. And by the time to which our present writers belong the Jews had come to be utterly despised as a headstrong, narrow-minded set of fanatics, who would fight to the death for the privilege of circumcising themselves. Before we can realize fully the causes which roused the great masses throug-hout the Roman empire, we must transport ourselves into the occurrences of daily life, and see how Christians frowned continually upon the habitual
I.] INTRODUCTION. 11
actions of polytlieists. If there was any interesting occasion on which friends assembled^ Christianity interfered to prevent its adherent from being present, because some heathen rite was to be performed. The Christian was absent when the assembled friends danced round the cradle of the infant and gave it its name. The Christian could not be present when the young Roman donned the manly robe and his friends offei'ed sacrifices in his behalf. The Christian absented him- self from the marriage festivals of his most intimate friends and relatives, because the celebration took place at the altars of gods whom he looked on as demons. The Christian could not attend the banquets to which his heathen friends invited him, because libations were poured out to beings whom he deemed infamous. As he walked along the sti-eet he was never seen lifting his hand to his mouth as he passed the august statues of the gods. He never found his way into a temple or a theatre. He refused to make idols, or the decorations of idols. He refused to swear by the emperor as by a god. He doubted the propriety of acting as a soldier in the army, or of taking upon him any public oiBce. If he were a slave, there were thousands of services from the performance of which he shrank. And if he were the master of a house, his house was destitute of a lararium, of household gods, of garlanded statues, and of every outward symbol of worship. In fact, a man by becoming a Christian proclaimed war against all the dearest and most hallowed practices of his neighbours, and the natural consequence was that he was expelled from society, he became an outcast and a reproach, and he was regarded as having no claim upon the protection of those whose most cherished sentiments he had outraged, nor could he appeal to a law to which he could not duly swear obedience. The Christianas presence in a community was felt to be a cause, and a sufficient cause, to bring down the wrath of the gods. Accordingly the most violent out- bursts of persecution against the hated sect took place when some external calamity had drawn men's minds to the realiza- tion of a superior power which might be incensed against
12 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
tribes and nations. Whenever an earthquake occurred^ tlie heathens believed that the gods were expressing their anger against the toleration of such men as the Christians. And the greater outbursts of heathen zeal which distinguished the reign of Marcus Aurelius are most likely to be attributed to the earthquakes and famines f, the pestilences^ floods^ and ravaging wars which mark that period.
The hatred which was thus evoked by private circumstances against Christians grew in intensity as Christianity extended its power, and at length found reasons for itself in three great accusations with which Christians were everywhere assailed. The first of these made the other two possible ; in fact, made any accusation probable. It was that of atheism. The Chris- tians were not restrained by any fear of the gods. They were men who had shaken themselves loose from all religious re- straint whatsoever. It may seem strange that the Christians should at any time have been so far misunderstood as to be believed to be atheists. But if we for a moment remember how completely polytheists are bound by the material, how essential it is to them that the supernal powers be represented by material representations, we shall see how natural their mistake was. The Christians were never seen to bow before the image of a god. They had no priests. They brought no offerings, and sacrificed no victims. They had no temples, no consecrated buildings of any kind. When they met it was in the open air or in common private houses. They had not the slightest vestige of a material image or symbol of the Divine Being. The inference to a heathen mind from this absolute negation of outward worship was inevitable, that the Christians had no gods, that they did not believe in divine beings or a superior power. As soon as the notion prevailed that Christians were atheists, any amount of persecution became justifiable in the eyes of a heathen. In all ages an atheist was a man on whom the populace had demanded the infliction of the heaviest penalties of the law. He was always looked on as by necessity a most vile and dangerous man. ' Cap. Vit. M. Anton, cc. viii. xiii. xvii. xxi.
I.J INTRODUCTION. 13
And so firmly was this idea fixed in men's mindsj that Justin allows that if Christians were proved to be atheists they would deserve the severest punishment. It is to this widely- prevalent belief in the atheism of the Christians to which we must attribute their treatment by the judges before whom they were often drag-ged. An atheist's word was worth nothing. He might profess innocence^ he might claim the rights of a citizen, he might beseech and implore; but what could all this avail, if no tnist can be placed in his word, if he will not take the oath which guarantees his obedience to the law, and refuses to worship any god whatever ? Hence it came to pass that no sooner had a Christian declared that he was such, than he was set down as a criminal. No special charge against him was required. He was known to be an atheist. He was recognised as an enemy to the human race, and the judge entertained no doubt that he must have com- mitted crimes which would deserve the extreme sentence of the law.
Against this accusation of atheism the apologists of our era have to lal:)our with all their power. Once overcome this fundamental obstacle to fair treatment and they know that the other accusations will vanish. And they struggle to show how false the prejudice is, and how real is their worship of the one living and true God.
The belief that Christians were atheists prepared the minds of heathens for giving full credence to the other two charges which were laid against the whole sect. These two charges were unlimited licentiousness and the eating of human flesh. The Christians, it was suj^posed, must have some reason for combining and spreading their influence. What could this reason be ? It seemed absurd and fantastic to imagine that they had combined for any good purpose. Atheists could not have a good purpose ; and so the heathen mind rushed to the conclusion that they were a society especially devoted to the indulgence of licentious habits. Many circumstances seemed to favour this notion. The only trace of a worship which they seemed to have was the worship of a man who
14 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
liad (lied by the most ignominious of deatlis^ as a public criminal, in a land besotted with the most blind fanaticism. Then, were not the majority of Christians wretched, contemp- tible men, belonging to the lowest classes ? And did they not admit the most abandoned criminals, the basest scoundrels and prostitutes into their ranks? Even the very signs of brotherly love were set down as borrowing's from the brothel — the hoi}- kiss, the endearing terms of ' brother^ and ' sister.^ And then what could bring a mixed congregation of men and women, free and bond, to assemble before dawn, if it were not wild licentious passion ? The meeting^s must be for indiscriminate intercourse, and stories were told how dogs were turned designedly into the place of meeting to overturn the candles and leave the assembly to their works of darkness. But the heathen mind would proceed to ask, how would villains who combined for such a detestable purpose cement their union ? Catiline we know made his companions drink human blood. The Christians, it was known, spoke also of drinking blood in one of their ceremonies. From this cir- cumstance arose the fiction that the Christians at their meet- ings slaughtered innocent babes and drank their blood while it was yet warm =.
It seems marvellous how such stories could possibl}^ arise, and still more marvellous that they should be set down as unquestionable facts b}^ the greater portion of the civilized communities of the time. But our wonder will be moderated when we reflect that Christianity was an altogether strange and startling phenomenon, and that it attempted to awaken religious feeling by the destruction of all the cherished ideas with which religious feeling had in the heathen mind been connected. At the same time, too, it has to be remembered that all the Gnostic sects as well as the true Christians bore the name of Christian, and that many vile practices were established by those who professed to follow the teachings of
s See on all these accusations the Dissertation by G. G. S. Koepke, De Statu et Condicione Christianorum sub imperatoribus Romanis alterius post Chriatuni seculi. Berolini 1828. 4to.
I.] INTRODUCTIONS. 15
Christ. So extraordinary however did the prepossessions of the heathens against the Christians seem to the Apologists, that they accounted for them by supposing them the result of deep plots which the demons had contrived and had been working out for long ages to prevent mankind from be- lieving the truths of Christianit}'.
In repelling these accusations, the Apologists could merely assert that they were not true. They demanded of the emperors that the judges should determine each case on its own merit, and they showed how utterly opposed the practice of any kind of vice was to the pure maxims which they had received from their heavenly teacher.
Thovigh the apologies were thus primarily defences against false accusations, they could not fail to attempt something more. It was scarcely possible for a man who had become a Christian to vindicate his character without defending the change which had taken place in him, and without contrasting his old faith with his new. These apologies thus contain at once attacks on heathenism and expositions and defences of the Christian religion.
The modern reader will find himself greatly disappointed at the mode in which the Apologists attack heathenism and defend Christianity. Their eyes seem shut to many aids which they might have found in heathenism. They are utterly unconscious of the beauty of the Greek mythology. They sometimes use the weakest arguments in defence of Christianity, and they show themselves defective in true his- torical criticism. There is, no doubt, much truth in the blame which has been attached to the Apologists ; but the blame does not belong to the Apologists as not having done their best, but to them as not having lived in the nineteenth cen- tury. There is not a single glaring fault in their modes of thought which might not be paralleled in Plutarch or any of their earlier contemporaries. In fact, the same main faidts pervade all the writings of that age to a degree which the difference of a belief in Christianity and in heathenism or philosophy, though it at first tends to conceal, only in the
16 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
end makes the more striking-. It is allowed, indeed, that the Apologists were not men of great powers of mind ; but it seems doubtful if more learned, more thoughtful, more able men would have done anything else than elaborate and polish up the arguments which are now found in the Apologetic writings.
In dealing with heathenism the Apologists had not to handle a fine series of poetic imaginings which were morally inoperative, but they had to struggle with beliefs that were in their day working potently among large masses for great evil. They could not be expected to form a true theory of the Greek or Roman mythology. This is one of the tasks of the present day, not yet by any means fully accomplished. They listened simply to the stories of the gods that were related; they weighed their effect on the moral nature of man ; thej'" saw their workings in the worship and life of heathens, and they held up the results to detestation. In doing this they did what almost all the wisest and best of the heathen philosophers had done already. In fact, the Greek mythology had outraged the feelings of the best of the Greeks, and it could not help doing so, for it was the creation of the Greek nation while yet in a comparatively barbarous and uneducated state. There may have been always a tradition of one god among the Greeks, but whether this was the case or not, the Greek mythology bears large traces of the activity of that early state of man^s mind when imagination is tyran- nical''. The Greeks then saw majestic serpents in the sky, conceived thunders and lightnings as the bellowings of mighty bulls and the flashing of golden swords, and pictured the rush of clouds, the fall of rain, and the various phenomena of the sky in endless living forms. It is not likely that in this stage of the Greek mind the gods were fixed. One grand appearance impressed the imagination one day and was wor- shipped, another succeeded and obliterated the recollection of the former. In those early days there seems no trace
•^ See Der Ursprung der Mythologie dargelegt an Griechischer und Deutscher Sage von Dr. F. L. W. Schwartz. Berlin i860.
I.] IN TROD UGTION. 17
of a moral nature in the Greeks. Brothers and sisters freely mix in sexual intercourse ; fathers kill sons, and sons dethrone fathers; lies and thefts pass as quite common occurrences. If the Greeks had believed these things to be wrong, would they at first have attributed them to the gods ? In fact, it required a long period before the moral sense was roused, and the Greek mind became aware that there were certain moral laws binding men to men. Even in Homer we find few, if any, traces of moral laws'. Yet before his time a vast change had come over the Greek mythology. It had passed from the unbridled efibrts of imagination to a regular explanation of results. It had become crystallized to a certain extent in a mass of traditions instead of being the momentary ex- pression of the strongly-awakened feelings. Even then, how- ever, the gods were not moral beings. The Greek of Homer^s time found his explanation of all events in the existence of gods. If he loved, it was Aphrodite that stirred him, whether the love were pure or impm*e. If he gained honour and dignity, they came from Zeus, whether the means he had employed to gain them were honourable or dishonourable. And yet a discrepancy did begin to be felt in the human mind. Man began to feel that he himself was the cause of calamity sometimes and not the gods. And this disturbance makes itself perceptible on various occasions in the Homeric poems. Moreover, though it would be scarcely fair to say that the gods have an ethical character, yet there are attached to Jupiter functions which are helpful to the maintenance of social life. He protects beggars and strangers, he loves the hospitable ; in fact, that which we can liken to morality shows itself in a knowledge of what is or is not beneficial to a man not merely as an individual but as a social being. The highest quality (a quality approaching to an ethical one)
■ I think that in Homer there is no consciousness of right as such. After examining all the passages in which moral feelings might be exhibited, this is the conclusion to which I have come : 5i/cajos never means ' just' or ' right,' and the man who is S^/caios is such in consequence of knowledge. See the passages quoted in Nagelsbach's Homerische Theologie, second ed. p. 317, note, There is the same absence of a moral sense in Hesiod.
VOL. II, C
18 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
in a man is that he knows a right thing- in its proper season, and this peculiar quality is also in an eminent degree attri- buted to the gods, and attracts the love of Zeus in particular. It is from Zeus that proceed the special determinations of cases in which two courses seem open, a beneficial and a detrimental. From him come the themistesJ. But at the same time it is Zeus that takes away from a man the intelli- gence which, if he retained it, would have prevented him from falling into the perpetration of what is detrimental. The gods are superior to men, therefore, not in morality properly so called, but in knowledge — a knowledge which is not inconsistent, as far as Homer's mind sees, with lying and cunning. They also are superior in what we might call physical qualities. They live for ever, and eat ambrosia, drink nectar, and far surpass men in might and strength.
As the Greek mind advanced from perceptions of what in individual cases was advantageous to the individual as an individual and a social being, to general ideas in regard to the advantageous, the notions of the gods necessarily changed. And when the Greeks at length reached the power of forming abstract ideas, the gods were left without a function. The attention of Greek thinkers was called to this point by the speculations of philosophers, but most of all by the special exertions of Socrates. He stood at the middle point of a great era in Greek thought — ^the time when the Greeks had come to generalize and arrange their particular observations under general terms. Socrates saw that the function of the gods was stated more precisely by abstract terms ; that, to adduce an instance, it was more correct to call love the im- pelling principle in a man's mind than to speak of a goddess Aphrodite or a god Eros who drove the man into frenzy. He did not carry his work to its completion. Such a mighty change can take place only in the course of centuries, and accordingly he spoke, or rather Plato spoke, of half-divine beings, demons as he called them, whose conduct was not
J On the nature of these themistes there are some admirable remarks in Maine's Ancient Law, p. 4.
I.] INTRODUCTION. 19
irreproachable as that of the gods. But he spent the most of his life in examining the nature of the good, the just, the pious, and in urging men to form clear apprehensions of what was really meant by these words taken as abstract words ; that is, as including a class of things or actions. From the time of Socrates an earnest belief in the gods of the Greek mythology became an impossibility to a philosophic mind. And no sect of philosophers did pretend to give credence to the popular tales. Some rejected the tales altogether as false, or true only of the Sat'/^oye? ; some, as Euhemerus, said that all the popular gods were originally men ; some made physical allegories out of the stories ; but none believed them, none defended them. And for a very obvious reason. The Greek mythology had been forming through the course of many ages, during which the Greek mind had been advancing from absolute ignorance of all moral distinctions to a consciousness of the moral laws which bind the intercourse of man with man. The traditions of the gods had taken their colour from the ages in which they were formed or recast ; and now, when the mind no longer explained either the physical or spiritual phenomena by personal forces but by abstract terms, and therefore no longer added to mythology, the previous tradi- tions were felt to be at variance with the moral feelings that had been aroused. They were unworthy of the gods, and the more unworthy they were felt to be, the higher became the notion of the divine being or of the perfection of man. The im- piety of some of the traditions had been felt at an early stage by men who were not necessarily philosophers. Pindar has given expression to his dissatisfaction, ^schylus, though he could not and probably did not wish to venture to decry the popular faith, yet brings out the tyrannic character of Zeus so strongly in his Prometheus Vinctus, that, whatever vindi- cation of Zeus he may have given in the concluding play of the Trilogy, doubts must have arisen. His play of the Eu- menides has the same effect; for the contest of two higher powers, determined at last only by a casting vote, naturally awakens the mind to serious reflections. By the time at which
C 2
20 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
the plays of Euripides were placed on the stage philosophy had done its workj and he could speak out his disapprobation of the popular notions in decided lang-uag-e. And this disregard of the prevalent stories continued down to the time of our Apologists, so that the work that lay before them in attacking the popular heathenism had, to a certain extent, been accom- plished by ante-Christian heathen writers. And many of the heathen writers who flourished in the first two centuries of the Christian era speak as strongly against the licentious stories of the deities as any of the Christian writers. Seneca, Pliny, Plutarch, and Apuleius may be mentioned as instances. In fact, almost the only writer of the period who seems to have unhesitating faith in the popular gods is Pausanias, who has, however, not the slightest claim to be looked on as a philo- sopher in any sense of the term^.
Not only had the philosophers abandoned the popular creed, but the poets had also given up all earnest faith in the common gods. And this is a very striking fact; for the poets were really the only teachers that heathenism had. Their priests, Lobeck' has proved, never taught morality, nor indeed had they any public function as teachers. And in the earliest days the poets w^ere not merely the narrators of the traditions of the gods, but often they acted as the creators of these traditions. Mythology being the result and expression of man^s thoughts and observations while his imagination is absolutely predominant, it is plain that the poets, as being able to give expression to their imaginations, would be the persons principally engaged in forming the popular traditions. So that the statement of Herodotus™, "that Homer and Hesiod formed the Greek mythology,^^ though not true of them ab- solutely, yet is true of them in the main, as the representatives of poets. Philosophy produced a complete change, however,
^ The opinions of the various heathen writers mentioned here are given at length in Tzschimer's Fall des Heidenthums, buch i. kap. i., and there is a clever sketch by M. Villemain prefixed to his Tableau de L'Eloquence Chrd- tienne au iv. Sifecle of Polytheism in the First Century.
' Aglaophamus, p. lo. >" ii. 53.
I.] INTRODUCTION. 21
on the poetSj as it did on almost all cultivated men. And the consequence was, that most of the poets of the middle comedy- held up the stories of the gods as ridiculous. These opinions passed to the Romans. Ennius translated the work of Eu- hemerus, and maintained his theory. Plautus ridicules the common stories. Neither Virgil nor Horace believed them.
What then was it that the Apologists had to oppose ? It was the popular belief. Though the stories about the gods had long been discredited by the intelligent, yet the masses of the people still believed them. The legends were still powerful in forming the manners of the people. The pagan debauchee defended his conduct by the example of Jove; he got drunk in honour of Bacchus ; he prayed to Venus for possession of the person whom he loved, by foul or fair means. The rites were still observed. The ceremonies connected with the conceptions and traditions of the gods were inwoven with everyday life. And occasionally there were solemn mysteries in which, by means of strange appearances, exquisite works of art, the power of hoar antiquity, and other such influences, the mind of the spectator was worked up to a deep feeling of the grandeur of the divine power and glory. The popular mind was indoctrinated into the absolute necessity of these rites. The stories were impressed on them by every tie that association could create. And perhaps they were believed with all the greater force that there had been no exercise of the reason in ascertaining their truth, and that there was a secret occasional feeling that if reason were to interfere the only result would be infinite doubt. Moreover, though the attacks of philosophers might weaken confidence in some tales, yet they could not and did not weaken to any great extent the tendency in unthinking minds to superstition, but merely gave it another direction. And the age of which we write was remarkable for the erratic forms of superstition which it displays. The Metamorphoses of Apuleius show how prevalent witchcraft was. Lucian's account of the prophet Alexander, an arrant knave who was adored by thousands, gives us a glimpse into the heathen longing for something
22 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
supernatural. And though most of the oracles were nearly dumb, some of them, such as those of Amphilochus and Tro- phonius, had a thriving- trade. The prevalence of the Mithras- worship and the frequency of religious riots testify to the great power which paganism had over the minds of the masses.
