What need is there, in speaking to you who have searched into every department of knowledge, to mention the poets, or to examine opinions of another kind? Let it suffice to say thus much. If the poets and philosophers did not acknowledge that there is one God, and concerning these gods were not of opinion, some that they are demons, others that they are matter, and others that they once were men, there might be some show of reason for our being harassed as we are, since we employ language which makes a distinction between God and matter, and the natures of the two. For, as we acknowledge a God, and a Son his Logos, and a Holy Spirit, united in essence, the Father, the Son, the Spirit, because the Son is the Intelligence, Reason, Wisdom of the Father, and the Spirit an effluence, as light from fire; so also do we apprehend the existence of other powers, which exercise dominion about matter, and by means of it, and one in particular, which is hostile to God: not that anything is really opposed to God, like strife to friendship, according to Empedocles, and night to day, according to the appearing and disappearing of the stars (for even if anything had placed itself in opposition to God, it would have ceased to 142 exist, its structure being destroyed by-the power and might of God), but that to the good that is in God, which belongs of necessity to Him, and co-exists with Him, as colour with body, without which it has no existence (not as being part of it, but as an attendant property co-existing with it, united and blended, just as it is natural for fire to be yellow and the ether dark blue), - to the good that is in God, I say, the spirit which is about matter,80 who was created by God; just as the other angels were created by Him, and entrusted with the control of matter and the forms of matter, is opposed. For this is the office of the angels, - to exercise providence for God over the things created and ordered by Him; so that God may have the universal and general providence of the whole, while the particular parts are provided for by the angels appointed over them.81 Just as with men, who have freedom of choice as to both virtue and vice (for you would not either honour the good or punish the bad, unless vice and virtue were in their own power; and some are diligent in the matters entrusted to them by you, and others faithless), so is it among the angels. Some, free agents, you will observe, such as they were created by God, continued in those things for which God had made and over which He had ordained them; but some outraged both the constitution of their nature and the government entrusted to them: namely, this ruler of matter and its various forms, and others of those who were placed about this first firmament (you know that we say nothing without witnesses, but state the things which have been declared by the prophets); these fell into impure love of virgins, and were subjugated by the flesh, and he became negligent and wicked in the management of the things entrusted to him. Of these lovers of virgins, therefore, were begotten those who are called giants.82 And if something has been said by the poets, too, about the giants, be not surprised at this: worldly Wisdom and divine differ as much from each other as truth and plausibility: the one is of heaven and the other of earth; and indeed, according to the prince of matter, -
“We know we oft speak lies that look like truths.”83
Chap. XXV. - The Poets and Philosophers Have Denied a Divine Providence.
These angels, then, who have fallen from heaven, and haunt the air and the earth, and are no longer able to rise to heavenly things, and the souls of the giants, which are the demons who wander about the world, perform actions similar, the one (that is, the demons) to the natures they have received, the other (that is, the angels) to the appetites they have indulged. But the prince of matter, as may be seen merely from what transpires, exercises a control and management contrary to the good that is in God: -
“Ofttimes this anxious thought has crossed my mind,
Whether ’tis chance or deity that rules
The small affairs of men; and, spite of hope
As well as justice, drives to exile some
Stripped of all means of life, while others still
Continue to enjoy prosperity.”84
Prosperity and adversity, contrary to hope and justice, made it impossible for Euripides to say to whom belongs the administration of earthly affairs, which is of such a kind that one might say of it: -
“How then, while seeing these things, can we say
There is a race of gods, or yield to laws?”85
The same thing led Aristotle to say that the things below the heaven are not under the care of Providence, although the eternal providence of God concerns itself equally with us below, -
“The earth, let willingness move her or not,
Must herbs produce, and thus sustain my flocks,”86 -
and addresses itself to the deserving individually, according to truth and not according to opinion; and all other things, according to the general constitution of nature, are provided for by the law of reason. But because the demoniac movements and operations proceeding from the adverse spirit produce these disorderly sallies, and moreover move men, some in one way and some in another, as individuals and as nations, separately and in common, in accordance with the tendency of matter on the one hand, and of the affinity for divine things on the other, from within and from without, - some who are of no mean reputation have therefore thought that this universe is constituted without any definite order, and is driven hither and thither by an irrational chance. But they do not understand, that of those things which belong to the constitution of the whole world there is nothing out of order or neglected, but that each one of them has been produced by reason, and that, therefore, they do not transgress the order prescribed to them; and that man himself, too, so far as He that made him is concerned, is well ordered, both by his original nature, which has one common character for all, and by the constitution of his body, which does not transgress the law imposed upon 143 it, and by the termination of his life, which remains equal and common to all alike;87 but that, according to the character peculiar to himself and the operation of the ruling prince and of the demons his followers, he is impelled and moved in this direction or in that, notwithstanding that all possess in common the same original constitution of mind.88
Chap. XXVI. - The Demons Allure Men to the Worship of Images.