The Apologists, therefore, were under the strongest oWiga- tions to set forth the degrading nature of the pagan gods and of the pagan worship. And they differed from most of those who had already thrown discredit on the stories of the gods, in that they felt it to be a solemn duty to disabuse the popular mind. Plato had spoken earnestly against the pre- valent tales, and had expelled Homer from his republic because he gave currency to them. He had felt how impossible it was for the Greeks to worship the divine being worthily as long as these tales were believed. But the majority of philosophers did not deem it worth while to interfere with popular belief. They had no missionary zeal. They were content with stating their own opinions, but they had no wish to indoctrinate men who were not philosophers with dis- paraging ideas of their national religions. The Apologists are, therefore, far more earnest, far more vigorous, and far more thorough in their exposure of the licentiousness and immorality of the gods. They dwell more on details, and bring the matter more directly home to the hearts of men.
They have frequently been blamed for not having entered with more sympathy into the heathen mythology ; but the blame is, in all cases but that of Tatian, undeserved ; and some of them, as Justin, are remarkable for their extreme liberality. There was nothing in Greek mythology of a moral nature with which they could sympathize. They could not be ex- pected at that time to look upon the mythology as a phase of the human mind, a stage of its progress from expression by figurative language into expression by abstract ideas. They were open to the adoption of theories which were pos- sible in their day, and the theory which they did adopt was that most favourable to man. There were, as I have said, three great theories as to the nature of the Greek mythology
I.] IN TROD UCTION. 23
prevalent among" philosophers. One of these was, that the myths were allegories of physical phenomena. The Apolo- gists unhesitatingly rejected this explanation, and deemed the Stoics unfair in maintaining that they were thus able to reconcile their philosophic ideas with reverence for the popular gods. The second was that of Euhemerus, that all the popular gods were originally men. The Apologists adopt this theory only to a certain extent, drawing indeed many illustrations of the mortal nature of the gods from the work of the Epicurean, but at the same time showing that they were conscious that the theory did not cover all the facts. The third theory was the one which had been adopted by many of the most famous philosophers in all schools, and which is expounded fully by Plutarch in several of his trea- tises. It maintained that there were beings intermediate between the gods and men, a kind of mediators .between the divine and the human. These were called Sa/fioves or baifxovia. Their actions were not perfectly holy, as those of the gods. They shared the frailties of man ; and the mythological stories were real facts in the histories of these demones. Plutarch" attributes this opinion to Pythagoras, Xenocrates, and Chrysippus, as well as to Plato, who has left a clear exposition of his sentiments on the subject in the Sympo- sium». The Apologists adopted this theory, adding to it the notion that the demones were the evil angels who had been begotten from the intercourse of the sons of God with the daughters of men mentioned in the sixth chapter of Genesis. They believed that these demons were real beings, anxiously labouring to enslave men for their own vile purposes ; and they thus represented polytheism as a fearful delusion contrived by cunning beings superior in knowledge to man, by which the happiness of the race was marred and destroyed. They could, therefore, have no sympathy with polytheism, since it was the direct offspring of evil agents, but they had much sympathy with those who had been ensnared by it, and who were continually led astray by demonic agency. " Isis and Osir. c. 25 ; 360 Xyl. » c. xxiii. p. 202 E.
24 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
At the same time, most of the Apologists show a ready desire to recognise an agreement on the part of heathen poets and philosophers with their own beliefs. Throughout the whole of Greek literature, from the earliest times, the cultivated minds struggle to retain fresh and uncontaminated the idea of one supreme God, one ruler of gods and men, far surpassing all in the highest elements of character. This struggle settled. down into an earnest conviction in the course of time, and most of the best minds after the days of Socrates recognised a divine being supereminently good and great. The Apologists adduce many proofs of this fact. Their proofs now, however, strike us as singularly defective. They had the whole of the Greek literature before them, and conse- quently a much wider range to draw from than we have ; and yet they omit many passages which present themselves to us as striking and conclusive, while they appeal to many which are either forgeries or were misunderstood by themP. They appeal to the wi-itings of poets and philosophers in regard to other doctrines besides that of the unity of God. Their uncritical modes of interpretation betray themselves strongly in these appeals ; and their explanation of the agreement is equally unsatisfactory. They suppose that the knowledge of these truths came to the poets and philosophers, not from investigation, but from reading the books of Moses.
The Apologists attacked polytheism, not because they found it supported by strong arguments or by arguments at all, but because it was powerful among the masses for evil. That which entered into a rational conflict with Christianity on the side of heathenism was philosophy. This conflict, how- ever, had not as yet found expressions for itself in words, nor did either party know exactly in what relation it stood to the other. In the next century we shall have to deal with it definitely when we treat of the Alexandrian school. In the age which we now discuss philosophy and Christianity stand opposed to each other as rival methods of doing the
P Most of them are given by Cudworth, Intellectual System, Harrison's edition, vol. i. p. 621.
I.] INTRODUCTION. 25
same thing-. Philosophy sought to save the soul of man, so did Christianity, In this aim the philosophy of the ancient world differed much from that of modern times. Aristotle, indeed, regarded philosophy as the pursuit of truth simply for the sake of the knowledge. But other philosophers looked on the simple knowledge as a means to the attainment of the best mode of living. They sought to solve the problem of the destiny of man, and to carry him up to perfection. And this is the peculiarity and distinction of all the ancient philo- sophies that attained renown, that it was through knowledge, through an acquaintance with the laws of man^s nature that they sought to purify his life, and to enable him to attain the end of his being. It was through his intellect that his heart and will were to be directed aright. Philosophers could not conceive of any other method, and they therefore looked on Christianity as utterly foolish. Christians, on the other hand, asserted that men were saved by Christ^s power, and that therefore their mode of piety was itself the only true phi- losophy. The method might seem absurd, but there could be no doubt of the reality of the effects produced by it, and on that account it laid claim to be reckoned the genuine philosophy.
The contest that thus arose was, as has been said already, not well defined. The Christian Apologists did not exactly perceive wherein the main dispute lay, nor did they answer the objections which philosophers would have made in any- thing like a satisfactory manner. But they saw clearly this much, that philosophy failed to save men, not because it was absolutely wrong in itself, but because it was defective. Many philosophers had somewhat of the logos or reason in them to direct their conduct, and therefore to this extent they were real Christians themselves. But Christians alone had the privilege of knowing and having the Logos perfectly and living with Him ; and therefore it seemed to them absurd and irrational, now that the Logos had appeared in human form, to prefer the dim and uncertain leading of philosophy to the certain and sure guidance of incarnated Reason. Even be- tween the ancient prophets and the Greek philosophers they
26 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
drew a mighty distinction. The prophets spoke as they were moved by God ; their utterances were authoritative ; they spoke without attempting* to demonstrate; their assertions were superior in credibility to any philosophic deliverance, because the fulfilment of their predictions was guarantee that they spoke with the authority of God. And their writings had this immeasurable advantage over the works of philosophers, that no contradictions made their appearance in them. Though written at various periods, and by men of various temperaments, they held one uniform language in regard to God and his dealings with man, in regard to the creation, the government of the world, and a future state. The productions of philosophers betray a totally different phenomenon. One philosopher destroys what another has built up ; one doubts where the other believes ; one school is set up as antagonist to another. There is no certainty. There are the most manifest inconsistencies and oppositions. How could any human being put his trust in philosophy when its light was so flickering, and the paths it pointed out led in so many different directions? This is the great argument of the Apologists against confidence in philosophy as a director of man towards salvation.
The position of the Apologists was therefore not that of direct opposition to all the claims of philosophy, but to that special claim which set it up as a rival to Christianity in its power of re-modelling man^s life. With some of the philoso- phic schools the Christians had strong sympathies, and even when they found themselves compelled to maintain a decided warfare against the chief doctrines of others, they were ready to bring forward any doctrines with which they agreed.
The philosophic teaching with which they felt most sym- pathy was that of Socrates and Plato. It was not because Plato's metaphysical system pleased them ; on the contrary, they did not as a rule believe in the natural immortality of soul, and they say little or nothing of his doctrine of ideas, Athenagoras excepted. But the morality of Socrates was healthy and sound. The earnestness with which he
L] INTRODUCTION. 27
turned man^s attention to himself and his own state was in harmony with the Christian feeling* ; and his noble, unselfish conduct excited their warmest admiration. Plato^s doctrine of God as the good was felt to be an approach to Christianity. His frequent affirmation that the soul could be injured only by its own evil-doing harmonized with the Christian teaching in regard to life. Many of his statements in regard to the creation of the world struck them as similar to the accounts of Moses ; and his doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments differed from the Christian mainly in that he did not set down Christ as the judge. It was, however, especially in the peculiar way in which he defined the aim of philosophy that Platonism resembled Christianity. With him the business of philosophy was to make man like God, to bring him into greater resemblance to God. Besides these express doc- trines there were many beautiful passages in his writings which gave utterance to longings and desires akin to those awakened by Christianity, and in some instances his descriptions seemed almost prophetic, as when he pictures the just man impaled and dying a death of ignominy, yet blessed in his lonely holiness.
Plato had no real successor. It is scarcely fair to say that he had even a fully developed system ; and consequently none of those who regarded themselves as his followers obtain much attention from the Apologists. The Academics in their attempt to carry out Plato^s dialectics came to the natural conclusion that they could not reach absolute certainty; in other words, that salvation through intellect was not possible for them. The value of this conclusion, however, the Apolo- gists did not see. Nor did they occupy their minds at all with Aristotle and his followers. Aristotle himself had not devoted much of his energy to the investigation, or at least exposition, of theology; and his followei's, the Peripatetics, had been far from distinguishing themselves by religious earnestness. In these early Christian apologies, therefore, the influence of Aristotle is almost unknown.
The philosophies prevalent in the days of the Apologists which exerted most power were the Stoic and the Epicurean.
28 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
The Epicurean philosophy was purely materialistic. But it was not its materialism that brought it into collision with Christianity, but its restriction of enjoyment to material pleasures and of man's aspirations to the present life only. Whatever J also, may have been the character of Epicurus, and however pure his philosophy in its aim and form may have been, as propounded and held by himself, there is no doubt that a very general motive for its adoption was the supposed licence it gave to the indulgence of human passions and desires. At the time of the Apologists Epicureanism pre- sented itself as defiant of all religious principles, and a pan- der to every form of vice. And, consequently, the Christian writers condemn it almost without argument. They reckon Epicurus among the corrupters of mankind, and they stig- matize him and his philosophy in the strongest terms.
Stoicism had, on the other hand, many things to recom- mend it to Christians j and the Christian Apologists do not hesitate to praise some of the Stoics in the highest terms. But the living principle of Stoicism was in deadly opposition to the Christian faith ; and the more earnest and exalted Stoicism was, the more profound was the feeling of the Apo- logists that its fundamental principles ought to be overthrown. Stoicism was not altogether materialistic. Plato had explained the perceptibility of the material world by stating that all material things partook of ideas ; that there was, as it were, a mixture of matter and the immaterial in every external thing, and that the matter became intelligible through the immaterial that resided in it. With Plato the immaterial was separable from the matter; and Plato had consequently to deal with a principle which was anterior to the present material universe, and different from it. The Stoics saw this difficulty, and solved the problem by supposing that matter and soul or reason were essentially distinct ; but, as they are never found apart in this world, so they concluded that they never could exist apart : that the material and the immaterial were always more or less worked up together i. The imma-
0 See Zeller, Die Philosophic der Grieehen, Dritter Theil. Erste Halfte,
L] INTRODUCTION. 29
terialj or reason and mind, or by whatever other name it mig-ht be called, they asserted to be God. But by this very assertion they deprived God of a separate existence. Their lang-uage, moreover, is not fixed; for, as the spiritual always is combined with the material, they applied the term ' g-od ' to the whole material universe. But whichever use of the word was adopted, the god of the Stoics was not a personal god. Not that the Stoics did not sometimes conceive of the Logos or Nous personally ; but, when they did so, they did it out of the irresistible impulse of the age to conceive principles personally. Systematically they looked on the divine being as an all-pervasive principle, as active everywhere ; in stones, in rivers, in brutes, in man. The Deity, therefore, had merely an eternal activity, not a will. He could not interfere for the salvation of man. He did not, and could not love. It was not a person at all, but a principle which acted. It acted indeed with benevolence, its arrangements were good ; but it had no personal interest in any one being or thing. It was this impersonal character of the Stoic divinity which closed up the Stoic heart against Christianity. The Stoic had no belief in a god of the heart, if I may so speak : he believed only in a god of the head. He did not wish to be saved by faith and love : he wished to reach perfection through a knowledge of the laws of the universe, and by stern obedience to them. Moreover, he had within himself somewhat of the divine principle ; and it was his business to act the god. Some things were in his power, some were not. Those which were not, were ordered well by the pervading spirit of the universe. He had to receive them thankfully. The conquest of those which were in his power he owed to himself. If he mastered them, he actually became a god ; he was admitted into the number of the celestial beings : he was not inferior to Jove himself. Stoicism thus
p. 70, notes. There is no satisfactory account of the Stoic philosophy either in German or English, as far as I know. The student must search for the truth in the monographs, especially of the Dutch school, on the individual Stoics. Zeller's account is by far the best. Grant's in the Oxford Essays is based on it.
30 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
roused all the powers of a man both to act and endure ; but, at the same time, it cut off all sense of dependence on superior being's. Hence the antipathy of Christianity to Stoicism. Yet Stoicism had many points in common with Christianity ; so many points, indeed, that, as we shall find. Stoicism insensibly forced many of its modes of looking at things into the minds of the Christian Apologists. It spoke of the providence of God. It spoke of the burning up of the world ; though all Stoics did not agree in this doctrine. It held out the hand of brotherhood to all who accepted its dogmas, of whatever nation or grade they might be. Its morality especially was noble. It proclaimed the virtuous man a king; it made virtue the one essential thing; and in some of its doctrines it approximated to a school of theology which afterwards arose in the Christian Church; it insisted on the necessity of conversion, if we may use the Christian term ; it maintained that there were no great or small sins, but that all were equally bad ; it maintained that if a man be once converted he will never turn again to evil courses ; and it assigned to the true Stoics a place in heaven after their death, though with them this meant nothing more than absorption into the divine being.
In the Apologists there is no elaborate attempt to refute the teachings of the Stoics ; but there are continual references to them, principally in the shape of statements that what the Stoics believed to take place through natural law they believed to happen in consequence of the will of God.
As yet Neo-Platonism had not made its appearance; nor can we distinctly trace in the Apologists any acquaintance with the writings of such men as Plutarch. As we have noticed already, the Christian theory of demonic agency in the heathen divinities has its counterpart in that writer ; but the Christian writers evidently did not borrow the theory from Plutarch : it came down from a much earlier period. Athena- goras, too, was a Platonist ; but his philosophy was taken directly from Plato, and indicates no tendency to Neo- Platonism.
I] INTRODUCTION. 31
Taking-, then, a general survey of the aggressive position of the Apologists of this age, we remark that their work was far from complete, that their attacks on the popular mytho- logy were only a more earnest repetition of opinions which the wisest and best of the heathens had uttered, and that their exposition of what was compatible with Christianity in the various philosophies, and what was erroneous in them, is extremely defective. But it cannot be too frequently repeated that the Christian Apologists did not directly aim at over- throwing philosophy, and that even if they had, they could not have done this part of their work satisfactorily until philosophy had expressed itself in regard to Christianity, and the points of agreement and disagreement had been brought more fully to light by frequent and deliberate discussion.
The Christian Apologists camiot be said to be more suc- cessful in their statement of the evidences of Christianity, and for very much the same reasons ; namely, that their main aim was not to defend Christianity, and that their faculties were not stirred to the utmost by acute observations of powerful opponents. In attempting to measure theii* merits in the defence of Christianity, it has also to be remembered that they believed the doctrines of Christianity to be fully and entirely revealed in the Old Testament. Christ came to teach them these doctrines, to explain them, to imprint them on the heart, and to remodel the life. But he taught nothing new. Such an assertion as this does not occur in actual words, but it is implied in the whole course of their reasonings. And hence the main argument on which they laid stress. This argument was that derived from prophecy. The power of prediction belongs to God alone. Demons and other agencies might work miracles, or at least work apparent miracles, but a prediction can come from God alone. Now the Old Testament is full of predictions which have been fulfilled ; it contains predictions which are now fulfilling, and, consequently, the Old Testament was written by men who were inspired by God. This is the certain and irre- fragable argument of the Apologists. Their defective treat-
32 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
ment of the whole question we shall have to discuss more minutely when we examine it as g-iven by Justin.
On account of a belief in apparent and false miracles, the Apologists of the second century did not bring- the argument from miracles prominently forward. Nor did they make the slightest attempt to define it philosophically, and to fence it against possible objections.
They did not bring forward the argument from the great change effected in the conduct of men by Christ^s doctrines in a formal systematic manner to any great extent. But it comes up continually in the necessary contrast between the results of heathenism and Christianity, and between the words and arguments of sophists and the deeds of Christians.
The Apologists also appeal to the teaching of Christ, as if it contained evidence in itself that it was true. But the appeals made to the history and character of Christ by way of evidence derive their force from their being fulfilments of prophecies delivered by the writers of the Old Testament. Still, both the exhibition of the character and teaching of Christ, and of the character and beliefs of the Christians, must have had a powerful effect on some heathen readers, whatever may have been the reasons which the Apologists had for making it; and perhaps all the more powerful be- cause there was no direct argument based on it. Yet it may be doubted whether the Apologies would do much towards bringing men to Christ. During the age of the Apologists Christianity made great progress. The language in which some of them speak of its spread will be quoted hereafter. No land, according to them, was without its Christians'". And during this period the Christians seem to have abstained from large public meetings. They had no churches, they had no regular preachers, they were not wealthy, they were not very learned, they were not powerful. How did they succeed in leading such vast multitudes to adopt the same mode of life as their own ? Are we not bound to accept the Christian
"■ See Graul's summary of the various references to the spread of the Gospel in this age, p. 15 ; and Pressens^, vol. i. of Second Series, p. 27.
I.] INTBODUGTIOK. 33
explanation of this most extraordinary phenomenon^ that God was exercising his power to save men through Christ ? And the agency which God employed in acting on men was the earnest personal influence of the Christians, whose lives were shaped after God^s laws, who were ready to die for the sake of Christ, or to wander away from their homes among savage tribes, to tell them about the good news that had come to men, trusting to God for food and clothing. Of these noble men the literature of the Christians says almost nothing, A vast and mighty change took place on the earth during these years ; but almost all that remains to testify of the agency are a few works written to deprecate injustice. These works bear testimony that it was the deeds of the Christians that attracted some of the cultivated men to Christianity. The patience of Christians under suffering, and the great simplicity of the Old Testament, are oftener than once referred to as leading the mind of the writer to the new course of lifes.
The early Christian writers had other contests besides those with heathenism and philosophy. Many of them felt a deep interest in the Jews, and were eager to prove to them that Jesus was indeed the Christ. The productions which the Christians composed for this object are, unfortunately, all lost except the Dialogue with Trypho by Justin. This is much to be deplored, because, however valueless the works might have been in regard to argument, they would have brought out distinctly the eflfect which Jewish opposition had in influencing the Christian mind. From the work of Justin we see that, as in the time of Paul so in his time, the great obstacle which kept the Jews back from Christ was the total abolition of the Jewish ceremonial in the Christian reli- gion. To obviate this diflficulty, Justin has to show that all ceremonial is in itself of no importance, that God judges only according to the conduct and the character of the man. In justification of this proposition Justin appeals to the pro- phets, who, he maintains, continually speak of a spiritual ' Pee Graul, p. 51.
VOL. II. D
34 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
circumcision, of a spiritual sabbath, of spiritual offerings and sacrifices. He also maintains that the law was laid on the Jews on account of the hardness of their hearts, and he there- fore deems it utteriy absurd that it should be supposed that Christians should have to submit to it. I need not enter more fully into his mode of argument ; but I simply remark here that, as long- as this contest with the Jews was pro- minently before the Christian mind, and carried on as Justin carries it on, there could not be any efficacy assigned to the mere observance of baptism or the eucharist. Christians could not well suppose that circumcision was replaced by baptism, or that the Sunday was to be kept sacred instead of the Saturday, for they affirmed that circumcision was a mark set by God on the Jews for their destruction -, and that the observance of the Sabbath was laid on the Jews because of extraordinary wickedness.
Besides having to show the vanity of ceremonial, the Christian writers had to prove that Jesus was the Christ. In attempting this proof the Christians were led to peculiar results. They had to base their arguments on the Old Tes- tament. They had to appeal to many passages, the inter- pretation of which was disputed, and accordingly they had to expound fully the Christian method of interpretation. This interpretation was based on the idea of Christ as the Logos. Christ was the manifestation of God. It was Christ, therefore, who appeared on the numerous occasions on which God is said to have appeared. The invisible God could not himself become visible and perceptible to men, but his Logos or Son could and did become visible. And hence the Chris- tian writers applied numerous passages in which God is spoken of as Christ. In this way the doctrine of the divinity of Christ became familiar to the Christian mind, and the Christians welcomed that doctrine all the more readily, that it seemed the only possible explanation of many mysterious passages in the Old Testament. We draw attention to this point now, simply to notice the effect which the contest with the Jews would have on Christian opinion. The Jews
I.] INTRODUCTIOK. 35
maintained that the Messiah was a man^ born of men. The Christians perceived that such an opinion left large portions of the Old Testament unexplained and unevangelical.
The Christians had also to do battle ag-ainst heresies. Here, ag-ain, we have to deplore the loss of many valuable treatises. For it would have been of immense consequence to know what the writers contemporary with the founders of the heresies thought of them. We should not have expected a fully-developed philosophical refutation of their opinions, but we should certainly have found a good deal of plain common sense and sound Christian feeling. From the few remarks which Justin makes on the leaders of heresies, we should also be inclined to think that he would have been honest and trustworthy in his statements with regard to their character. And these would have been of immense use in determining the position of the heretics in the development of truth. The heresies arose within the Church, and most of tlie founders continued in fellowship with the Church for a considerable time. The}-, no doubt, had been attracted to Christianity by its practical goodness ; but, in the course of time, had become discontented with the simply practical character of the reli- gion. They wished to advance farther. They wished to place Christ somewhere in a system of the universe; and after much speculation, they at last generally ended in re- garding their speculations as more essential to salvation than their practice. They wished to be saved by knowledge, not by faith. Their hold on Christian sympathies was loosened. They looked down on their weaker practical brethren ; and frequently they left the Church altogether to set up a school of the more enlightened. The speculations of these Gnostics, as they were called, are extremely interesting, as they are the result of the passage of the Eastern mind from a Semitic mode of thought into an Indo-European. The Semitic mind firmly adheres to the idea of one God. It looks on nature as his work. Accordingly, it personifies but does not hypos- tatize. The Indo-European in its early stages, on the other hand, throws life into everything. !Now the Gnostics were
30 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
almost all orientals. They came in contact with Christianity and philosophy nearly at the same time. The3^ became tired of the principle of Christianity^ mere practical faith in an unexplained Son of God^ and they passed on to the principle of philosophy, salvation by knowledge.. But their mode of philosophizing- is new. Their ideas are philosophic, but their mode of conceiving- them and expressing them is mythological. They speak of their notions as existences, and their doctrines assume the form of history or of legend. It was, therefore, extremely difficult for the early Christian writers to get at the bottom of these speculations ; but they knew that most of them were carried on in defiance of many of the Christian practical beliefs. The knowledge of the Gnostics must pene- trate into the mysteries ; therefore Christ was not what most plain Christians would take Him to be. There was much that was delusive in his appearances. It was not sufficient to state what Christ^s work was, but the mode in which his work was to be accomplished, and how He came to accomplish it must be explained. And, in the course of these explanations, Christ^s real work often vanishes entirely ; his precepts are explained in a non-natural sense, and the common morality is undermined. All that the Christians could reply to these explanations and new theories of morals was, that they had not been so taught by Christ and his apostles. The answer which the Gnostics made to such an assertion is curious and important. They asserted that they based their opinions on the writings of the apostles of Christ. They appealed con- tinually to one or other of the books of the New Testament. Most of them could not appeal to the Old Testament, because they rejected it as the work of an inferior god. But there was nothing to hinder them from founding the true revelation on the writings of some one or other of the apostles of Christ. Accordingly, the Gnostics are before the Christians in appeal- ing to the books of the New Testament as authorities. They are the first who employ the New Testament in the same- way as the early Christians use the Old. And far more evi- dence of the existence of the books of the New Testament
I.] INTRODUCTION. 37
is to Le got from the fragments of these heretical writers, few though they be, than from all the Christian writings of the Apologetic age^. The reply which the Christian writers made to these appeals we shall have to discuss in a subsequent chapter. It was in the main this : Your inter- pretation of the writing of the apostles is wrong. We have among us those who heard the apostles when alive. We have disciples of their disciples. And they never heard the apostles say such things as you affirm they said. They could ask the apostles what they meant. They could not be in a mistake; but you, misled by your speculative zeal, twist the written words, which can no longer reply, into meanings abhorrent to the minds of the apostles.
The Gnostics, then, were the founders of speculative theo- logy; and hence they have sometimes been called the Protestants of the early Church — very falsely, as I think. For, so far from asserting the liberty of thought, each man seems to have claimed for himself the sole possession of the truth, and to have condemned all others. There is no proof that Christians objected to any amount of speculative theology ; but they felt, and felt rightly, that if speculation attempted to overturn the main facts of Christianity, and to give new moral laws to men, and if the speculators refused in consequence obedience to Christ and fellowship with his simple-minded followers, the speculators were no longer Christians. So wide, indeed, of Christianity were the speculations of the Gnostics, that their systems have now become very unintelligible. And their systems never found their way into the Christian Church ; but they were nevertheless precursors of many tendencies and opinions which made their appearance afterwards, when the Christian Church itself laboured at a systematic explanation of the fundamental facts and laws of Christianity. The Gnostics, even in the age of the Apologists, must have exer- cised a powerful influence on the Christians ; for the tendency of the human mind is not to rest satisfied with simple faith, but to seek explanations. And the Gnostics preceded the ' See Westcott's section on this subject in his History of the Canon.
38 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
Christians in the one speculative attempt which characterizes the Apologetic age — the explanation of the person of Christ.
We pass now from the external relations of the Church to a short review of what took place within it. It has ever to be remembered that here our means of information are scanty. Only a few fragments remain to us of the works to which the internal necessities of the Church gave rise. And it could not be expected that the Apologies would give comj)lete and satisfactory accounts of the difficulties which Christians felt in the apprehension of the mysteries of Chris- tianity, or in the management of their associations. The insufficiency of these documents, however, to satisfy us with regard to the doctrines of the Apologists has often been pressed too far. The Apologists did not shrink from a full exposition of their faith. There is not the slightest proof that any of them deemed it a matter of duty to hold back from the heathen either an explanation of a doctrine, or information with regard to a practice. Justin Martyr lays before the emperors his opinions with regard to the Father, Son^ and Holy Spirit, and he gives a detailed account of the proceedings of Christians on the Sunday, narrating among other things the administration of baptism and of the eucha- rist. Moreover, the Apologists would be led by a regard to the welfare of pagans to give a fair account of Christ's teaching and doctrines, though they would naturally discuss only those doctrines which were directly opposed to the prevalent belief among the heathen. Hence the Apologetic treatises are occupied largely in urging the unity of the divine being, in opposition to polytheism. They bring prominently forward the doctrine of creation, and God as the almighty creator ; and they labour hard to reply to the heathen objections against the doctrine of the resurrection, and write special treatises on the subject. For the same reason also the Apologists of this age insist on the freedom of man''s will very strongly. They had to resist the fatalism of the Stoics ; they had to deal with the apathy of the Epicureans. And therefore they bring out fully man's
I] " INTRODUpriON. 39
power to judge and act for himself. In consequence of this they have been blamed as Pelagianizing-. But the blame is totally misplaced. The Apolog-ists do not speak of the doctrine of original sin^ and they speak sometimes in language apparently opposed to it, because as yet the Church had no theory on the matter. Circumstances had not yet arisen to call the attention of Christians to the explanation of the universal depravity of man. The Apolo- gists contented themselves with affirming that man was absolutely free, but that, on the other hand, the training of men was such as to make them vicious. Whether they would have adopted the doctrine of original sin, if it had been presented to them as it was held in the time of Augus- tine, is a problem that cannot and need not be solved. All that has now to be remarked is, that they did not give their attention to the matter, and did not even discover the terms on which the question was to be settled. The same observation has to be made in regard to many other doc- trines, such as those relating to the death of Christ. The Apologetic writings contain no theory on this subject. There is no indication that they supposed that Christ saved simply by example, no indication that they looked on his death as a satisfaction to God as moral governor for sin. There is one step, however, which deserves to be noted. Justin and some others regularly mention, in describing the future state, the salvation of men as being a salvation not merely from sin but a deliverance from pain. The idea of personal happiness becomes more prominent in some of these writings than it is in the earlier. The idea, indeed, of personal holiness is still uppermost, but it is conjoined with that of personal happiness; and thus the way was opened up for the two questions, — how, on the one hand, Christ^s life and death wrought holiness ; and, on the other hand, how his life and death procured happiness. Attempted solutions of the first question will appear in the next age. The Church had to go through many phases of feeling and life before it was led to attempt a full solution of the
40 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
last. The same generality pervades their treatment of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. They mention the Spirit in conjunction with the Father and Son as being- third in rank. But they seem scarcely to know what to make of the Spirit. TheophiluSj and even Justin^ speak as if they confounded Him with the Logos. They all recognise his personality in one set of passages and in express assertions, and in another they make Him belong to the Father and to the Son, very much as if He were an attribute. They never speak of Him as God, nor as possessed of the divine nature ; and Justin asserts that God gives his glory only to his Son, as if the Spirit were not in existence, or could not and did not receive God^s glory. They do not discuss the mode of his existence at all.
The doctrine which the Apologists discuss fully is that of the Logos, and the relation of the Son to the Father. The writers of the synoptical gospels and the apostolic letters speak of Jesus as the Son of God. They do not go farther into the nature of Christ. So do the apostolical fathers. They feel content with the assertion that He was in a peculiar sense the Son of God, the bearer of the Divine message to men, the revelation of the Divine Being to men. They make various assertions with regard to Him: such as that all power was given Him in heaven and earth ; that to Him every knee should bow ; that through Him the world was created ; that He was the firstborn of all creation; and that the Father had given up all things into his hands. But in none of them occur express and unmistakeable assertions of the divinity of Christ. The first verse of the gospel of John is the first statement which we have in regard to this subject. This statement, however, is so difficult to understand that there seems to me no possibility of ever attaining certainty as to its real meaning. An exact translation of it into English, so as to represent the difficulties which it suggests, is impossible. This arises mainly from the two words in it: Xoyo^, word, and 0eo's, God. The word Ao'yo? signifies either the expression of an idea, word, or it may mean reason, the originator of ideas.
I.] INTRODUCTION. 41
or it may mean the combination of idea and expression, for which in English there is now no term, though once the term ^discourse' conveyed the meaning. Now, in which sense does John use the term; or does he use it with different meanings? " In the beginning was the Reason, or the Expression of thought, and this Reason or Expression was to God, or in relation to God", and the Reason or Expression was God." Adopting the meaning of ' Expression'' we might obtain the following sense. In the beginning there was a being who expressed the Divine mind. This being' addressed his revela- tion to God, for there was none else in existence ; and the object to which he gave expression was God himself. A serious objection to this translation is, that we should have expected 6 0eos, if it were meant that the Divine Being was the object-matter of the revelation. Yet this is not a fatal objection. For the apostle may have meant to con- trast the Divine nature of the revelation with the material nature of the subsequent revelation of God in the creation of the world. The verse, according to this meaning, would state that before the world was created there was a manifestation of the Divine Being in the person of his Son, the object and subject of which were God. If this translation were correct, then John in the commencement of his gospel would state nothing else than what he states frequently in other words in other portions of the same book. But the difficulty is, to rest satisfied with the translation of the last clause. And it is more probable that its real meaning is, " And the Logos was God.'' But what did John mean by 'God?' That John does not assert that the Logos was one, or of the same nature with the God, is plain from his use of 0eos without the article. The unity of the Divine nature in God and Christ may be a satisfactory explanation of John's statement, biit it is not what John states. The woi'd 0eds, as we shall see in treating of Justin Martyr's use of the term, and in many other cases, was very widely applied. It was some-
1 I have given Trp6s its usual meaning. It is used to signifj' ' with ' in the Fir.st Ej>istle of John, and may have the same meaning here.
42 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
times applied to man when perfected. It was applicable to any being possessed of supernatural powers : especially was it applicable to a being who was worshipped. And perhaps what John meant to do, and certainly what he seems to do here, is to make a very wide general statement that the Logos was divine. He does not obviate any of the difficulties which might arise from the assertion. As far as John's statement goes, we are bound to believe that the Logos is a divine being; but we go beyond John's statement when we either assert that there are two Gods of equal glory and of the same substance, or that there is but one Divine Being, but two persons.
John's assertion is of the vaguest and most general nature, in consequence, as I have said, of the uncertainty attaching to the terms Ao'yos and 0eos. It becomes more definite, or at least more intelligible, if we consider it alongside of the philosophy of Philo. Philo held that there was a being called the Logos, who was the manifestation or revealer of God ; the mediator between God and man. He is therefore called by him the image" and glory of God. By him God made the world v, and governs it^; he is the chief messenger of God ; he is himself a second Gody, and especially would be the God of men, for they are imperfect beings 2, and are thus unfit for the worship and communion of the great God. This is Philo's doctrine stated broadly. Many parts of it are still matters of keen discussion, and scholars are still divided as to whether Philo's logos was a person or not. The preponderance of the evidence seems to me strongly in favour of the personality, and the history of the opinion also tends in that direction. The whole doctrine seems to have arisen from the combination of circumstances which I have already noticed in speaking of Gnosticism. It was the result of the Semitic mind going through the philo-
" De Mundi Opif. vol. i. p. 6, 1. 42.
' De Leg. Alleg. vol. i. p. 106, 1. 29 ; De Cherubim, p. 162, 1. 15 ; De Somn. p. 656, 1. 50.
* De Somniis, vol. i. p. 656, 1. 48 ; De Prof. vol. i. p. 562, 1. 34.
> Frag. vol. ii. p. 625. ^ De Leg. Alleg. vol. i. p. 128, 1. 43.
I] INTRODUCTION. 43
sophical and myth-creative phases at the same time. Almost all intelligent nations have felt the necessity of some kind of intervening- agent between them and the supreme l^eing. This being is often called the word or the voice. Among Arj'an nations this word or voice is hypostatized, and some- times, as in Greek mythology, divided into numerous per- sonages. With the Hebrews it was a mere personification or circumlocution. The ' voice of God"* seems with them to have been simply a periphrasis to avoid the repetition of the name Jehovah, but in speaking of Wisdom as the helper of God in the creation of the world they personify. This personification makes its appearance in the book of Job and in the Proverbs. It reappears again in later times in the apocryphal book of Sirach the son of Jesus, where it is difficult to say whether the personification has not vanished and wisdom become a real person; or whether, as some have maintained, she is not a pure ethereal substance, some- thing* between a personification and a real existence. The step which Philo takes in advance of this is to convert the Wisdom into Logos, and to make that Logos a person, the first-begotten of God''.
It seems scarcely possible not to identify the statement in John^s introduction with Philo's doctrine. But we are not bound on that account to suppose that John accepted the whole of Philo's doctrine. His words, " And the Word was a God,^' do not state that the Logos was a second God. They might mean that ; but they may well harmonize with quite different theories of the divine existence of the Logos. And when we proceed farther into inquiries into Philo^s doctrine, we soon perceive that it diverges widely from John^s and all Christian teaching. Philo makes his logos in some measure correspond to the intelligible world of Plato. John^s words are, " And the Logos became flesh -j" John takes the main idea of the Logos, that he is the manifester of the Divine Being, that in creation, in theo- phanies, in all divine dealings the Logos is the agent.
^ De Confus, Linguariim, vol. i. p. 414, line 29.
44 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
And he asserts that Jesus was and is this Logos. He finds the term 'logos' in tliis sense to be of great use; for it combines into one the various phases and activities of Christ. The Apologists adopted the phraseology ; they more- over identify the Logos^ the revealer of God, with logos, reason ; and therefore wherever reason makes its appearance, there they maintain is proof of the activity and indwelling of Christ. He is the light that is in every man.
They also, in more decided language than John, assert the divinity of the Logos, and apply to him all those passages in the Old Testament in which visible manifestations of God are spoken of. They regard him, indeed, as inferior to the Father ; as deriving his divinity from the Father ; as second in rank ; as subject in all things to the Father ; but they do not hesitate to pronounce him God in the most clear positive manner. There are indications in the work of Justin, and still more decidedly in the Clementine Recog- nitions, that there was a party that refused to proceed beyond the statement that Jesus was the Son of God ; and such a party held fellowship with the other Christians. But it is far from likely that the party was large. The ten- dency of the human mind to make inferences is irresistible; and the inference that if Jesus was the Son of God he was God, is also one of the clearest that could well be made.
The divinity of the Logos could not be long before the Christian mind without causing difficulties. If the Logos was God, how could there be only one God ? To answer this question it was not enough to say that there was one supreme God, and that the Logos was a being on whom godhead was conferred by the other. Some explanation more than this is required ; and the Apologists attempted it. Their attempt is a complete and most manifest failure. As will be noticed hereafter on several occasions, the materialistic philosophy of the day had a powerful effect on Christian speculation, because it was really the atmosphere which they unconsciously breathed. The explanation of the divinities of Father and Son is based on this materialistic philosophy.