They who draw men to idols, then, are the aforesaid demons, who are eager for the blood of the sacrifices, and lick them; but the gods that please the multitude, and whose names are given to the images, were men, as may be learned from their history. And that it is the demons who act under their names, is proved by the nature of their operations. For some castrate, as Rhea; others wound and slaughter, as Artemis; the Tauric goddess puts all strangers to death. I pass over those who lacerate with knives and scourges of bones, and shall not attempt to describe all the kinds of demons; for it is not the part of a god to incite to things against nature.
“But when the demon plots against a man,
He first inflicts some hurt upon his mind.”89
But God, being perfectly good, is eternally doing good. That, moreover, those who exert the power are not the same as those to whom the statues are erected, very strong evidence is afforded by Troas and Parium. The one has statues of Neryllinus, a man of our own times; and Parium of Alexander and Proteus: both the sepulchre and the statue of Alexander are still in the forum. The other statues of Neryllinus, then, are a public ornament, if indeed a city can be adorned by such objects as these; but one of them is supposed to utter oracles and to heal the sick, and on this account the people of the Troad offer sacrifices to this statue, and overlay it with gold, and hang chaplets upon it. But of the statues of Alexander and Proteus (the latter, you are aware, threw himself into the fire near Olympia), that of Proteus is likewise said to utter oracles; and to that of Alexander -
“Wretched Paris, though in form so fair,
Thou slave of woman”90 -
sacrifices are offered and festivals are held at the public cost, as to a god who can hear. Is it, then, Neryllinus, and Proteus, and Alexander who exert these energies in connection with the statues, or is it the nature of the matter itself? But the matter is brass. And what can brass do of itself, which may be made again into a different form, as Amasis treated the footpan,91 as told by Herodotus? And Neryllinus, and Proteus, and Alexander, what good are they to the sick? For what the image is said now to effect, it effected when Neryllinus was alive and sick.
Chap. XXVII. - Artifices of the Demons.
What then? In the first place, the irrational and fantastic movements of the soul about opinions produce a diversity of images (εἲδωλα) from time to time: some they derive from matter, and some they fashion and bring forth for themselves; and this happens to a soul especially when it par takes of the material spirit92 and becomes mingled with it, looking not at heavenly things and their Maker, but downwards to earthly things, wholly at the earth, as being now mere flesh and blood, and no longer pure spirit.93 These irrational and fantastic movements of the soul, then, give birth to empty visions in the mind, by which it becomes madly set on idols. When, too, a tender and susceptible soul, which has no knowledge or experience of sounder doctrines, and is unaccustomed to contemplate truth, and to consider thoughtfully the Father and Maker of all things, gets impressed with false opinions respecting itself, then the demons who hover about matter, greedy of sacrificial odours and the blood of victims, and ever ready to lead men into error, avail themselves of these delusive movements of the souls of the multitude; and, taking possession of their thoughts, cause to flow into the mind empty visions as if coming from the idols and the statues; and when, too, a soul of itself, as being immortal,94 moves comformably to reason, either predicting the future or healing the present, the demons claim the glory for themselves.