I.] INTRODUCTION. 45
The Divine nature is like fire. Fire may be taken from fire, and the original fire is not diminished. So the Divine substance of the Son is taken from the Divine substance of the Father; but there is no diminution of the original Divine substance. Perhaps it is too much to say that this is an explanation ; but whatever it be, it was by material analogies such as these that the Apologists bridged over the mysteries of the two divinities. The Divine substance was conceived of as incapable of diminution, while other beings might partake of it. To Christ alone, however, had the Father given his glory. The diSiculties which the doctrine of the divinity of the Holy Spirit would have caused are, of course, not as yet felt, because no one spoke of the Holy Spirit as divine. When Theophilus speaks of the triad, the point of view which he assumes is, that the Logos and Spirit belong- to the Father just as a man's mind belongs to the man. In reply to such an explanation a modern thinker would say to Theophilus that he had denied the personality of the Logos and Spirit ; but this objection would very likely never have occurred to any ancient theologian at that time, and if it had, it would have been thought a weak one.
It deserves to be noticed that the Apologists do not speak of the Divine nature ; and when they make declarations with regard to Christ, they never divide his personality. It was the Logos that became man. They have not yet analysed the phenomena of Christ's activity, and therefore know no- thing of a celestial and Divine nature and a human nature. It was the Divine Logos that was born, that died, that rose again. No difficulty is felt by them in making such state- ments as these.
There is still another point in regard to the Logos which demands observation. This is the teaching of the Apologists in regard to the eternity of the Logos. The word * logos ' means, as has been remarked, a manifestation. But the taking place of a manifestation implies a previous conceal- ment, or at least seems to do so ; and, if so, then there must have been a time when the Logos was not manifesting.
46 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
Was the Logos, then, existent before the first manifestation ? In regard to this point the language of the Apologists is generally vague, simply because their minds had not been led to consider the subject in all its bearings. They felt that manifestation necessarily carried along with it the idea of time, and therefore they gave to the Logos the epithets ' first- begotten of God,^ ' off*spring of God,' and applied to him all the passages in the Old Testament in which God speaks of begetting his Son. The earlier amongst them, therefore, seem to countenance the idea that they looked on the generation of the Son as an act accomplished in time, though anterior to the creation of the world. The later of the Apologists adopted a distinct theory of the matter; namely, that the Ao'yos was eternally with God as his reason ; but when utterance was given to his reason, then the Logos was begotten. This theory does not deny the personality of the Logos from eternity, for, as we have seen, though such language in regard to the Logos would compel modern thinkers to regard it as a faculty, yet these early writers would not feel themselves so influenced.
It has been a question much and keenly discussed, what influence the heathen philosophy had on the religious opinions of the Apologists. At one time a set of writers eagerly maintained that Christianity derived almost all its beliefs from Platonism. But there are few now who woidd go so far. There cannot be a question that Platonism and other heathen philosophies had an influence on the Apologetic writers, because they were trained in the midst of these philosophies, and their speculative opinions had to be based on them, consciously or unconsciously. Far too much power has been attributed to Platonism, however, in moulding their minds. They sympathized with many of Plato's noble senti- ments and thoughts, but Athenagoras is the only one that is a Platonist. The others were far more influenced by the prevailing materialistic tendencies — a fact that will come prominently out in our minute discussion of particular cases. It will be also seen frwn such a discussion that Plato had
I.] ' INTRODUCTION. 47
nothing to do with the doctrine of the Christian Trinity, and, as we have noticed ah-eady, the part of the logos- doctrine which Philo derived from Phito was the part which Christians did not accept.
In regard to the constitution of the Christian churches during the Apologetic period, not much information has come down to us. The most probable conclusion from the evidence is, that the churches had not yet any fixed organization. They had presidents, but there is no proof that there was any distinction into clergy and laity. From Justine's ac- count it is plain that any one might baptize. Nor is there any sign that peculiar efficacy was attached to what were afterwards called the sacraments. Justin on one occasion uses language that is peculiar, but he does so out of simplicity, and without the consciousness that his words might be taken to mean something very different from the common beliefs.
There seems not the slightest reason for the opinion that the Church was divided into a Pauline and a Petrine party. The reasons which have been assigned for this opinion will be discussed as they come up in treating of the various writers. The Christians acted towards each other with charity. They permitted differences of opinion in regard to the divinity of Christ. They permitted differences of opinion in reg-ard to the observance of the Passover. But towards the end of our period a mighty change came over the Church ; and we shall find the most violent passions, the keenest bigotry, and the most absurd dogmatism play very prominent parts. And this is what we might expect. The Church was liberal during the Apologetic days, because, from ig- norant simplicity and childlike love, it was indifferent to outward observances and to speculative opinions. As soon as Christians come to attach any value to outward observances and to dogmas, a spirit of intolerance \vill show itself.
The opinions of the Apologists in regard to morals deserve careful examination. Christ laid down only general prin- ciples, and left the working out of these to his followers. And accordingly we find that the Christians of this age,
48 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
starting from a peculiar view of these principles, come to peculiar conclusions. This is especially the case with regard to sexual intercourse. Over the New Testament there are scattered various general precepts in regard to this matter, but there is no attempt to give reasons for these precepts. The Apologists found themselves compelled by the circum- stances of their case, and especially by the universal prevalence of licentiousness, to come to definite conclusions on the matter, though it can scarcely be said that they examined the whole rationale of their conclusions. Thus, for instance, they do not define wherein the essential principle of marriage lies, but they unquestionably hold that permission by law was not absolutely necessary. They would never have been married at all if they had been required to appear before a public official, for death would have been frequently the consequence of such an act. When once a man and a woman had co- habited, some of the Christians thought that by this act they became one flesh, and that, consequently, another marriage of either the widower or widow would be something approach- ing to adultery. Then, again, all of them looking on the act of cohabitation as simply a means to an end, looked on cohabitation for mere pleasure as a sin. Accordingly they regarded cohabitation with a pregnant woman as sinful. Finding, moreover, a passage in the New Testament which spoke in praise of men who had made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven, they did not deem it wrong to mutilate themselves. A remarkable instance of this is given in the Apology of Justin. Barbej^'ac and others have found great fault with the fathers for such opinions as these ; but if we remember the prevalence of vice in their days, and the corruption of women through it, we shall easily allow that they eiTed on the right side, and we shall not have much to boast over them until we be able to define wherein he the risrhtness and wrong-ness of the various acts connected with the relations of the sexes. It may be noticed here that Justin condemns polygamy ; and, perhaps, he is the first Christian 1 writer who did so.
I.] INTRODUOTIOX. 4;>
In reg-ard to evils in the social system^ Christ did not interfere^ but left his principles to work silently. According-ly^ the Christians did not, like the Therapeuts, forbid the pos- session of slaves ; nor do they ever bring- forward arg-uments against slavery. But they treated the slave as a brother, welcomed him as equal in the Lord, and did everything to help him when in distress.
The works which relate to the various subjects noticed in this chapter are exceedingly numerous. Books which discuss the history of Apologetics generally commence with a survey of the Apologies produced in this age. Those which I have used are the following : —
1. Jo. Alberti Fabricii SS. T. D. et Prof. Publ. Delectus Argumentorum et Syllabus Scriptorum qui veritatem Reli- gionis Christianae adversus Atheos, Epicureos, Deistas seu Naturalistas, Idololatras, Judseos et Muhammedanos lucubra- tionibus suis asseruerunt. Hamburgi 1725, 4to. A book of vast erudition, but too sketchy to be of much use.
2. Geschichte der Apologetik, von Heinrich Gottlieb Tzschirner. Leipzig 1805, 8vo. ; and
3. Der Fall des Heidenthums, by the same writer. Leipzig 1829, 8vo. These are both remarkably able and thorough books.
4. Die Christliche Kirche an der Sehwelle des Irenaeischen Zeitalters, von K. Graul. Leipzig i860, 8vo. This is a very readable and scholarly introduction to a full account of the life and activity of Ireneeus, in which Graul reviews the state of the Christians and their relations to heathenism, Judaism, Gnosticism, and Montanism in the period immediately pre- ceding that of Irenseus.
5. Les Apologistes Chretiens au II® Siecle : Cours d'Elo- quence sacree fait a la Sorbonne 1858-60. Par M. L^Abbe Freppel. 2 vols. 8vo., Paris i860.
In our own language two works which deal with our sul).- ject deserve especial notice.
6. Paganism and Christianity compared, by John Ireland, D.D. London 1807, 8vo. These lectures treat partly of the
VOL. II. E
50 TILE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
accusations broug-ht against the Christians. They show con- siderable knowledg-e of the early writers.
7. History of the Christian Church in the Second and Third Centuries^ by James Amiraux Jeremie^ D.D.^ Regius Professor of Divinity^ Cambridge. 1852. First published in the En- cyclopaedia Metropolitana. The writer passes over his subject rapidly, but in a masterly manner. He gives a short account of those writers of the second and third centuries whose works still remain, always appealing to authorities, and exhibiting* a very wide knowledge of the French literature on the subject.
The list of works that discuss the Platonism of the Fathers is very large. The works that seem to me the most satis- factory are, —
I. Caesar Morgan^s Investigation of the Trinity of Plalo and of Philo. Cambridge 1853, 8vo. ; and
3. Baur, Das Christliche des Plato nismus oder Sokrates und Christus. Tiibingen 1837, 8vo. This was originally a review of Ackermann^s glowing but unsatisfactory work on the same subject.
3. Ueber das Verhaltniss der Hellenischen Ethik zur Christlichen, by Neander, p. 140 of Wisseuschaftliche Abhand- lungen von Dr. August Neander, edited by Jacobi, Berlin i85i,8vo. ; and Neander^s Vorlesungen iiber Geschichte der Christlichen Ethik, Berlin 1864.
The early treatises which attempt to prove that Christianity derived its Trinity from Platonism are exceedingly defective both in their representations of Christianity and Platonism. The book which gave rise to the keen discussions on this subject which prevailed in the eighteenth century atfords little help to the modern student in his attempts to arrive at the truth. It is styled, Le Platonisme de voile ou Essai touchant le Verbe Platonicien. Divise en deux Parties. A Cologne ehez Pierre Marreau, 1700. It was published anonymously. Its author^s name was Souverain. The French work is rare. It was translated into German by Loffler, who in the second edition (1792) added a short history of the doctrine of the Trinity.
CHAPTER IL
QUADRATUS.
A LL the satisfactory information which we have with reg-ard to Quadratus comes from Eusebius^. He flourished in the reign of Hadrian ; and, as far as we know, was the first Apologist of the Christians. He was induced to compose his Apology and present it to the emperor, " because some wicked men were attempting to disturb the Christians." Eusebius, who had the Apology before him, says that there were in it brilliant proofs of the man^s understanding and of apostolic soundness''. He also adduces a passage from the work which is interesting in itself, and gives conclusive evidence with regard to the early age of the writer : " The deeds of our Saviour were always present, for they were real ; those who were cured, those who rose from the dead, who were not merely seen while in the process of being cured and of rising, but during a continual presence, and who not only while the Saviour dwelt on earth, but also when He was removed, were alive for a considerable time, so that some of them even lived to our times ^."
Eusebius in another place ^ mentions a Quadratus who lived in the time of Trajan ; who, he says, had the gift of prophecy, and who with others succeeding to the work of the Apostles,
=> Eccl. Hist. iv. 3.
b opdoTOfjila : Tightness in dividing the word of truth, as is inferred from a comparison of 2 Tim. ii. 15.
^- Euseb. Hi.st. Eccl. iv. 3. " Ibid. iii. 37.
E 2
52 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
gave up their propertyj and moving* from land to land, preached the gospel and set up churches. This same Quad- ratus seems to be mentioned by an anonymous writer against the Montanists®. Whether he is the Apologist or not we cannot sa}'^, but as the period at which he flourished is the same, and as Eusebius draws no distinction, the probable inference is that Eusebius regarded them as the same.
Eusebius makes mention of another Quadratus in his ac- count of one of the lettei's of Dionysius, overseer of the Corinthian Church. The letter was addressed to the Athe- nians, and was intended to stir up their faith. " He reproves them as having paid too little heed to living according to the gospel, as having almost apostatized from the truth [koyov) ever since it came to pass that Publius, their president, bore his testimony in the persecutions then prevalent. And he has made mention of Quadratus as having been appointed their overseer after the martyrdom of Publius, bearing wit- ness that they had been collected through his zeal, and had received a rekindling of faith ^.^^ The circumstance that Dionysius writes to rouse the dead faith of the Athenians, the praise which he assigns to Quadratus for having already done so much in this work, and indeed the whole tone of the reference, imply that Quadratus was overseer of the Athenian Church at the time when Dionysius wrote. Notwithstanding this, some have identified the Quadratus of the reign of Hadrian with this one of the reign of Marcus Aurelius. It is indeed possible that the Quadratus who wrote the Apology might have lived to the age of Marcus Aurelius. There is nothing which we know for certain that would prevent such a possibility ; for the words of Eusebius, '' He himself proves to us his own antiquity,^'' (r?jy KaO^ kavTov apxaioTrjTa,) mean, not that he was an old man, but that he belonged to a very early age of the Churches history. It must be admitted also that the words of Dionysius do not compel us to regard Quadratus as a contemporary. But either possibility is in a high degree improbable.
«= Euseb, Hist. Eccl. v. 17. f Ibid. iv. 23.
II.] QUADBIT us. 53
Jerome's account of Quadratus is a patchwork of all that Eusebms has said about Quadrati, with a few additions of his own. " Quadratus/' he says, " a disciple of apostles, after Publius bishop of Athens had been crowned with martyrdom on account of his faith in Christ, is elected in his room, and through his faith and diligence brings together the Church, which had been scattered in great terror. When Hadrian spent the winter at Athens, and when by visiting Eleusis and by being initiated into almost all the sacred rites of Greece, he gave an opportunity to all who hated the Christians to trouble them, — for they believed that they might do so without an order from the emperor, — he presented a book to him, com- posed in defence of our religion, which is very useful, full of reason and faith, and worthy of the apostolic teaching ; in which, showing the antiquity of his age, he says that he had seen very many who, when oppressed by various calamities in Judea, had been healed by the Lord, and v.ho had risen from the deads."' Jerome elsewhere'' repeats his statement that Quadratus presented his Apology to Hadrian at the time of his initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries, and asserts, moreover, that the work had the effect of showing the violence of the persecution. Jerome's information in regard to these particulars seems to have been derived solely from the Chronicon of Eusebius. There, under the eighth or tenth year of the reign of Hadrian, it is said that " Quadratus, the disciple of apostles, and Aristides an Athenian, our philosopher, gave books (to Hadrian) composed on behalf of our religion ' ." Then it is added that Serenus Graniauus sent a letter to the emperor, and that the favourable rescript of the emperor to Minucius Fundanus was the result. Jerome evidently thought, as Syncellus did, that the rescript was the result of the double efforts of Quadratus and Aristides on the one hand, and Granianus on the other. But the words of Eusebius mean no such thing, and the rescript itself, as given at the end of Justin's first Apology, is decidedly
s De Vir, Illustr. c. in. i" Ep. 70. n. 4.
' This is Jerome's own version : it is somewliat different in Syncellus.
54 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
against the supposition. There is therefore no g-ood reason for connecting Quadratus with Athens. There is no good authority for assigning any remarkable effect to the Apology of Quadratus; and it may be added that Jerome is wrong in saying that Quadratus saw those who had been healed by Christ : he states merely that they survived to his day.
Nothing is known of the death of Quadratus^ though much has been fabled.
The fragment of Quadratus is given in Routh, Reliq. Sacr. vol. i. p. 75, and in the fifth volume of the Greek series of J. P. Migne^s Patrologise Cursus Completus, p. 1265. The work of Quadratus must have been extant at a late period, if the information of Photius be correct, that a bishop of the name of Eusebius (supposed to belong to the sixth century) made extracts from it in a letter addressed to Andrew, a monk^.
Aristides.
Aristides was a contemporary of Quadratus, and, like him, addressed an Apology for the Christians to the emperor Hadrian ^. This is all that Eusebius relates of him. He mentions that the work was extant in his day, but he does not inform us whether he read it or not. Jerome adds to this information. He tells us that Aristides was an Athenian philosopher', and that after he became a Christian he still retained the philosophic garb, and that he presented his Apology to Hadrian at the same time as Quadratus «i: all which statements are unquestionably to be discarded. Per- haps more reliance may be placed on his information with regard to the work which was extant also in his day, and the merits of the author. He says that the Apology was made up of the opinions of the philosophers" (contextum philosophorum sententiis), and he describes the author as a most eloquent
J Phot. Bibl. Cod. 162. k Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iv. 3.
' Both in Syncellus and in Jerome's version of the Chronicon of Eusebius, Aristides is said to be an Athenian philosopher.
I" De Vir. Illustr. c. 20. " Ep. 8_^ ad Magnum.
II.] AGRIPPA CASTOB. 55
philosopher. A French traveller, De la Guilletiere, in a work, Athenes Anciennes et Nouvelles, Paris 1672, p. 146, relates that a manuscript of the Apology of Aristides was preserved in a monastery six miles from Athens ; but Spon could not find any trace of it". Reithmayr appeals to Usu- ardus and Ado as witnesses to the existence of the manuscript in the ninth century P; but from what these writers say, it mig-ht be questioned whether the copy was genuine, for they assert that Quadi-atus defended the divinity of Christ before Hadrian not only in his writings, but in a most elegant speech delivered before himl.
Agrippa Castor.
Agrippa Castor is the first writer who is mentioned as having written against heresy. This information, which Eusebius gives us, is all that we really know with regard to him. After mentioning the rise of heresies, he says, " While very many men belonging to the Church at that time [the time of Hadrian] contended for the truth, and fought reasonably for the opinion of the Apostles and the Church, some of them already by writings supplied to posterity the means of warding off the heresies mentioned. Of which writings there has come down to us a most satisfactory work directed ag*ainst Basilides by Agrippa Castor, a writer who was among the best known of his day. This work uncovers the cleverness of the man's jugglery. Laying open, then, his secret mys- teries, he says that he composed twenty-four books on the gospels ; that he named his prophets Barcabbas and Barcoph, contriving for himself some other unreal beings, and that he gave them barbarous names to dazzle those who are amazed at such things ; that he taught that the tasting of things offered to idols, and the reckless abjuration of the faith during times of persecution, were matters of indifference, and
'> Villoison, Anecdot. torn. ii. p. 2f>4 ; Spon, Itinerary ; Eouth, Rel. Sacr. vol. i. pp. 74, 80. •' Moehler's Patrologie, p. 310.
'1 Lumper, vol. i. p. 383.