Chap. XXVIII. - The Heathen Gods Were Simply Men.
But it is perhaps necessary, in accordance with what has already been adduced, to say a little about their names. Herodotus, then, and Alexander the son of Philip, in his letter to his mother (and each of them is said to have conversed with the priests at Heliopolis, and Memphis, and Thebes), affirm that they learnt from them that the gods had been men. Herodotus speaks thus: “Of such a nature were, they said, the beings represented by these images, they were very far indeed from being gods. However, in the times anterior to them it was otherwise; then 144 Egypt had gods for its rulers, who dwelt upon the earth with men, one being always supreme above the rest. The last of these was Horus the son of Osiris, called by the Greeks Apollo. He deposed Typhon, and ruled over Egypt as its last god-king. Osiris is named Dionysus (Bacchus) by the Greeks.”95 “Almost all the names of the gods came into Greece from Egypt.”96 Apollo was the son of Dionysus and Isis, as Herodotus likewise affirms: “According to the Egyptians, Apollo and Diana are the children of Bacchus and Isis; while Latona is their nurse and their preserver.”97 These beings of heavenly origin they had for their first kings: partly from ignorance of the true worship of the Deity, partly from gratitude for their government, they esteemed them as gods together with their wives. “The male kine, if clean, and the male calves are used for sacrifice by the Egyptians universally; but the females, they are not allowed to sacrifice, since they are sacred to Isis. The statue of this goddess has the form of a woman but with horns like a cow, resembling those of the Greek representations of Io.”98 And who can be more deserving of credit in making these statements, than those who in family succession son from father, received not only the priesthood, but also the history? For it is not likely that the priests, who make if their business to commend the idols to men’s reverence, would assert falsely that they were men. If Herodotus alone had said that the Egyptians spoke in their histories of the gods as of men, when he says, “What they told me concerning their religion it is not my intention to repeat, except only the names of their deities, things of very trifling importance,”99 it would behove us not to credit even Herodotus as being a fabulist. But as Alexander and Hermes surnamed Trismegistus, who shares with them in the attribute of eternity, and innumerable others, not to name them individually, [declare the same], no room is left even for doubt that they, being kings, were esteemed gods. That they were men, the most learned of the Egyptians also testify, who, while saying that ether, earth, sun, moon, are gods, regard the rest as mortal men, and the temples as their sepulchres. Apollodorus, too, asserts the same thing in his treatise concerning the gods. But Herodotus calls even their sufferings mysteries. “The ceremonies at the feast of Isis in the city of Busiris have been already spoken of. It is there that the whole multitude, both of men and women, many thousands in number, beat them selves at the close of the sacrifice in honour of a god whose name a religious scruple forbids me to mention.”100 If they are gods, they are also immortal; but if people are beaten for them, and their sufferings are mysteries, they are men, as Herodotus himself says: “Here, too, in this same precinct of Minerva at Saïs, is the burial-place of one whom I think it not right to mention in such a connection. It stands behind the temple against the back wall, which it entirely covers. There are also some large stone obelisks in the enclosure, and there is a lake near them, adorned with an edging of stone. In form it is circular, and in size, as it seemed to me, about equal to the lake at Delos called the Hoop. On this lake it is that the Egyptians represent by night his sufferings whose name I refrain from mentioning, and this representation they call their mysteries.”101 And not only is the sepulchre of Osiris shown, but also his embalming: “When a body is brought to them, they show the bearer various models of corpses made in wood, and painted so as to resemble nature. The most perfect is said to be after the manner of him whom I do not think it religious to name in connection with such a matter.”102
Chap. XXIX. - Proof of the Same from the Poets.
But among the Greeks, also, those who are eminent in poetry and history say the same thing. Thus of Heracles: -
“That lawless wretch, that man of brutal strength,
Deaf to Heaven’s voice, the social rite transgressed.”103
Such being his nature, deservedly did he go mad, and deservedly did he light the funeral pile and burn himself to death. Of Asklepius, Hesiod says: -
“The mighty father both of gods and men
Was filled with wrath, and from Olympus’ top
With flaming thunderbolt cast down and slew
Latona’s well-lov’d son - such was his ire.”104
And Pindar: -
“But even wisdom is ensnared by gain.
The brilliant bribe of gold seen in the hand
Ev’n him105 perverted: therefore Kronos’ son
With both hands quickly stopp’d his vital breath,
And by a bolt of fire ensured his doom.”106
Either, therefore, they were gods and did not hanker after gold -
“O gold, the fairest prize to mortal men,
Which neither mother equals in delight,
Nor children dear”107 -
145 for the Deity is in want of nought, and is superior to carnal desire, nor did they die; or, having been born men, they were wicked by reason of ignorance, and overcome by love of money. What more need I say, or refer to Castor, or Pollux, or Amphiaraus, who, having been born, so to speak, only the other day, men of men, are looked upon as gods, when they imagine even Ino after her madness and its consequent sufferings to have become a goddess?
“Sea-rovers will her name Leucothea.”108
And her son: -
“August Palaemon, sailors will invoke.”
Chap. XXX. - Reasons Why Divinity Has Been Ascribed to Men.
For if detestable and god-hated men had the reputation of being gods, and the daughter of Derceto, Semiramis, a lascivious and blood-stained woman, was esteemed a Syria goddess; and if, on account of Derceto, the Syrians worship doves and Semiramis (for, a thing impossible, a woman was changed into a dove: the story is in Ctesias), what wonder if some should be called gods by their people on the ground of their rule and sovereignty (the Sibyl, of whom Plato also makes mention, says: -
“It was the generation then the tenth,
Of men endow’d with speech, since forth the flood
Had burst upon the men of former times,
And Kronos, Japetus, and Titan reigned,
Whom men, of Ouranos and Gaïa
Proclaimed the noblest sons, and named them so,109
Because of men endowed with gift of speech
They were the first”);110
and others for their strength, as Heracles and Perseus; and others for their art, as Asclepius? Those, therefore, to whom either the subjects gave honour or the rulers themselves [assumed it], obtained the name, some from fear, others from revenge. Thus Antinous, through the benevolence of your ancestors towards their subjects, came to be regarded as a god. But those who came after adopted the worship without examination.
“The Cretans always lie; for they, O king,
Have built a tomb to thee who art not dead.”111
Though you believe, O Callimachus, in the nativity of Zeus, you do not believe in his sepulchre; and whilst you think to obscure the truth, you in fact proclaim him dead, even to those who are ignorant; and if you see the cave, you call to mind the childbirth of Rhea; but when you see the coffin, you throw a shadow over his death, not considering that the unbegotten God alone is eternal. For either the tales told by the multitude and the poets about the gods are unworthy of credit, and the reverence shown them is superfluous (for those do not exist, the tales concerning whom are untrue); or if the births, the amours, the murders, the thefts, the castrations, the thunderbolts, are true, they no longer exist, having ceased to be since they were born, having previously had no being. And on what principle must we believe some things and disbelieve others, when the poets have written their stories in order to gain greater veneration for them? For surely those through whom they have got to be considered gods, and who have striven to represent their deeds as worthy of reverence, cannot have invented their sufferings. That, therefore, we are not atheists, acknowledging as we do God the Maker of this universe and His Logos, has been proved according to my ability, if not according to the importance of the subject.
Chap. XXXI. - Confutation of the Other Charges Brought Against the Christians.