56 THE AP0L0C4ISTS. [Chap.
that he inculcated on those who came to him a silence of five years, like Pythag-oras. And the person mentioned relating- other things like to these in regard to Basilides, not ignobly brought to light the deceit of the heresy mentioned'^.''^ The account of Jerome is in the main a repetition of what Eusebius says. He has, however, carelessly asserted, as Fabricius pointed out in his notes on Jerome^s words *, that Agrippa^s work was directed ag-ainst the twenty-four books of BasiHdes on the gospel, while Eusebius says merely that he mentioned these books. Jerome also says that he stated that the g-reatest god of Basilides " was Abraxas, which as it were contains the year if it be reckoned according to the Greek calculation ^^^ Some have supposed that in the work Agrippa Castor refuted Isidorus the son of Basilides as well as Basilides himself. The opinion rests on a statement of Theodoret that "Agrippas surnamed Castor, and Irenseus, and Clemens of Alexandria, and Origen, fig-hting for the truth, contended against these [Basilides and Isidorus] ^" Theodoret, how- ever, may not have intended to say that Agrippa Castor contended against Isidorus, his language being often inac- curate : and, even if he did, his authority is worthless. These words are utterly unable to support the mere conjecture of Ceillier'*', that Castor wrote another work besides the one mentioned by Eusebius.
The fragments of Agrippa are given in Gallandi, Routh, and Migne.
Aeisto Pelljsus.
The name of Aristo Pellseus, or Aristo of Pella, occurs in three ancient writers. The first is Eusebius. He says : " When the war had reached its height in the eighteenth year of the reign of Adrian, at the city of Biththera, a very strong place not very far from Jerusalem, and the siege from without had continued long, and the revolutionists had through hunger and thirst been driven to the last extremities, and the author
"" Hist. Eccl. iv. 7. "^ See also Fahricii Bibl. Graec. vol, vii. p. 155, note v.
* De Vir. Ilhistr. c. 21. " Hseret. Fabvil. lib. i. c. 4- ^ torn. i. p. 692.
II.] A EI S TO PELLjEUS. 57
of their madness [Barchoche])as] had beeu punished according" to his desert, the whole nation [of the Jews] is prevented from that time even from treading- at all on the land round about Jerusalem, for Adrian gave command by the appoint- ment of a law and by injunctions, so that they should not behold their native soil even from a distance. Aristo of Pella relates''/'' Eusebius here mentions no work of Aristo of Pella, and it is impossible to determine whether Eusebius adduces the authority of Aristo for the truth of the pre- ceding" clause only, or for that of the whole of the preceding sentences, or indeed for how much. The curt and uncon- nected way in which the clause containing Aristo's name is introduced, might lead ns to suspect an interpolation, but the words are not omitted in any manuscript. If one might hazard a conjecture on the nature of Aristo^s work from the words employed, we should be inclined to regard it as his- torical. But such a conjecture would be, after all, nothing but the purest conjecture.
The second writer who mentions Aristo is Moses Choren- ensis, author of an Armenian history, edited by two sons of Whiston. An examination of Moseses method of dealing mth early church historj- has led Routh to believe that Moses knew nothing more of Aristo of Pella than what he saw in Eusebius y, and so this testimony is merely a distorted repetition of the first.
The third writer who mentions Aristo of Pella is Maximus, in his notes on the works of Dionysius the Areopagite. His information is to the following effect : " I read this ' seven heavens^ also in the Dialogue of Papiscus and Jason, written by Aristo of Pella, which Clemens of Alexandria in the sixth book of his Hypotyposes says was written by the holy Luke ^.'•' The Dialogue of Papiscus and Jason is mentioned by Origen and Jei'ome, but neither of these writers say a word of the writer of it. Moreover, a translation of the Vv^ork was made by one of the name of Celsns. The translation is lost, ])ut
^ Hist. Eccl. iv. 6. >' Routli, Reliq. Sacr. i. p. 103.
' torn. ii. cap. i. p. 17. cd. Corderii ; Routh, Reliq. Racr. p. 96.
58 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
the preface to it remains^ and in it nothing- is said of the writer. How then did Maximus know that Aristo of Pella was the writer ? And whether are we to accept his opinion, or the opinion which he states Clemens Alexandrinus main- tained ? We have no means of coming* to a conckision. The authority of Maximus on such a point is null. The proba- bility is rather that he would be wrong- than right. And we cannot even judge of the opinion of Clemens Alexandrinus, for we have not his reasons for believing Luke to be the author ; we do not know that Maximus interpreted Clemens aright ; and most have been inclined to think that his state- ment that Clemens attributed the work to Luke is altogether a mistake. If this portion of his statement is not to be believed, what possible reason can we have to attach the slightest importance to his own opinion that Aristo of Pella was the writer of the Dialogue ?
Mention seems to be made of Aristo in a fourth writer, the author of the Alexandrian Chronicle. Under the year A.D. 134 he says^: "This year Apelles and Aristo, which men [Stv] Eusebius the son of Pamphilus has mentioned in his Ecclesiastical History, gives (iinbLbuxTLv) Apologies to the emperor Adrian in regard to our piety.^^ The grammar of this sentence is bad, and the statement is unquestionably incorrect. Fabricius proposed to change the names 'AvreAA/js Kol ' ApicTToov, Siv into 6 OeAAatos ^ApLarcau ov, 'Aristo of Pella, which man/ and we should then have the assertion that Aristo of Pella presented an Apology to Hadrian. As no such Apology is mentioned by any other writer, it would be hard to believe in its existence simply on the faith of an emendation, especially when the whole passage is omitted in one of the manuscripts.
The result of our investigation is that almost nothing is really known of Aristo of Pella, and that especially the works which have been ascribed to him have been ascribed to hira on insufficient testimony. The Dialogue of Papiscus and .Jason, however, belongs to the history of early Christian
" p. 477, e<l. Dindorf.
II.] A BIS TO PELLJEUS. 59
literature ; and as it has been in modern times associated with the name of Aristo, we may set down what is known with regard to it. Mention of it first occurs in the treatise of Orig-en ag-ainst Celsus''. Celsus had adduced the work as a specimen of those Christian writings which were so crammed with allegories and simple narratives as to offend the feelings of the cultivated heathen. He describes the w^ork as " worthy not of laughter, but of pity and hatred rather.^^ " It is not my business/' Celsus adds, " to confute such works, for their nature is evident to all, especially if any one could have the patience and perseverance to study the writings themselves. ""^ Origen replies to this accusation, that, if any one did take the book into his hands, he would find nothing in it worthy of hatred, or even of laughter ; and then he goes on to de- scribe its contents. " In it,'^ he says, " a Christian is described as disputing w^th a Jew from the Jemsh Scriptures, and show- ing that the prophecies about the Christ suit Jesus. The other replies to the argument vigorously, and in a way not unbe- coming to the Jewish character which he assumes." The dis- putation is more minutely described in the Preface of Celsus^. We cannot determine at what time his translation was made, for there is no allusion in the Preface which can settle the point. Its tone, however, is certainly that of the Cyprianic age, especially in the mode of speaking of martyrdom. " For I trust," he says, " that it is the privilege of martyrdom that the sinner should deserve to be saved through the prayer of the just martyr, when you yourself are freed by the merits of the martyr, a thing which you could not succeed in simply by your prayers. Thus just Job is shown to us when going to ask and obtain pardon from God for the sins of his three friends, and the approbation of his fear and faith is sealed by the voice of the Lord. When, therefore, in the day of thy deliverance, dearest, thou beginnest to present thyself to the countenance of Christ, when thou goest by fortunate lot to eternal life
*• Contra Celsum, lib. iv. c 52 ; p. 544 Delaruc.
'■ This Preface is given at the end of Fell's edition of the works of Cyprian, ]i. .^o of the last appendix Ad Vigilium Ac Jiidaica Tnciedulitate.
<iO THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
to reigri with Christ, in the mercy of the Lord, hold thy child (puerum) Celsus in thy mind, O most holy friend/^ This passag-e is the only authority for asserting that Celsus is the author of the Preface. Mention is nowhere made of the translation, and nothing is known of this Celsus. It may even be doubted whether Celsus is the correct reading. Fell, at least, has proposed Csecilius, and the incorrectness of the text of the Preface may lead us to place little certainty in any name that occurs in it. The Preface is addressed to Vigilius, with regard to whom nothing is known; though, as usual, there has been much conjecture. Though the writer calls himself the jmer or child of Vigilius in the passage already quoted, he states in another place that he had reached old age. " In my desire to see you,^'' he says, " I was not terrified by the distance of the journey, nor was I kept back b\^ old age (senium), and the difficulty of a wearied and worn- out body.''^
The description given in the Preface of the Disputation of Jason and Papiscus is as follows. After stating that he will not mention the conversion of the Jemsh people throug-h the Apostles, he goes on, " That illustrious, memorable, and glorious result of a discussion between Jason a Hebrew Chris- tian, and Papiscus an Alexandrian Jew, comes into my mind. There we have the obstinate hardness of the Jewish heart softened by Jewish warning and gentle chiding, and the teaching of Jason on the outpouring of the Holy Spirit victorious in the heart of Papiscus. When Papiscus was brought by this teaching to an understanding of the truth, and was fashioned into a fear of the Lord through the mercy of the Lord himself, he put his trust in Jesus Christ the Son of God, and asked of Jason that he might receive the sign (signaculum, the sign of baptism). This is proved by the written account of the Discussion in Greek, in which Papiscus and Jason come to close quarters with each other, Papiscus opposing the truth, and Jason asserting and vin- dicating the disposition [oiKoyo/iia ?] and fulness of Christ. To the translation of this work I have set myself.^^
II.] A BIS TO PELL^EUS. 6!
We get still further a g-limpse into the nature of the Dis- cussion from two references to the work in Jerome. From theone^ we know that Jason had found it necessary to g-rapple with the text " Cursed is every one that hangs upon a tree." From the second e we learn that he intei-preted the words " In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth/^ as meaning- " In the Son God created the heavens and the earth." Some indeed have supposed that the writer of the Disputation appealed to a peculiar reading in the Jewish scriptures ; but there is little probability in the conjecture, and no need for it. The same interpretation of ap\r] as applicable to Christ is made in Theophilus ; and, as Jerome remarks, also in Tertullian and Hilarius.
It is imi)0ssible to fix the date of the Disputation between Jason and Papiscus. It must have been written before the work of Celsus, that is, sometime before the middle of the second century. It may have been written much earlier. There is no reason to suppose that the extract made from Aristo Pellaeus by Eusebius occun-ed in the Disputation ; and therefore nothing can be based on such a supposition. If the information of Maximus in regard to Clemens Alex- andrinus had been reliable, we should have had good reason for assigning an early date, even if we had not agreed with him in ascribing it to Luke. At any rate, it seems to have been among the first works that employed the Old Testament to convert the Jews to Christianity. Its exposition of the Old Testament must have found Christ ever}'where, and its exposition of apxr] as the Son of God is pretty conclusive proof that the writer used the doctrine of the Aoyos to explain some of the difficulties of the Jews.
^ Comm. ad Galat. lib. ii. cap. 3. comm. r^.
« Quaest. Hebr. in Genes, torn. ii. p. 507. Both passages are given in Routh and Migne.
CHAPTER III.
JUSTIN MARTYR. I. HIS LIFE.
± HE best part of the information wliich we have with regard to Justin Martyr is derived from his own writings. The few particulars which we gather from others relate almost ex- clusively to his death.
He was born in Flavia Neapolis% a city of Samaria which had been built near the ancient Siehem. It was the scene of many of the displays of Simon Magus. He was the son of Priscus and grandson of Bacchius. The name of his father and P-randfather would lead us to infer that they were of Latin origin, and this supposition is in some respects con- firmed by various passages in which he speaks of himself as " not circumcised 'J/^ and identifies himself with the heathens^. We know nothing of his early life. The notices which we have of his conversion are contained in two passages. In one he tells us how his attention was attracted to Christianity by the endurance of the Christians. " For I myself/^ he says'', '' while rejoicing in the Platonic doctrines, heard the Christians spoken evil of ; but when I saw them fearless in regard to death and everything else that is reckoned fearful, I began to think that it was impossible that they could be wicked and voluptuous. For what man who is voluptuous or incontinent, or who regards the eating of human flesh as an enjoyment, could welcome death with the certainty of being deprived of his enjoyments ? Would he not rather
« Apol. i. 1. " Dial. c. Trypli. c. 28. " Apol. i. 53. '• Ibid. ii. 12.
III.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 63
Ijy every means try to continue for ever the mode ot life which is here, and escape the notice of rulers, instead of giving information against himself which would lead to his death?" The other passage in which Justin speaks of his conversion occurs in the Dialogue with Trypho, at the com- mencement. We cannot rely with absolute certainty on its historical nature. Everything depends on the view taken of the Dialogue itself. If the composition be a genuine report of a real dialogue, the statements made in it will then be true. But if the Dialogue be fictitious, then there would be no good reason for receiving as historically true of Justin what he has made the narrator of the Dialogue say of himself. We give elsewhere our reasons for thinking that Justin has given us a report of a real dialogue ; and therefore we should be inclined to take the statements made in it as true of Justin himself.
In the introduction to the Dialogue with Trypho Justin makes some remarks on the variety of the heathen philo- sophies, and then gives his own experience of them. " Having a desire,"*^ he says, " at the beginning to converse with one of these philosophers, I gave myself up to a Stoic, and having spent a considerable time with him, when I found that I was not a whit the wiser with regard to God (for he himself had not this knowledge, and maintained that such learning was unnecessary), I left him and went to another, called a Peripatetic, a sharp fellow in his own opinion. He bore my presence for the first few days, and then requested me to fix the fee, that our intercourse might not be profitless. But I for this reason left him, for I concluded that he was not at all a philosopher. My soul still continued to long to hear what was peculiar and excellent in philosophy, and so I went to a very celebrated Pythagorean, a man who had a very high idea of his own wisdom. When I conversed with him, with the intention of becoming one of his regular hearers, he said to me. Have you studied music, and astronomy, and geometry ? Or do you fancy that you will clearly see any of those things that contrilnite to happiness, without first
64 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
being taught those things which will draw the soul away from the sensible world, and make it fit for the intelligible, so that it shall clearly see the beautiful and the good in their essence ? After praising these studies highly, and telling me they were necessary, he sent me away, since I confessed that I was ignorant of them. I was then greatly troubled, as you may well suppose, at this disappointment of my hopes, especially as I thought he really had some knowledge ; but, on the other hand, taking into consideration the time which I should have to spend on these studies, I could not bear putting off so long. While in this perplexity it occurred to me that I might try the Platonic philosophers, for they were also held in high esteem. And luckily there had just come to our town an intelligent man who held a high place among the Platonic philosophers. I had long and frequent conversations with him, and made exceedingly great progress, increasing my knowledge every day. For I was vastly taken with the perception of bodiless things, and the contemplation of ideas winged my mind, and within a short time I thought that I had become wise, and, in my stupidity, I hoped to see God forthwith ; for this is the end of the Platonic philo- sophy e." Justin then goes on to relate how, when he was in this state, he happened one time, for the sake of quiet, to take a walk to a district not far from the sea. There he fell in with an old man, of mild and venerable aspect, who accosted him. Justin confesses to him that he is a (f)tXok6yos, lover of reason. The old man asks him, playing on the word ^tAoAdyos, which may mean also a lover of words, "Are you then a lover of words, and not at all of deeds or of truth, and do you not try to be practical {irpanTLKios) rather than a sophist P-"^ Justin replies that he regarded it as a deed of the greatest importance to exhibit reason as the guide of all. The pursuit of philosophy was the most honourable work of man, and it alone could bring happiness. The old man asks what philosophy is, and what the happiness is which it brings. Justin replies, " Philosophy is the science
^ Dial. c. Trypli. c. 2.
III.] JUSTIN MAHTYU. 65
of beiiio-, and the thorough knowledge (e'^■ty^•6oa■ty) of" the true, and happiness is the reward of this science and wisdom/' The old man identifies being {to 6v) with God, and asks for a definition of God. When this has been given, he discusses how God can be known. By the mind, says the Platonic Justin. But why by the mind? On account, says Justin, of its kinship to God, and the desire it has to see God. Do all souls, then, contain this kindred element, or only some ? All, says Justin, souls of beasts as well as of men. Do the souls of beasts see God then ? No ; nor do those of many men. Why ? Because they are not righteous. Do animals then injure any one ? No ; they do no injustice. They, then, will see God ? No ; their bodies prevent them. The old man says that the beasts might bring the same objection to the bodies of men, but he will let the answer pass, since it suggests another question. Does the soul see God in the body, or removed from it ? It can see God in the body, but especially when removed from it. But will it remember what it has seen in the body? This is rendered unlikely by the circumstance that the soul does not remember what happened to it in a former state ^ Then there is no use of its seeing God. What becomes of those who are unworthy of the sight of God ? They are punished by being bound up in the bodies of animals. Are they conscious of their punishment ? No. Then their punishment is no real punishment, for they do not feel it to be such. And then the old man sums up by saying that souls do not see God, and are not punished by being sent into other bodies. And these philosophers do not know anything about them, not even what soul is. For the soul, says the old man, ought not to be spoken of as incapable of death, for if it were, then it would be unbegotten. Justin replies that some Platonic philosophers look on the soul as both incapable of death and unbegotten. Is the world then unbegotten ? Justin says some think so, but I do not. You are right, says the old manj and, consequently, souls which existed for the sake of men are also not unbegotten. The
f The Platonic doctrine of Reminiscence is here alluded to. VOL. II. F
66 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
old man then explains. He also believes that no soul ever dies ; but this takes place, not because the souls are naturally incapable of death, but because God wills it. Justin asks if Plato had not some glimpse of this truth in a passage in the Tima^us. The old man repKes that he does not trouble him- self about Plato or Pythag-oras, but about the truth. The soul, he says, is not life, but partakes of life. And it partakes of life, because God wishes it to partake of life. Justin then asks him, if the philosophers do not g-ive correct ideas with regard to these matters, to what teacher should he go ? The old man directs him to the prophets, who do not demonstrate, but are trustworthy witnesses of the truth above all demon- stration. The fulfilment of their prophecies warrants us in beheving them. And they have a right to be believed also on account of their miracles {hvva}j.^is), for they did not, like false prophets, glorify evil spirits and demons, but God the maker of all ; and they announced the coming of his Son. The old man therefore urges Justin to pray that the gates of light would be opened to him, and that God and his Christ would grant him understanding. " These and many other such things he said, which I have no time now to relate, and he went away ordering me to follow them out. And I no more saw him. And suddenly a fire was lighted in my soul, and I was possessed with a love of the prophets and those men who are Christ^s friends ; and, pondering his statements over by myself, I found that this was the only secure and advan- tageous philosophy s." Justin makes no mention of the effect produced on his mind by the patience of Christians in the endurance of persecution. His object, however, in relating his conversion is accomplished without the mention of it, for he wished to show to Trypho that he had not renounced philosophy when he renounced Platonism, but that he had reached the true and only safe philosophy. It is to be noticed also that the old man does not satisfactorily refute Platonism, and perhaps had no wish to do so. He merely shows that the Platonic sight of God is a matter of grave question, and
? Dial. c. Tryph. c. 8, p. 225 B.