But they have further also made up stories against us of impious feasts112 and forbidden intercourse between the sexes, both that they may appear to themselves to have rational grounds of hatred, and because they think either by fear to lead us away from our way of life, or to render the rulers harsh and inexorable by the magnitude of the charges they bring. But they lose their labour with those who know that from of old it has been the custom, and not in our time only, for vice to make war on virtue. Thus Pythagoras, with three hundred others, was burnt to death; Heraclitus and Democritus were banished, the one from the city of the Ephesians, the other from Abdera, because he was charged with being mad; and the Athenians condemned Socrates to death. But as they were none the worse in respect of virtue because of the opinion of the multitude, so neither does the undiscriminating calumny of some persons cast any shade upon us as regards rectitude of life, for with God we stand in good repute. Nevertheless, I will meet these charges also, although I am well assured that by what has been already said I have cleared myself to you. For as you excel all men in intelligence, you know that those whose life is directed towards God as its rule, so that each one among 146 us may be blameless and irreproachable before Him, will not entertain even the thought of the slightest sin. For if we believed that we should live only the present life, then we might be suspected of sinning, through being enslaved to flesh and blood, or overmastered by gain or carnal desire; but since we know that God is witness to what we think and what we say both by night and by day, and that He, being Himself light, sees all things in our heart, we are persuaded that when we are removed from the present life we shall live another life, better than the present one, and heavenly, not earthly (since we shall abide near God, and with God, free from all change or suffering in the soul, not as flesh, even though we shall have flesh,113 but as heavenly spirit), or, falling with the rest, a worse one and in fire; for God has not made us as sheep or beasts of burden, a mere by-work, and that we should perish and be annihilated. On these grounds it is not likely that we should wish to do evil, or deliver ourselves over to the great Judge to be punished.
Chap. XXXII. - Elevated Morality of the Christians.
It is, however, nothing wonderful that they should get up tales about us such as they tell of their own gods, of the incidents of whose lives they make mysteries. But it behoved them, if they meant to condemn shameless and promiscuous intercourse, to hate either Zeus, who begat children of his mother Rhea and his daughter Koré, and took his own sister to wife, or Orpheus, the inventor of these tales, which made Zeus more unholy and detestable than Thyestes himself; for the latter defiled his daughter in pursuance of an oracle, and when he wanted to obtain the kingdom and avenge himself. But we are so far from practising promiscuous intercourse, that it is not lawful among us to indulge even a lustful look. “For,” saith He, “he that looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery already in his heart.” (Mat_5:28) Those, then, who are forbidden to look at anything more than that for which God formed the eyes, which were intended to be a light to us, and to whom a wanton look is adultery, the eyes being made for other purposes, and who are to be called to account for their very thoughts, how can any one doubt that such persons practise self-control? For our account lies not with human laws, which a bad man can evade (at the outset I proved to you, sovereign lords, that our doctrine is from the teaching of God), but we have a law which makes the measure of rectitude to consist in dealing with our neighbour as ourselves.114 On this account, too, according to age, we recognise some as sons and daughters, others we regard as brothers and sisters,115 and to the more advanced in life we give the honour due to fathers and mothers. On behalf of those, then, to whom we apply the names of brothers and sisters, and other designations of relationship, we exercise the greatest care that their bodies should remain undefiled and uncorrupted; for the Logos116 again says to us, “If any one kiss a second time because it has given him pleasure, [he sins];” adding, “Therefore the kiss, or rather the salutation, should be given with the greatest care, since, if there be mixed with it the least defilement of thought, it excludes us from eternal life.”117
Chap. XXXIII. - Chastity of the Christians with Respect to Marriage.
Therefore, having the hope of eternal life, we despise the things of this life, even to the pleasures of the soul, each of us reckoning her his wife whom he has married according to the laws laid down by us, and that only for the purpose of having children. For as the husbandman throwing the seed into the ground awaits the harvest, not sowing more upon it, so to us the procreation of children is the measure of our indulgence in appetite. Nay, you would find many among us, both men and women, growing old unmarried, in hope of living in closer communion with God.118 But if the remaining in virginity and in the state of an eunuch brings nearer to God, while the indulgence of carnal thought and desire leads away from Him, in those cases in which we shun the thoughts, much more do we reject the deeds. For we bestow our attention; not on the study of words, but on the exhibition and teaching of actions, - that a person should either remain as he was born, or be content with one marriage; for a second marriage is only a specious adultery.119 “For whosoever puts away his wife,” says He, “and 147 marries another, commits adultery;” (Mat_19:9) not permitting a man to send her away whose virginity he has brought to an end, nor to marry again. For he who deprives himself of his first wife, even though she be dead, is a cloaked adulterer,120 resisting the hand of God, because in the beginning God made one man and one woman, and dissolving the strictest union of flesh with flesh, formed for the intercourse of the race.