III.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 67
that the use of seeing* God in this way is equally questionable ; that the Platonic doctrine also in reg-ard to the soul is open to grave objections. He thus creates in Justin^s mind a craving" for a better teacher and a surer wisdom; and for this wisdom the old man points him to the prophets and friends of Christ, especially to the discourses of Christ, as he mentions in the conclusion of his account.
It is matter of dispute in what place this conversation between the old man and Justin took place. Some suppose that by '' om- city^^ Flavia Neapolis is meant. Others suppose that Ephesus is the place, since Eusebius'' mentions that the dialog-ue between Justin and Trypho was held there. There is no method of settling this dispute, nor of determining- the claims which others have set up for Corinth and Alexandria. The description of the place where Justin met the old man is applicable to any town not very far distant from the sea.
We know almost nothing" of Justm^s life subsequent to his conversion. We have every reason to believe that he was a diligent evangelist, attracting people to conversation by the philosopher's robe which he still continued to wear', and pointing them to Christ. He believed it to be the duty of every Christian to speak the truth to all men^. And from one passage we may gather that he set himself out for con- versing with men of every race on the truth of Christianity. " Even though you yourselves,^' he says, " act unfairly, I shall readily answer any arguments and objections which ye may adduce, and I do the very same thing to all men without exception of every race who wish to inquire, or to ask infoi'mation from me with regard to these things^.''
There is much likelihood in the supposition that Justin travelled about from place to place as an evangelist, but there is no certainty. If we could have believed in the genuineness of the Cohortatio, we should have certain information that he had visited Alexandrian^ and Cumse". From Eusibius
•> Hist. Eccl. iv. i8. ^ Dial. c. Tiyph. c. i. '' Ibid. c. 82.
' Dial. c. Tryph. c. 64, p. 287 D. "> Cohort, ad Gra?c. c. 13.
" Cohort, ad Grsec. c. 37.
F 2
68 THE APOLOGIST!^. [Chap.
we have learned that he was at Ephesus ; and there is the most conclusive testimony that he lived at Rome. The events mentioned in the second Apology happened at Rome, and Justin seems to speak from personal knowledg-e. He men- tions there the Cynic philosopher Crescens as plotting- against him, and we know from Tatiau that Crescens lived in Rome. And Tatian himself was a scholar of Justin's in Rome". Eusebius states also that he held his conversations in RomeP.
Some have supposed that Justin was a presbyter in the church. The inference is based on the passage given after- wards, in which he relates the conduct of the Christians in their meetings. " They ai'e led by us to the waters/" he says: and in another place, "after we have bathed him.'' The inference is utterly unwarrantable; for the "we" of Justin simply designates Christians ; and moreover, even if he did baptize, he would not necessarily be a presbyter in a church, for there is not the slightest proof that presbyters alone baptized, but much proof that any Christian might baptize, if he deemed the circumstances of the case required that he should.
Justin fell a victim to persecution. This fact is well at- tested, IrenseuS; speaking of Tatian, says that he was a scholar of Justin's, and gave out no heretical opinion so long as Justin was alive ; " but after his testimony^ (ixapTvpiav) he left the church." Hippolytus calls him " the martyr^." Ter- tullian names him "philosopher and martyr." Eusebius, Jerome, Epiphanius, and Photius also affirm the fact. The circumstances of his death, however, are involved in doubt. Justin in his second Apology expresses his expectation of persecution from Crescens the Cynic philosopher. " I also expect," he says, " to be plotted against by some one of those named, or at least by Crescens, and to be impaled*." Tatian asserts that Crescens actually did make the attempt. In irony he says, " He, who thus despises death, feared death
" See the Life of Tatian. p Hist. Eccl. iv. ii. i See Apol. i.6f, 65.
• Iren. adv. Hser. I. xxviii. 1. » Refiitat. Omn. Hser. viii. 16.
' Apol. ii. 3.
111.] JUSTIX MARTYR. 69
itself, so that he made an effort to involve Justin as well as me in death as being" an evil, because proelaiming" the truth he accused j^hilosophers of gluttony and deceit ^." Justin was probably dead at the time Tatian wrote, though the point is by no means certain. If he were, the assertion of his dis- ciple woiild be ground for inference that Crescens had failed in his attempt. However this may be, there is not the slightest ground in it for asserting that Justin fell a victim to the machinations of the Cynic. Yet this passage is the only proof adduced by Eusebius for his statement to this effect''. Jerome repeats the statement of Eusebius y, and so does Photius^.
There exists a Martyrion of one Justin and some others, which many believe to be a narrative of the martyrdom of Justin Martyr. The document has been handed down to us by Simeon Metaphrastes. The name of the author is not g-iven, and the writer does not say how he got his information. The only points to be ascertained therefore are, whether the Justin referred to is our Justin, and whether the narrative is true. In regard to the first, there is extreme probability that our Justin is the person meant. The time suits ; and Justin^s mode of speech and his opinions in the Martyrion are striking-ly like those in the Apology and Dialogue. \n regard to the second point, it is at once plain that there is no historical evidence for its truth. But, at the same time, the simplicity of the narrative, and its utter artlessness of expression and circumstance, strongly claim for it credence. Objections indeed have been urged against it. In early times Papebroch attacked it, but his attack was satisfactorily re- pelled by Ruinart », and the arguments on both sides are not worth repeating. In modern times Bunsen has attacked it. He says, " We are now sufficiently acquainted with the forms
» Orat. ad Graecos. c. 19. " Hist. Eccl. iv. 16.
> De Viris Illustr. c. 23. '■ Biblioth. c. 125.
» See Acta Martynim P. Theotlorici Kuinart opera ac studio coUecta,
Augustc-E Vindelicorum 1802, Pars Prima, p. 122. I believe this is not the
common edition of Ruinart. I quote it because it is the only one I happen to have.
70 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
of Roman trial and with Roman topography to see that it is the wretched lucubration of some monk^/'' The ob- jections here brought against the document might be brought against many accounts of trials in London given by persons not lawyers. Suppose that the writer did not know the exact forms of the Roman law courts, he would be exactly in the same jjosition as thousands in our own country in regard to our own courts. And suppose he had made some mistake in regard to the localities in Rome, he would have done no more than thousands of people would do if they were to describe minutely many a place in London. Bunsen, moreover, has not intimated what he deems the mistakes of the writer to be. On the other hand, it is almost morally impossible that a monk could have written it. There is not one trace of monkery in it, unless these said local and legal mistakes be monkish. There is not the slightest introduction of anything miraculous. There is not one opinion mentioned which was not held in Justin^s time in the exact mode in which it is set down in the Marty rion. Altogether, it is the most credible document of the kind I know of, and contains several curious glimpses into the state of the Christian Church, which only a man of the second or the beginning of the third century would ever dream of giving ; such, for instance, as his mention of the place where Justin taught.
We proceed, then, to give an account of this document, believing that it is trustworthy, though entirely devoid of historical testimony. The few introductory words with which it commences are evidently the work of some editor who lived after the time of Constantine. They give the exact day and month of the martyrdom, and state that the saints when taken were brought to Rusticus the prefect of Rome. The date given is worthless. The document itself, then, properly begins thus : " Rusticus the prefect said to Justin, ' First obey the gods and submit to the kings ^.^ Justin said,
•^ Christianity and Mankind, vol. i. p. 2 1 7, note.
•^ ThemiRtius mentions Eusticiis as prefect of the citj- under Marcu.s Aureliuf; and Lucius Verus, ' the kings.'
III.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 71
' No one can blame and condemn me for obeying- the com- mandments given by our Saviour Jesus Christ/ Rusticus the prefect said^ ' What are the doctrines {koyoi) which you profess ? ' Justin said, ' I tried indeed to learn all doctrines, but I agreed to the true doctrines of the Christians, though they do not please those who hold false opinions/ Rusticus the prefect said, ' Are those the doctrines that please you, you utterly wretched being ?^ Justin said, 'Yea, since I follow them with right dogma^ [settled belief]. Rusticus the prefect said, *^What sort is the dogma?'' Justin said, 'That according to which we are pious to the God of the Christians whona we reckon to be one, in the beginning the maker and fashioner of the whole creation, seen and unseen, and to the Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, who also v/as proclaimed beforehand by the prophets as about to appear the herald of salvation to the race of men, and the teacher of good disciples. And I, being a man, think that what I can say is insignificant in comparison with his boundless divinity, for I believe that prophetic power is neces- sary for this purpose, since such proclamation was made before- hand with regard to Him of whom I now said that He was the Son of God. For I know that of old the prophets foretold his appearance among men.^ Rusticus the prefect said, ' Where do you meet?^ Justin said, 'Where each one chooses and is able ; for do you suppose that we all meet together in one place ? Not so ; because the God of the Christians is not circumscribed by place, but, being invisible, fills the heavens and the earth, and is everywhere worshipped and glorified by the faithful.' Rusticus the prefect said, 'Tell me Avhere do you meet, or in what sort of place do you assemble your disciples ?•" Justin said, ' I stay above one Martinus, near the Timotinian bath^ ; and all the time I have been in Rome (and this is the second time that I have come to the city of the Romans) I have had no otlier place of meeting. And
'• The exact rendering of this passage is a matter of considerable doubt, as usually happens in names of localities not well known. See Otto's note on it.
72 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
if any wished to come to me, I communicated to him the truth/ Rusticus said, ' Are you not, then, a Christian ? Justin said, ' Yea, I am a Christian/ ^^
The writer g-oes on to relate the examination of some other Christians, whose answers are characterized by g-reat sim- plicity and adherence to the truth. From one of the ques- tions of Rusticus to four of them, ' Did Justin make you Christians ?^ and from the statement of another, ^ I willingly heard the words of Justin,^ we may g-ather that the six martyrs had been frequenters of the rooms above Martin at the Timotinian bath. After their examination, Rusticus addresses Justin, evidently as ringleader : ' Hear, you who are called learned and think that you know the truth, do you believe that if you are scourged and beheaded you will ascend into heaven^ ?^ Justin said, ' I hope that I shall have his [Christ's] gifts ^ if I endure these things ; for I know that to all who have thus lived there abides the divine favour until the completion of the whole world."" Rusticus the pre- fect said, ' Do you suppose, then, that you will ascend into the skies to receive some recompense ? ' Justin said, ' I do not suppose it, but I know it, and am fully assured of it/ Rusticus the prefect said, ' At length, then, let us come to the urgent matter in hand. Come together, and unanimously sacrifice to the gods.' Justin said, ' No one of a sound mind lapses from piety into impiety.' Rusticus the prefect said, ^ If ye do not obey, ye will be mercilessly punished.' Justin said, ' Through prayer we can be saved, even when punished, on account of our Lord Jesus Christ, because we shall have salvation and confidence at the more fearful and universal judgment-seat of our Lord and Saviour.' In like manner, the other martyrs said, ' Do as you wish, for we are Christians, and do not sacrifice to idols.'
" Rusticus the prefect pronounced their sentence, saying,
« This is the first mention of ' going to heaven' which we have had ; and it is remarkable that it is a heathen, and probably a Stoic, who uses the words.
' I have adopted Maranus's emendation of ^iy^xara into StJ/iaTa.
III.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 73
' Let those who have refused to sacrifice to the gods, and to yield to the command of the emperor, be scourged and led away, suffering the penalty of decapitation according to the laws/
" The holy martyrs went forth to the usual place glorifying God, and were beheaded, and they perfected their testimony in the confession of the Saviour. And some of the faithful, secretly taking their bodies, laid them in a suitable place, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ working along with them, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.^^ Thus ends this interesting document. It is probable that the last para- graph is the addition of some editor ; yet how different from the additions in the Martyrion of Polycarp.
There is no clue to exact dates in the history of Justin. We know from Eusebius that he addressed his first Apology to Antoninus Pius, and his second to Marcus Aui-elius. He mentions in the first that the Jewish war of Barchoehebas had taken place in his time (a.d. 131-136). The Chronicon Pas- chale places his martyrdom in a.d. 165, a probable date; but there is no reason to suppose that it is anything more than a guess. Epiphanius? informs us that Justin was " thought worthy of the perfect crown in the city of the Romans when Rusticus was ruler {-^yefKav), and Adrian king, being thirty years old, in the vigour of his life,'"' {ev KaOca-Tcaa-y] yjKiKiq, in ipso flore juventutis. — Petav.). This absurd statement has been made the basis of infinite conjectures, and many have attempted to settle the exact years of Justin^s birth, con- version, and death. Some have based arguments on the identification of the Rusticus mentioned in the Acts with some or other of the Rustici referred to by heathen writers h. And Hort has recently appealed to Epiphanius and Cedrenus in behalf of the year 148 or thereabouts'. But if we cannot trust Eusebius, our only authority for placing Justin^s martyr- dom in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, we know nothing in
K Haer. xlvi c. i.
^ Thus B. Aube, in his Saint .Justin Philosophe et Martyr, places his martyrdom in a.d. 163.
' On the Date of .Justin Martyr, in the .Journal of Classical ami Sacred Philology, .June iSff). A very able article, well worth perusal.
74 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
regard to the date of Justin^s death. The value of Eusebius's opinion is not great^ but it is infinitely to be preferred to the utterly uncritical statements of Epiphanius or Cedrenus.
II. THE WRITINGS OF JUSTIN MARTYR.
Justin Martyr is the first writer among the Christians whose works are of considerable extent. Of the extant works ascribed to him, a division has been made into those which are unquestionably genuine, those which are question- ably genuine, and those which are unquestionably spurious. Critics, however, have doubted with regard to those generally reckoned among the unquestionably genuine ; and indeed the most various opinions have been expressed with regard to them.
The writings ascribed to Justin Martyr by the ancients are the following: I. Two Apolog'ies for the Christians •« ; 2. A Dialogue with Trypho, addressed to the Jewsl ; 3. A discourse addressed to the Greeks — described by Eusebius as being of considerable extent, as discussing most subjects examined by Greek philosophers, but especially expounding the nature of the demons (gods) "^ ; 4. Another discourse addressed to the Greeks, called 'A Refutation'' (e'Aeyxos)"; 5. A discourse on the Unity (sole government) of God [p.ovapxias) , with proofs not only from the Scriptures but from the Greek writers" ; 6. A work against all heresies, mentioned by himself as well as by Eusebius, Jerome, and PhotiusP; 7. A work against Marcion^, noticed by Irenseus as well as those previously mentioned; 8. A work on the Soul {ax^oXiKov Trepl \j/vxrjs)' in the first book of this he expounded the opinions of philosophers with regard to the soul, and promised to explain his own in the second : but whether he ever wrote the second is not stated by any one : Photius does not mention the work at all ; 9. A work entitled "i-'dXTrjs^, of which we know nothing
" Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iv. 18. 1 Ibid. "" Ibid. " Ibid. " Ibid.
p Ibid. ; Jerome, De Vir. Illustr. c. 23 ; Photius, c. 125.
1 Iren. Adv. Hicr. iv. 6.-2. ■■ In Eiisebius, Jerome, and Photius, as above.
III.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 75
except what the name may be supposed to indicate. Some have also inferred, from an expression in Jerome, that Justin wrote a commentary or notes on the Apocalypse. Jerome^s words are, " Scripsit [Joannes] Apocalypsim quam interpre- tantur Justinus Martyr et Irenseus^" As Jerome himself does not mention such a commentary in the appropriate place, and as no mention is made of such a work by any other writer, the words of Jerome must mean that Justin explained some parts of the Apocalypse incidentally in some of his writing's. Halloix has imagined that Justin wrote an ac- count of his conversation with the philosopher Crescens, but the supposition is based on a misinterpretation of a passage in the second Apology*.
We have not a complete list of the works of Justin in any ancient writer. The most complete is that of Eusebius, who expressly informs us that "there were very many other works of Justin current among many brethren"." Of the works which are now extant, and which have been ascribed to Justin, the following is a list : i. The two Apologies; 2. The Dialog-ue with the Jew Trypho j 3. A speech to the Greeks ; 4. An address to the Greeks ; 5. On the Sole Government of God; 6. An Epistle to Diognetus; 7. Fragments from a work on the Resurrection; 8. Various other fragments; 9. An Exposition of the True Faith ; 10. Epistle to Zenas and Serenus; 11. A Refutation of certain doctrines of Aristotle; 12. Questions and Answers to the Orthodox; 13. Questions of Christians to Heathens; 14. Questions of Heathens to Christians.
Ill, THE APOLOGIES.
There can be no reasonable doubt that the two Apologies which have come down to us bearing the name of Justin are the productions of that writer. They are attested by Eusebius, Jerome, and Photius", and extracts from both are
^ De Vir. lllustr. e.g. « c. 3. '■ Eccl. Hist. iv. 18.
' In the passages above referred to.
7« THE ArOLOaiSTS. [Chap.
given Ly Eusebius. The whole style of them is perfectly accordant with that of the other writers of the same period, and the thoughts are so alike that Semisch thinks he can trace quotations from Justin in the writings of Tatian, Irenajus, Minucius Felix, and Tertullian, perhaps also in Athenagoras and Theophilus.
Though this matter may therefore be regarded as settled, there are several circumstances which seem to render doubtful the so-called second Apology^s claim to be the second Apology mentioned by Eusebius, Jerome, and Photius. These circum- stances are external and internal. The external circumstances are that Eusebius, in quoting from this Apology, never ex- pressly calls it the second, but on one occasion calls it expressly the first. Eusebius quotes three times from the so-called second Apology. The first quotation occurs in chapter viii. of Book IV. of his Ecclesiastical History. He states that Justin lived about the time of Antinous, and quotes a passage from the first Apology, in which mention is made of Antinous, ('Atrii^oou tov vvv yevofxivov) . Eusebius opens the quotation with the words, '^Writing in the Apology to Antoninus,^^ [iv rfj irpos ^ AvTiav'ivov a-noXoyCa) . He then extracts from the same a passage relating to the Jewish war. Then he adds, " In the same {h ravTi^), showing that his own conversion from Greek philosophy to piety was not an irrational act, but the result of deliberate judgment, he writes these things ;" and then follows an extract from our second Apology. Immediately after Eusebius goes on to quote again from the first Apology. Now there can scarcely be a doubt that by the w^ords " in the same " Eusebius meant in the Apology previously quoted, namely, that addressed to Antoninus Pius ; and if any confirmation of this were required, it is to be found in the circumstance that all the extracts previous and subsequent are made from the first Apology. The second extract made by Eusebius is thus prefaced y : " Justin, formerly mentioned, having de- livered a second book on behalf of our opinions to the fore- y Eccl. Hist. iv. i6.