Chap. XXXIV. - The Vast Difference in Morals Between the Christians and Their Accusers.
But though such is our character (Oh! why should I speak of things unfit to be uttered?), the things said of us are an example of the proverb, “The harlot reproves the chaste.” For those who have set up a market for fornication and established infamous resorts for the young for every kind of vile pleasure, - who do not abstain even from males, males with males committing shocking abominations, outraging all the noblest and comeliest bodies in all sorts of ways, so dishonouring the fair workmanship of God (for beauty on earth is not self-made, but sent hither by the hand and will of God), - these men, I say, revile us for the very things which they are conscious of themselves, and ascribe to their own gods, boasting of them as noble deeds, and worthy of the gods. These adulterers and paederasts defame the eunuchs and the once-married (while they themselves live like fishes;121 for these gulp down whatever fails in their way, and the stronger chases the weaker: and, in fact, this is to feed upon human flesh, to do violence in contravention of the very laws which you and your ancestors, with due care for all that is fair and right, have enacted), so that not even the governors of the provinces sent by you suffice for the hearing of the complaints against those, to whom it even is not lawful, when they are struck, not to offer themselves for more blows, nor when defamed not to bless: for it is not enough to be just (and justice is to return like for like), but it is incumbent on us to be good and patient of evil.
Chap. XXXV. - The Christians Condemn and Detest all Cruelty.
What man of sound mind, therefore, will affirm, while such is our character, that we are murderers? For we cannot eat human flesh till we have killed some one. The former charge, therefore, being false, if any one should ask them in regard to the second, whether they have seen what they assert, not one of them would be so barefaced as to say that he had. And yet we have slaves, some more and some fewer, by whom we could not help being seen; but even of these, not one has been found to invent even such things against us. For when they know that we cannot endure even to see a man put to death, though justly; who of them can accuse us of murder or cannibalism? Who does not reckon among the things of greatest interest the contests of gladiators and wild beasts, especially those which are given by you? But we, deeming that to see a man put to death is much the same as killing him, have abjured such spectacles.122 How, then, when we do not even look on, lest we should contract guilt and pollution, can we put people to death? And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God123 for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very foetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it; and not to expose an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable with child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been reared to destroy it. But we are in all things always alike and the same, submitting ourselves to reason, and not ruling over it.
Chap. XXXVI. - Bearing of the Doctrine of the Resurrection on the Practices of the Christians.
Who, then, that believes in a resurrection, would make himself into a tomb for bodies that will rise again? For it is not the part of the same persons to believe that our bodies will rise again, and to eat them as if they would not; and to think that the earth will give back the bodies held by it, but that those which a man has entombed in himself will not be demanded back. On the contrary, it is reasonable to suppose, that those who think they shall have no account to give of the present life, ill or well spent, and that 148 there is no resurrection, but calculate on the soul perishing with the body, and being as it were quenched in it, will refrain from no deed of daring; but as for those who are persuaded that nothing will escape the scrutiny of God, but that even the body which has ministered to the irrational impulses of the soul, and to its desires, will be punished along with it, it is not likely that they will commit even the smallest sin. But if to any one it appears sheer nonsense that the body which has mouldered away, and been dissolved, and reduced to nothing, should be reconstructed, we certainly cannot with any reason be accused of wickedness with reference to those that believe not, but only of folly; for with the opinions by which we deceive ourselves we injure no one else. But that it is not our belief alone that bodies will rise again, but that many philosophers also hold the same view, it is out of place to show just now, lest we should be thought to introduce topics irrelevant to the matter in hand, either by speaking of the intelligible and the sensible, and the nature of these respectively, or by contending that the incorporeal is older than the corporeal, and that the intelligible precedes the sensible, although we become acquainted with the latter earliest, since the corporeal is formed from the incorporeal, by the combination with it of the intelligible, and that the sensible is formed from the intelligible; for nothing hinders, according to Pythagoras and Plato, that when the dissolution of bodies takes place, they should, from the very same elements of which they were constructed at first, be constructed again.124 But let us defer the discourse concerning the resurrection.125
Chap. XXXVII. - Entreaty to Be Fairly Judged.
And now do you, who are entirely in everything, by nature and by education, upright, and moderate, and benevolent, and worthy of your rule, now that I have disposed of the several accusations, and proved that we are pious, and gentle, and temperate in spirit, bend your royal head in approval. For who are more deserving to obtain the things they ask, than those who, like us, pray for your government, that you may, as is most equitable, receive the kingdom, son from father, and that your empire may receive increase and addition, all men becoming subject to your sway? And this is also for our advantage, that we may lead a peaceable and quiet life, and may ourselves readily perform all that is commanded us.126
FOOTNOTES
80 [Comp. cap. xxvii., infra.]
81 [Kaye, 192. And see cap. x., supra, p. 133. Divene Providence does not exclude the ministry of angels by divine appointment. Resurrection, cap. xviii., infra.]
82 [The Paris editors caution us against yielding to this interpretation of Gen_6:1-4. It was the Rabbinical interpretation. See Josephus, book i. cap. 3.]
83 Hesiod, Theog., 27. [Traces of the Nephilim are found in all mythologies.]
84 Eurip.: from an unknown play.
85 Eurip.: from an unknown play.
86 Eurip., Cycl., 332 sq.
87 [Kaye, p. 190.]
88 Or, “powers of reasoning” (λογισμός).
89 From an unknown tragedian. [A passage which I cannot but apply to the lapse of Tatian.]
90 Hom., Il., iii. 39.
91 [See note to Theophilus, cap. x. supra, p. 92.]
92 [Kaye, p. 191; and comp. cap. xxiv., supra, p. 142.]
93 [Comp. On the Resurrection, cap. xiii., infra, p. 439 of ed. Edingurgh. Also Kaye, p. 199.]
94 [Kaye, p. 190.]
95 ii.144. Mr. Rawlinson’s translation is used in the extracts from Herodotus.
96 ii. 50.
97 ii. 156.
98 ii. 41.
99 ii. 3. The text is here uncertain, and differs from that of Herodotus. [Herodotus, initiated in Egyptian mysteries, was doubtless sworn to maintain certain secrets of the priests of Osiris.]
100 ii. 61. [The name of Osiris.]
101 ii. 170.
102 ii. 86.
103 Hom., Od., xxi. 28 sq.
104 Hesiod, Frag.
105 i.e., Aesculapius.
106 Pyth., iii. 96 sq.
107 Ascribed by Seneca to the Bellerophon of Eurip.
108 From the Ino, a lost play of Eurip.
109 i.e., after Gaïa and Ouranos, Earth and Heaven.
110 Oracc., Sibyl., iii. 108-113. [Kaye, p. 220, and compare cap. vii., supra. The inspiration of Balaam, and likewise that of the ass, must, in my opinion, illustrate that of the Sibyls.]
111 Callim., Hym. Jov., 8 sq. [Tit_1:12. But St. Paul’s quotation is from Epimenides.]
112 [“Thyestian feasts” (p. 130, supra); a charge which the Christian Fathers perpetually repel. Of course the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper lent colour to this charge; but it could not have been repelled, had they believed the material body and blood of the “man Christ Jesus,” present in this sacrament. See cap. iii., note.]
113 [1Co_15:44. A very clear representation of the apostle’s doctrine. See Kaye, 199; and compare On the Resurrection, cap. xiii.]