III.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 77
mentioned rnlers [Marcus Antoninus and Lucius Verus], is adorned with divine martyrdom, the philosopher Crescens having succeeded in the plot which he had formed against
him Justin himself anticipated clearly that this
would happen, as it very soon did happen, and in his fore-mentioned Apology [kv rfj 8e8f|Aco/j.ei'?j airoKoyiq) points it out in these very words." Then follows the extract from our second Apology ^. In looking at this passage one would certainly be inclined to think that the Apology re- ferred to is the second hook mentioned by Eusebius ^. But this is by no means a certainty ; for from the way in which Eusebius mentions the second book, one would be inclined to believe that Justin wrote it after he had been condemned, and that his martyrdom took place immediately after his handing the book to the emperors. If such were the case, he could not make mention of Crescens as likely to succeed in procuring his death, as Crescens had already been successful ; and he then must refer to the first Apology, which had been, as we have seen already, frequently referred to and quoted by Eusebius'^. The third extract mentions expressly the first Apology, and quotes from it a passage now found in our second. All the manuscripts and Rufinus, the translator, agree. Editors think that " second " ought to be written instead of " first," or that Eusebius made a slip, or that some passages of the second Apology had been transferred to the first in some transcripts. Another external circumstance, certainly not of much importance, is that in the two manu- scripts of the Apologies the lesser, or second Apology, is placed first.
There is still another circumstance in the testimony of Eusebius which deserves consideration. In mentioning the second Apology, he states in one place that it was addressed to the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus '^j and
' c. 3, p. 46.
" And the author of the Chronicon Paschale, in redacting the passage, shows that he so understood it (p. Z58 C).
b Eccl. Hist. iv. 17. c Ibid. iv. 16.
78 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
in another he says simply that it was addressed to Antoninus Verus, the successor of Antoninus Pius^*. Now in our second Apology no address to Marcus Aurelius or to Lucius Verus is to be found. On the contrary, it is addressed to the Senate. To overcome this difficulty, those who maintain that our second Apolog-y is the second Apology of Eusebius, appeal to a passage in the Ecclesiastical History, Book IV. chap. xi. It runs thus : " Now this same Justin, after having laboured most satisfactorily in writing to the Greeks, also addresses other discourses (Aoyous-), containing a defence of our faith, to the emperor Antoninus, surnamed Pius, and to the Roman senate; for at that time he was staying at Rome." Stress is laid on the word Aoyov?. As the word is plural, it is set down as certain that Eusebius speaks of more than one treatise, that indeed the two Apologies are men- tioned, and that, as the one is addressed to Antoninus Pius, the other, addressed to the senate, must be that stated else- where to be addressed to Marcus Aurelius. This interpre- tation of the passage seems to me wrong. The word Ao'yoi does not necessarily imply more than one treatise, since it means ' arguments,^ ' parts of a discourse," ' words,' and every Apology contains many Aoyot. But even if it did, that is not only not a reason for identifying the second Ao'yos with the really second Apology, but a good reason for be- lieving that Eusebius had the first Apology in two parts or discourses, one of which was addressed to Antoninus Pius and the other to the senate. For we gather with considerable certainty from Eusebius's chronological mode of narrative, and also from the context, that he is now relating what happened in the time of Antoninus Pius. We may also affirm from the context that Eusebius believed Justin to have written the erepoi Adyot, if he understood more than one treatise by it, in the same period of his life. And, in fact, it is likely that we have here an express allusion to the two parts of Justin's first Apology, as they have come down to us, and therefore good reason for believing
d Eccl. Hist. iv. 1 8.
III.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 79
that the so-called second Apology is the latter half of the first.
The internal circumstances deserve as much notice as the external. Three times reference is made to statements in the first Apolog-y by the words m ■npoi(pr)ixev, ' as we said before ^.^ Perhaps in one of the passages these words may be corrupt ; in the two others there is no reason to doubt their genuineness. Now it is scarcely possible that Justin would have used these words to refer to a production that had been written several years before, — according to the common opinion, between thirty and forty years before. Justin would then have said, ' in my previous Apology,' or some such thing. ' For, supposing that the emperors had read Justin's previous Apology, it could scarcely be expected that they would remember its sentences minutely ; and as for Justin's general readers, what a wide meaning must the words have had, when Justin had written so many woi'ks as those mentioned by Eusebius. The only satisfactory ex- planation of the words is, that they formed a continuous part of that to which they refer. The same formula occurs several times in the first Apology, referring back to statements made in some previous portion f.
Then, again, Eusebius informs us that the second Apology was addressed to Marcus Antoninus and Lucius Verus. But the part which is now called the second Apology contains no address. It opens with an appeal to the Komans, in har- mony with one part of the address of the first Apology, " to the whole people of the Romans." The only passage in which the rulers are mentioned can be made to agree with the statement of Eusebius only by rather violent processes. It runs thus : '' You pronounce judgments, O Urbicus, not becoming the emperor Pius, nor the philosophic son of Csesar, nor the holy senates." Unfortunately, there is a various reading in the passage which gives rise to doubt. The
0 Apol. ii. 4, p. 43 D refers to Apol. i. lo, p. 58 B ; Apol. ii. 6, p. 45 A refers to Apol. i. c. 23, p. 68 C, and c 63, p. 96 A D. The third and doubtful passage is Apol. ii. 8. See Otto's note. ' cc. 56, 58. s c. 2.
80 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
manuscripts of Justin read (PlKoo-ocPov KaiVapos iraibC, but all the MSS. of Eusebius, except three, read (f)i.\oa6(p(^, which is confirmed by the Syriac translation and that of Rufinus. Efforts have been made to show that the epithet ' Pius' was added to the name of Marcus Aurelius, and that Lucius Varus was called ' philosopher/ Admitting* the possibility of this, thoug-h the evidence on both points is not satisfactory, one would still be far more inclined to regard the reference as made to the emperor whose regular surname was Pius, and to his adopted son, known for the interest he took in philosophy. Nor need we be surprised at the terms Kaiaapos TTaibi, by which Justin designates Marcus Aurelius. Justin probably kaew very little in regard to the real father of Marcus Aurelius. On the present occasion he had to think of him as the son of the emperor, and, in consequence of his sonship, the colleague in the administration of justice. Nor do we feel much difficulty because he calls Antoninus Pius Csesar. Caesar he was, and Justin may have had his own reasons for preferring" that to o-e^aoro), or any other epithet which mig-ht have been more satisfactory to us. The application of the words to Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius is confirmed by the closing words of the second Apology : " May it happen that you shall judg'e just judg- ments in our behalf, worthily of piety and philosophy li l^' In the first Apology it is remarkable that the same terms are applied to the princes, and in the same order. Thus in c. 2 they are spoken of as pious and philosophic. In c. 12 it is said, " Ye desire piety and philosophy." We may add that Lucius Verus and the Roman people are both wisely omitted in the passage of the second Apology which we are discuss- ing, as their credit would not be so directly involved in the wrong judgments of those appointed by the emperor, his colleague, or the senate'.
»• c. 15.
' Valesius so amends the passage, that it is applicable to Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and Lucius Verus ; but the emendation is unnecessary, and has too much of conjecture in it to be satisfactory.
III.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 81
Moreover, the second Apolog-y invariably speaks of one emperor. " She gave the petition to the emperor''." And there is but one emperor mentioned in the passage quoted above. Now, if the Apology had been addressed to the conjunct emperors Aurelius and Lucius, Justin in the first passage, and most probably in the second, would have used the plural. ' Emperor^ is suitable only to Antoninus Pius.
The last circumstance that has to be noted is the date of Urbicus. Justin mentions in his second Apology Urbicus as the magistrate in Rome before whom Christians were brought. This Urbicus, it is likely, was the Lollius Urbicus who in the reign of Antoninus Pius vanquished the Britons, and subsequently acted as prefect of the city. He may indeed have lived till the days of Marcus Aurelius, but we have no historical authority for believing so. However, this argument cannot count for much; for the identifica- tion of the one Urbicus with the other is a matter of pure conjecture.
Putting all these circumstances together, there is a strong presumption that we have in the so-called second Apology only a portion of the first. Some, indeed, have regarded it as an appendix ; but the circumstances adduced tend rather to prove that it was an integral part, and its commencement, /cat TO. x^es 8e /cat -npcarjv, is also in favour of this supposition.
The only circumstance that seems opposed to the supposi- tion is, that some of the statements made with regard to persecutions of Christians appear more suited to the times of Marcus Antoninus' : but the answer to this is obvious ; namely, that the statements made in the first Apology with regard to the ill treatment of Christians are as strong as any in the second"*.
Most of the earliest of the modern critics, among them Valesius, Pearson, Fell, and Dodwell, solved the problem which the two Apologies present, by attempting to prove that Eusebius was wrong in assigning the second Apology to the
^ Apol. ii. c. 1, p. 42 C.
' See Neander's Church History, vol. ii. p. 416. •" See cc. i and 45.
VOL. II. G
82 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
time of Marcus Aurelius, and that it must have been written in the time of Antoninus Pius. Their arguments were can- vassed by Dupin, Pag-i, and Tentzel^. In more recent times the opinion has been maintained again by Neander, who supposes that the true relation of the two Apologies to each other had in the time of Eusebius already become confused^.
Scalio-er, in his Animadversions on the Chronicle of Eu- sebius", maintained, as I have done, that the second Apology mentioned by Eusebius is now lost; but he incorrectly re- garded the so-called second Apology as an introduction to the first. Papebroch agreed with him. Almost all recent critics have regarded this opinion as completely refuted. They take their stand on their interpretation of Eusebius, and especially on his quotation from the second Apology in Eccl. Hist. iv. 1 6. Aube, however, maintains that the second Apology was addressed to Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, and tries to prove, principally from conjectures with regard to Lollius Urbicus and Junius Rusticus, that it was written tov/ards the end of i6o or the beginning of 1 61 p. Thirlby seems to affirm the opinion which I have maintained. In a note on the passage in which the pious emperor is mentioned, he says, " Pagium aliosque viros doctissimos vehementer errare puto qui Marcum hie designari arbitrantur. Nam ut alia multa mittam, et concedam Marcum in nummis et veteribus inscriptionibus Pium vocari (quod tamen ad- dubito an ita sit) banc apologiam continuo post alteram iisdemque imperantibus scriptam esse, tota ipsa apologia clamati.''
Justin, then, wrote two Apologies ; one of which was ad- dressed to Antoninus Pius, and the other to Marcus Aurelius. The latter has been lost. We have now to ascertain the date of the former. We know for certain that it was written in the reign of Antoninus Pius. More minute information can be got only from an examination of the work itself. The
m See Grabe, Spicileg. ii. p. 144, who gives a resum^ of arguments and replies. " Church History, vol, ii. p. 417. ° P- 219.
p pp. 65-76. " P- no, note 22.
Ill] JUSTIN MARTYR. 83
various parts of the work that afford, or are supposed to afford data, are the following- : —
I . The address, which runs thus : " To the emperor Titus ^lius Adrianus Antoninus Pius Augustus Csesar, and to Verissimus his son, philosopher, and to Lucius, the son by- nature of a Caesar, a philosopher and the adopted son of Pius, a lover of instruction, and to the holy senate, and to the whole people of the Romans." The inference from this pas- sage with regard to the date is based on the supposition that Justin would l^e very particular in giving to the persons ad- dressed all their titles. Now Justin does not call Marcus Antoninus Caesar ; and therefore the Apology must have been written before Marcus was made C^sar, that is, before 139. So strong has this argument been felt to be, that the only possible way that has been devised to evade it is to change the text, and by hook or crook to attach the title Caesar to Verissimus. The objections are worthless which are urged against the mode of address, on the supposition that the Apology was written in 138 or 139. Lucius, it is said, could not be called philosopher, for he would be only in his eighth or ninth year. But then the Christians, and even the heathens, used the word ' lover of wisdom' (0i\o- ao(})os) in a wide sense. We shall have abundant instances from Christian writers, in which they speak of even the most ignorant becoming philosophers when they embrace Chris- tianity. Capitolinus also, in his Life of Marcus Aureliusr, says of him, that he was when a boy a great student of philosophy ; and consequently there is nothing incongruous in the application of the term to Lucius. Thei'e is, moreover, a mode of escape from the difficulty ; for several manuscripts of Eusebius read (j)L\oa6(f)ov Kaiaapos (t>va€t vl(2, ' son of the philosophic Ctesar.' The other reading, however, is unques- tionably to be preferred 3.
Moreover, the epithet ' fond of instruction,' or ' fond of learning,' as the words e/)a(Tr^9 TraiSfias in this connection
■• c. a.
■ See Justini Apobgi83, edidit Jo. Braunius. BonnK i860, p. 77.
G2
84 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
are perhaps more properly translated, is very applicable to the tender j^ears of Lucius.
Still the argument is not a satisfactory one. Justin men- tions none of the honorary titles which had been conferred on Marcus Aurelius, thoug-h, long before he had received the title of Csesar, he had been exalted to the highest dignities. And, moreover, the Apology seems to intimate that there was more than one responsible power in the state, for it is addressed to kings and rulers of men. " We serve you gladly,'^ he says, "in other matters, acknowledging- that you are kings and rulers of men, and praying that you may be found to possess sound reason in connection with your kingly power*.^^ Again he says, " Let it be your part, as powerful kings, to examine if we have been taught, and now teach, these things truly^i." It is difficult to imagine that Justin would thus have applied the title of king to Marcus Aurelius, if that prince had not been joined with Antoninus in the exercise of regal power. And, as we have seen, in the second Apology the philosophic son of Caesar is coupled with the pious emperor, when a judgment that would bring disgrace on the government is referred to^.
2. Justin mentions Marcion as being still alive, and says of him that, " through the help of demons, he has made many throughout every race of men [KaTo. ttclv yevos avdpa>7!(ov) speak blasphemies y.^^ Justin refers to him again in c. 58, and there also affirms that many followed him. We thus know that Marcion before this Apology was written had already considerable success in propagating his opinions. Unfor- tunately, however, we are at a loss to fix the date of Marcion, our information being either too indefinite or contradictory. Irenseus says^ that he succeeded Cerdo, who is supposed to have come to Rome in a.d. 138, and that he flourished under Anicetus. This is the only satisfactory information which we have with regard to the date of Marcion, the statements of Tertullian and Clemens being either manifest errors, or the text of them corrupt. Clemens seems to intimate that
' Apol. i. c. 17. " Ibid. c. 14. " Ibid. ii. c. 2. > c. 26. ^ III. iv. 3.
III.] JUSTIN MAETYli. 85
Marcion lived at Rome in the time of Antoninus Pius, but his statement can be admitted as probable only after several emendations. Even those of Irenseus are satisfactory on the supposition that there is something like correctness in the dates usually assigned to Cerdo and Anicetus.
3. The third circumstance that affords a clue to the date is the mention of the Jewish war, conducted by Barchochebas, as having- now taken place (ey rcG vvv yeyei'Tj/xtW TroAe'juw^). This is an indefinite statement, and it has to be taken into account that he uses similar language in the Dialogue with Trypho^, {tov vvv yevofxevov noKeixov). Equally indefinite is the allusion to the deification of Antinous^.
4. The fourth clue to a date runs thus : " That none may say that we assert that the Christ was born 150 years before, in the time of Cyrenius, &c., and hence object that all the men born before this time were not responsible, let us first solve the difficulty^." Ail that we learn from this is, that Justin, according to his method of estimating, supposed about 150 years in round numbers to have elapsed from the birth of Christ. Particular stress cannot be laid on such a statement.
These are the principal circumstances which throw light on the date. Unfortunately the light is very small. The first points to the year 138 or 139 a.d., an auspicious time for the presentation of an Apology, as Antoninus had just at- tained to the imperial dignity. This date has, moreover, the Chronicle of Eusebius in its favour, for this work sets down the Apology as written in the third year of the reign of Antoninus Pius, a.d. 140. Still, as we have seen, the infer- ence drawn from the inscription is more than nullified by statements in the Apology itself, and a later date is more suitable to the expression ' philosopher' applied to Lucius, though far from necessary. The second points to a later date than 139; and the fourth is favourable to such a supposition. The two circumstances mentioned in the third, on the other hand, suit better the earlier date, though not incompatible with the later. On the whole, then, the evidence may be » c. 31. '' c. I. * c. 29. '' c. ^6.
86 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
taken to point to somewhere aLout the middle of the reign of Antoninus Pius^.
Eusebiue states that Justin wrote his first Apology at Romef. The statement^ as we have seen, probably applies to both the documents which have come down to us.
With regard to the real second Apology we know nothing but what Eusebius informs us. As we have said already, Justin appears to have written it immediately before he suffered martyrdom in the reign of Marcus Aurelius.
IV. THE DIALOGUE WITH TRYPHO.
The genuineness of the Dialogue with Tryplio has been attested in the most satisfactory manner by Eusebius. That historian not merely mentions the work, but he mentions various parts of the work, which are all found in the Dialogue now extant. He tells us that Justin showed in what manner the divine favour had urged him on to the word of faiths j how the Jews plotted against the Christians^ ; that prophetic gifts lasted till his time'; that he made mention of the Apocalypse of Johni^; and that he stated that certain pas- sages of Scripture had been erased from their copies by the Jews'. The testimony of Eusebius is repeated by Jerome and confirmed by Photius. In addition to this, the work bears the strongest marks of being a production of the second century. We have seen already that it agrees with Barnabas and Tertullian in some peculiar representations of Jewish ceremonies. Semisch has collected several remarkable coincidences with this Dialogue in the writings of Irenseus and Tertullian, some of which are rather to be taken as
<= Volkmar, in an article on the date of Justin, has come to the conclusion that both Apologies of Justin were written under Antoninus Pius, about the year 150. This I learn from Baur, Das Christenthum der drei ersten Jahrh. p. 440, note 2. Volkmar's article and his arguments are unknown to me, except what I gather from Hort's article. Grabe states the arguments for the later date ably. Dupin and Papebroch were of the same opinion. Grabe, Spicil. vol. ii. p. 151.
f Hist. Eccl. iv. II. s c. 2. ^ c. I'j. ' c. 39.
'' c. 81. ' c. 71.
III.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 87
quotations than coincidences. Its whole turn of thoug'ht_, its explanations of Scripture, and its views of heathenism, are peculiarly of the second century. Besides this, there is a very g-reat similarity between its style and that of the Apologies. The writer, indeed, has to look at matters from a different point of view ; as in the Apologies he attempted to convince the Greeks, in the Dialogue he tries to win over the Jews. But the opinions expressed are substantially the same, and some of the expressions, such as the use of ra a-noiivr]- IxovevfjiaTa tS>v aTioaToXcov for the gospels, occur in the longer Apology and in the Dialogue, and in no other writer what- soever. The quotations from the Old Testament, moreover, occasionally agree in readings that are either peculiar or found nowhere else. Especially as far as Justin himself is concerned, everything is harmonious. He is represented in the one and the other as of the race of the Samaritans ; as a heathen originally, and as especially delighting in the Platonic doctrines before his conversion. The writer also, as we have seen already, alludes to his having addressed the emperor in writing. In fact, the more thorough the examination of the Dialogue has been, the more numerous are the tokens of Justin^s authorship. Notwithstanding this, there have been several who have disputed the genuineness of the Dia- logue "i, but all on such grounds as are utterly flimsy and unsubstantial, with the exception of those of Wetstein. That great scholar in the Prolegomena to his edition of the Greek Testament stated that he had observed that Justin^s quota- tions from the Old Testament agree more nearly with the Hexaplar edition of Origcn than with the Septuagint, and that Justin used some other version of Daniel, perhaps that of Symmachus. Wetstein draws no inference from this /act, as he believed it to be, but hoped learned men would see to it. Supposing that it were a fact, it would by no means impair the genuineness of the Dialogue. We should simply
™ The objections of Koch and Lange are refuted by Otto in his work, De .Tustini Martyris Scriptis et Doctrina, scripsit Joann. Carol. Theod. Otto, •Tenee 1841.