114 Otto translates: “which has made us and our neighbours attain the highest degree of rectitude.” The text is obscure, but the above seems the probable meaning: comp. Mat_22:39, etc.
115 [Hermas, p. 47, note, and p. 57, this volume; Elucidation, ii.]
116 [The Logos never said, “it excludes us from eternal life:” that is sure; and the passage, though ambiguous, is not so interpreted in the Latin of Gesner. Jones remarks that Athenagoras never introduces a saying of our Lord in this way. Compare Clem. Alexandrin. (Paedagogue, b. iii. cap. v. p. 297 Edinburgh Series), where he quotes Mat_5:28, with variation. Lardner (cap xviii. sec. 20) gives a probable explanation. Jones on The Canon (vol. i. p. 436) is noteworthy. Kaye (p. 221) does not solve this puzzle.]
117 Probably from some apocryphal writing. [Come from what source it may, it suggests caution of the utmost importance to Americans. In the newer parts of the country, the practice, here corrected, has cropped out among “brothers and sisters” of divers religious names, and consequent scandals have arisen. To all Christians comes the apostolic appeal, “Let it not be once named among you.”]
118 [This our Lord commends (Mat_19:12) as a voluntary act of private self-devotion.]
119 [There is perhaps a touch of the rising Phrygian influence in this passage; yet the language of St. Paul (1Ti_5:9) favoured this view, no doubt, in primitive opinion. See Speaker’s Comm. on 1Ti_3:2. Ed. Scribners, New York.]
120 [But Callistus, heretical Bishop of Rome (a.d. 218.), authorized even third marriages in the clergy. Hippolytus, vol. vi. p. 343, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Edinburgh Series.}
121 [An allusion to the fable of the Sargus; and see Burton’s Anat. Mel., p. 445.]
122 [See Tatian, cap. xxiii., supra, p. 75. But here the language of Gibbon is worthy to be quoted: though the icy-hearted infidel failed to understand that just such philosophers as he enjoyed these spectacles, till Christianity taught even such to profess a refined abhorence of what the Gospel abolished, with no help from them. He says, “the first Christian emperor may claim the honour of the first edict which condemned the art and amusement of shedding human blood; but this benevolent law expressed the wishes of the prince, without reforming an inveterate abuse which degraded a civilized(?) nation below the condition of savage cannibals. Several hundred, perhaps several thousand victims were annually slaughtered in the great cities of the empire.” He tells the story of the heroic Telemachus, without eulogy; how his death, while struggling to separate the combatants abolished forever the inhuman sports and sacrifices of the amphitheatre. This happened under Honorius. Milman’s Gibbon, iii. 210.]
123 [Let Americans read this, and ask whether a relapse into heathenism is not threatening our civilization, in this respect. May I venture to refer to Moral Reforms (ed. 1869, Lippincotts, Philadelphia), a little book of my own, rebuking this iniquity, and tracing, and tracing the earliest violation of this law of Christian morals, and of nature itself, to an unhappy Bishop of Rome, rebuked by Hippolytus. See vol. vi. p. 345 Edinburgh Series of Ante-Nicene Fathers.]
124 [Comp. cap. xxxi., supra, p. 146. The science of their times lent itself to the notions of the Fathers necessarily: but neither Holy Scripture nor theology binds us to any theory of the how, in this great mystery: hence Plato and Pythagoras are only useful, as showing that even they saw nothing impossible in the resurrection of the dead. As to “the same elements,” identity does not consist in the same particles of material, but in the continuity of material, by which every seed reproduces “its own body.” 1Co_15:38.]
125 [It is a fair inference that The Discourse was written after the Embassy. “In it,” says Kaye, “may be found nearly all the arguments which human reason has been able to advance in support of the resurrection.” p. 200.]
126 [1Ti_2:1, 1Ti_2:2. Kaye, p. 154. They refused worship, however, to imperial images; and for this they suffered. “Bend your royal head” is an amusing reference to the nod of the Thunderer.]