88 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
learn that transcribers had taken the liberty of altering the quotations of Scripture, as they were rather apt to do ; and there is no doubt that some of the quotations as they now stand have been altei^ed by transcribers". The g-enuineness of the Dialogue rests on too strong a basis to be so easily overwhelmed. But the fact has been very much disputed. There is not such a complete agreement of Justin^s quotations with the Hexapla as Wetstein represented. We have not a sure guarantee for the text of the Septuagint until the time of Origen, and it is possible that Justin^s quotations may have harmonized with the ante-Origenian text more than they do with the post-Origenian text. We know that Justin freqviently quoted from memory. We know also that Justin was very suspicious of the Jews and their dealings with the Bible, and this suspicion does not seem to have been confined to him. The early Christians would therefore take every means to get the right translation and a true copy of the Scriptures^ and, consequently, there would be many emendations and corrections of the current copies, of which Justin would become aware in his intercourse with Christian men. These oral corrections, no doubt, Theodotion and Symmachus would be also aware of, and would adopt in their new version".
A very important question in connection with the Dialogue is, whether we are to regard its form as real or fictitious. It unquestionably looks like an imitation of a dialogue of Plato or of Cicero, as has been remarked^, and hence some have regarded the whole clothing of the work as purely fictitious. This procedure at once destroys its historical value with regard to Justin's own history. But, whatever look it may at first sight have, a nearer inspection of the work leads to a belief in the reality of the narrative. The exact agreement, already mentioned, between the statements with regard to Justin's history in the Apologies and the Dialogue, must be taken into consideration. There are
" Semisch, vol. i. p. 87.
" See Semisch, vol. i. p. 83, and Kaye, p. 20, note. r Kaye, p. 19.
Ill] JUSTIN MARTYR. 8!)
several very unartistic references to the conversations held the previous day^ the dialogue extending over two days. For no reason that can be given, several come alongside Trypho, to meet Justin on the second day, and Justin gives the name of only one of them, Mnaseas. Besides this, the vi^hole looks like a report of a dialogue, for Justin in narrating it forgets parts of it, and then when he comes to some other part that is connected with them by some association, he speaks as if he had written them fully out. To gratify his new-come friends on the second daj^, he needlessly rehearses some things already discussed. These and suchlike slight circumstances, combined with the utterly unartistic setting of the work, scarcely permit us to doubt that Justin relates a real conversation.
Eusebius speaks of Trypho as being* a very illustrious Jew. According to the Dialogue'^, he fled from his country on account of a war which had just taken place, and spent a great deal of his time in listening to Greek philosophers. This is all we know of him, thoug-h modern scholars have been very busy in conjecturing who he was. Grabe identified him with a renowned rabbi; but, unfortunatelj^, every reference to him in the Dialogue shows that he was not a teacher, but one of the taught'". The Dialogue was addressed to one Marcus Pompeius^, of whom also we know nothing. Con- jecture has been also rife about him, and has even been employed in changing his name, aud making him into two persons.
It is impossible to fix the date of the composition of the Dialogue. The only indication of a date is that already mentioned, that it was posterior to the longer Apology*. The Dialogue itself took place shortly after the conclusion of a Jewish war", which most scholars have taken to be the war of Barchochebas, biit a considerable interval may have
1 c. I, p. 217 D.
' Dial. c. Trypho, c. 9, p. 226 C ; c. 38, p. 256 B; c. 62, p. 285 B. ^ c. 8, p. 225 D, and c. 141, p. 371 B.
• Some suppose a reference also to the shorter Apology, c. 15 in e. 120, but this is doubtful. " c. I, p. 217 D.
90 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
elapsed between the holding" of the conversation and the narrating of it.
The Dialogue, as it has come down to us^ seems to be defective in some parts. The writer mentions that the con- versation lasted for two days, yet he nowhere tells us where the first day^s conversation ends and the second day^s begins. Some have supposed that the part of the Dialogue which did this has been lost. Some suppose that the part lost is con- siderable, others that it is very small. It is possible that Justin gave a very confused account of the accessories, and that we have the Dialogue just as he wrote it, with the exception of two or three lines, where there is an evident gap. Against this notion, however, we have to take into account that Photius saj^s that the Dialogue was divided into two parts, and that in John of Damascus^s Parallels, p. 754, a passage from c. 82 is said to be taken from the second book to Trypho''. Maranus supposes a gap some- where between cc. 70 and 78 ; and mentions cc. 78, 84, 92, 118, as repetitions of discussions in the previous part. Maranus''s opinion is that the work is on the whole as Justin wrote it ; that the gap at c. 74 is very slight (verba desunt pau- cissima) ; and that we have similar instances of conversations going on as one, while it is mentioned that they continued for several days, in Plato^s Republic, and especially in Dia- logus de Vita S. Joannis Chrysostomi inter Palladium Epi- scopum et Theodoretum Diaeonumy.
The objections which may be urged against the genuineness of cc. 80 and 81 will be presented in the discussion of Justin^s opinions in regard to the Millennium.
V. THE DISCOURSE TO THE GREEKS.
A small tractate has come down to us, under the title Ao'yoj 77pos "EXXriva's, bearing the name of Justin. Eusebius, Jerome^ and Photius, as we have seen, mention such a discourse, but
" 0' \6yov. This, however, may l>c a mi.stake for SioAo'^jv, ^■ In Prfef. xc, xci.
Ill] JUSTIN MAETYH. 91
the two characteristic traits which Eusebius gives of the work are not found in that now extant. Eusebius says that in the treatise Justin had " a long- discussion on matters wdiich occupied the minds of Christians and Greek philo- sophers/'' Now the discussion in the extant work is not long-, and it does not meddle wath most matters about wdiich the Greek philosophers showed anxiety. Eusebius farther remarks, that it discussed the nature of the demons {tQ)v baiiJLovcov) , and in this representation Jerome and Photius agree. The extant work is certainly entirely occupied with the character of the Greek deities, which the Christian writers very often styled ot baijjLovis, and so far it corresponds with the description. But it seems very unlikely that a mere exhibition of the character of the Greek gods would be de- scribed by any such terms as uepl cpvaecos rSiv hai}x6v(3iv; that the w^ord (pixn'i would be chosen for such an exhibition ; and that the word batixoves would be selected without some qualification, especially when the word does not once occur in the work itself. There seems, therefore, to us to be no external evidence for the genuineness of the extant w^ork.
The internal evidence amounts to almost nothing. None of the few ideas of the work are inconsistent with its being a production of the second century, and there is nothing to attach it especially to Justin. The few points which have been adduced to show that the work is not Justin^s are far from satisfactory; but, on the whole, the probability rests on that side. Thus it has been objected, that the writer of the extant work traces his acceptance of Christianity to his abhorrence of the character of the gods. But the writer makes no such assertion as is attributed to him. His words are : '' Do not suppose that my separation from your customs is unreasonable and unthinking, for I found in them nothing that was holy or acceptable to God^." Here the writer simply states, as a reason for the Greeks not looking on his conduct as irrational, that when his mind was led to examine Greek customs, he perceived that they were not holy. This would
92 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
not prevent him from having" had his attention brought to the subject by an okl man, or having the power of Chris- tianity demonstrated to him by the patience of Christians. There is therefore no force in this objection.
Nor is there any force in the objection, that in the Dialogue with Trypho Justin represents Christianity as the only true philosophv ; while in the Ao'yo?, Christianity is said not to make philosophers ^, Both statements are strictly true and harmonious. Christianity did not make philosophers, " or poets, or clever orators." Its function was not intellectual, but it made " mortals immortal," as the hoyo^ g-oes on to say, " and men gods." Yet, at the same time, the writer of the Ao'yos would not have hesitated to say that in making mortals immortals it showed itself a truer philosophy than the cleverest inventions of Greek wisdom.
Nor, again, is there any contradiction in the writer's belief with regard to a future state and that of Justin. Justin unquestionably believed in an intermediate state ; but wdien the writer of the Ao'yos says that the soul at death goes to Him that made it, he uses language which Justin himself would no doubt have used, for it occurs in the New Testa- ment, and was common with Christians. Justin himself uses similar language in Apol. ii. c. 2, for he tells us that Lucius knew that by his deatli " he was freed from such wicked ruler?;, and was going to the Father and King of Heaven."
The only considerations that are of any weight are that the style is somewhat different, not in mere words only but in character, and that there is an absence of many phrases and turns of thought which we should have expected Justin to use in treating of such a subject. The difference of the character of the style, however, may be accounted for mainly by the close contact into which the writer comes with poets, and the absence of Justinian modes of thought is easily ex- plained by the shortness of the work and the fewness of the thoughts in it. Even if this were not the case, we have
III.] JUSTIN MAliTYli. 93
already remarked bow unsatisfactory inferences from st}le and thought g-eneially are.
Cureton publishes in his Spicileg-ium Sja-iacum a Syriae translation of the Discourse. It is not exactly the same. The Syriae omits some parts of the Greek^ and introduces small portions not found there. The inscription in the Syriae is : '' Ilypomnemata, which Ambrose, a chief man of Greece, wrote : who became a Christian : and all his fellow-senators raised a clamour ag-ainst him : and he fled from them, and wrote and showed them all their folly : and at the beginning of his discourse he answered and said^." Cureton thinks that the Ambrose here mentioned " can hardly be understood to be any other than the friend and disciple of Origen, whom Epiphanius designates as one of those illustrious in the palaces of kings^.^^ But neither Eusebius, nor Jerome, nor Epi- phanius, all of whom mention Ambrose, say one word with regard to Ambrose^s being in Greece. On the contrary, they could not have heard such a story as that given in the S3a-iac, for they say that he was a Marcionite or Sabellian, and that Origen convinced him of his error in Alexandria^.
The inscription in the Syriae, therefore, merely gives a name of which we know nothing ; and it ma}^ be questioned how far any reliance could be placed on the S3'riac, if the name had told us more.
The Discourse commences with the statement that the speaker^s departure from the customs of the Greeks was not unreasonable ; for the writings of their poets were monu- ments of madness and impurit3% A woman is the beginning and end of both Iliad and Odyssey''; Hesiod^s "Works and Days " and his " Theogony " contain vile stories, and the characters of the heroes and gods in them, as also in the dramatised histories, are full of inconsistencies and fearful moral blemishes ?. Any one who imitated the conduct of the gods now, would be condemned by every one^^ The Greeks
"= p.6i. '' Preface, p. xii.
« See Eus. Hist. Eccl. vi. i8 ; Hieronym. De lllustr. Vir. c. 56 ; Epipli. Pan. Har. 64. 3.
f c. I. « cc. 2, 3. "> c. 4.
94 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
should therefore come and be instructed by divine truth. The Ao'yos concludes with the following beautiful passage, which has been translated by Neander : " The power of the Logos does not produce poets ; it does not create philosophers, nor able orators; but by instructing us it makes of mortal men immortal beings, and converts mortals into gods. It transjiorts us from the earth beyond the limits of Olympus. Come and submit yourselves to its influence. Become as I am, for I too was as you are. This has conquered me — the divinity of the doctrine, the power of the Logos ; for as a master serpent-charmer lures and frightens the hideous rep- tile from his den, so the Word expels the fearful passions of our sensual nature from the most secret recesses of the soul. And the cravings of lust having once been banished, the soul becomes calm and serene, and, delivered from the evil which had cleaved to it, returns to its Creator. ^^
VI. ON THE MONARCHY OR UNITY OF GOD.
We have already seen that Eusebius, Jerome, and Photius mention a treatise by Justin with this name. The only characteristic of the work which Eusebius gives us is in these words : "^Wv ov [xovov €k t5>v Trap' yjuv ypacfi&v a\ka kol e/c Twy 'EKX-qviK&v avviaTTqai ^i^Xioiv. These words have been supposed to admit of a double translation ; either, ' The unity of God, which he proves not only from the writings which we (Christians) have, but also from Greek books,^ or 'The unity of God, which he not only does not prove from the writings which we have, but proves it even from Greek writings.^ The latter translation is unquestionably wrong, and would not have been devised but under the pressure of necessity. There can be no doubt that Eusebius never uses ov fxovoi; — akka kol as equal to '^ not only not — but even'.^
• Prud. Mar. Preef. p. Ixxii., adduces some passages from Justin, one from Athenagoras (Leg. i), and one from Tatian (c. 36). Those from Justin are unsatisfactory — the others are all doubtful — and, at all events, he makes no attempt to prove that such was the usage of Eusebius.
III.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 95
There remains therefore for us only the former^ which leaves us the following alternative, — either the work now extant is not the work of Justin, or it is not complete ; for it does not contain a single reference to the '' Scriptures used by ws." It appeals to the Greek writings alone, and very frequently to forgeries among the Greek writings. As there is not the slightest token that the work is incomplete, the most likely alternative is that this is not the work of Justin. Some indeed have supposed a reference to a previous part in which testimonies would be quoted from the Old Testament — but the supposition is pm-ely gratuitous. The sentence appealed to runs as follows : " I, as I promised a little before, having used a god-loving state of mind will use a man-loving voice." The god-loving mind (7; cfyiXoOeos yvwyiri) is absurdly supposed to imply that the writer had appealed to Scripture, while the man-loving voice (r/ (f)LXdvOp(D'Tros (pcavrj) is taken to be the appeal to the Greek poets. The portion, " as I promised before," refers to a sentence occurring a few lines above ^.
Critics used to lay stress on the circumstance that the text of Eusebius called the work r/ept &eov ixovap\ias, while the inscriptions of the Codd. called it simply Tiept fj.0L'ap\(as. But no stress can be laid on this circumstance, for, in the first place, it is not improbable that Eusebius wrote simply Trepl p-ovapyla^, since Rufinus does not translate the O^ov ; and in the second place, the Codex of Weimar designates the work " De monarchia Dei 1."
The internal evidence furnishes us little help. The phi'ase- ology is somewhat different, and the author is supposed to express his belief that all the gods were originally men"^. He does not, however, give full expression to this theory. He makes no mention of the origin of the gods through the demons as in the longer Apology, but he speaks of " forget- fulness transferring to mortals the name which is fit only for the one true God^i." And he also speaks of the idolatrous rites as arising from the great honours paid to mortals of
^ See Otto, in loc. ; Semiach, vol. i. p. 189. 1 Otto, Prolegomena, p. 20. >" Semisch, vol. i. p. 1(^7. " c. i.
96 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
supereminont merit". Both of these statements are in har- mony with the Euhemeran theory, but they are not absolutely inconsistent with the daemonic.
The tractate consists mainly of extracts from the Greek poets. He introduces the subject in chapter first. In chapter second he quotes fromvEschylus, Sophocles, Philemon, Orpheus, and Pythag-oras, to show that they recognised but one God ; but all the verses have generally been considered spurious. In the third chapter he quotes Sophocles, Philemon, and Euripides, to prove that they believed that God would judge men. In the fourth he quotes Philemon, to prove that he thought that libations would not remove the punish- ment. In the fifth he quotes Menander, Euripides, and others, to show that the}'' did not believe in the common gods ; and the last chapter concludes with some observations on the immorality that would accompany an imitation of the gods.
VII. HORTATORY ADDRESS TO THE GREEKS.
A treatise has come down to us bearing the name of Justin styled Ao'yos irapaiveTLKos irpos "EWrjvas — " A hortatory address to the Greeks.''^ As both external and internal evidence is incapable of settling the authorship satisfactorily, the opinion of critics has been divided, some regarding it as a genuine work of Justin^s, while others have rejected it as spurious. In the course of the discussions on this subject many argu- ments have been adduced both for and against the genuine- ness which are either misunderstandings of the text or false assertions, or at the best have no weight. We shall adduce those which seem to be of some moment. We think that the internal evidence preponderates against the genuineness, but that its force depends considerably on the accumulation of slight indications which would be of no great consequence if external evidence were in any way decided in its tone.
The first mention of the Hortatory Discourse by name occurs in the Claremont MS. of the " Parallels of John of
III.] JUSTIN MARTYR. 97
DamascusP." The treatise must therefore have passed by this name in the eighth century.
Those critics who regard the work as Justin's believe that they can find notices of it much earHer. In his Hist. Eccl. iv. 1 8, Eusebius states that "another work of Justin's has also come down to us, addressed to the Greeks, which he inscribed lAeyxos, confutation." Jerome copies this notice ; and Photius includes among- the works of Justin one also with the name ^k^yxo's : " There is a fourth treatise of his, composed in like manner against the nations, which bears the title eA.£yxos*.'' Now it is asserted that the title "Confuta- tion'' would exactly suit the work which we are discussing, while the title " Hortatory Addi'ess " is not so appropriate. We think that this is not a correct statement of the case. There is, properly speaking, no refutation of heathenism in the treatise. It does not exhibit the absurdities and con- tradictions of the Greek religion ; it does not bring to light the hideous practices of the gods, and the immorality of their rites. The address to the Greeks would be far more appro- priately entitled the Confutation than the Hortatory Address. On the contrary, it is an exhortation from beginning to end to the Greeks to give up the error {irKdvqv) of their ancestors, to read the Scriptures, and to learn from them the true piety. This exhortation is indeed based on a peculiar line of argu- ment. The writer asserts that only inspired men could teach true piety. He maintains this by showing in the first place that the Greek poets and philosophers contradicted themselves and spoke unworthily of the true God; and, in the second place, by showing that the best of the Greek poets and philosophers had learned part of the wisdom of Moses while in Egypt, and that thus what was true in them was not their own. He urges them therefore to give heed to the books from which Orpheus and Homer, Pythagoras and Plato, borrowed their wisdom. Especially does he urge them to give heed to the words of the Sibyl, who was inspired to foretell the coming of Christ. Such a work can in no proper p See Grabe, Spicileg. vol. ii. p. 149. 1 Cod. 125.
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98 THE APOLOGISTS. [Chap.
sense be called a confutation, though it is easy enough to suppose that an inaccurate author might have called it by this name. As, howevei-, the name " Hortatory Address " is really more appropriate than " Confutation," no argument can be derived from the name in Eusebius, Jerome, and Photius as to the identity of the treatise.
The only other point of external evidence in regard to the treatise is somewhat more important. Photius, in his notice of the work of Stephanus Gobarus, adduces as one of the contradictions mentioned by that writer, " that every- thing created is destructible and mortal, but by^ the will of God remains indissoluble and indestructible ; and, on the con- trary, that what is destructible by nature cannot be inde- structible by the will of God.''^ Then Photius adds that it was from Justin Martyr that Stephanus had borrowed this opinion, for Justin had had a contest against the Greek opinion, and had refuted the opinion of Plato in Timseus, 41 B. Then Photius gives the refutation, partly in the