THE TESTIMONY OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE SECOND CENTURY.

199. We have some important witnesses to produce during this epoch; but we must observe that the chronological divisions of these ancient times are necessarily deficient in exactness. For as Irenæus might be classed in this period by the date of his birth, and the acts of his youth, so there are many of the apostolic fathers, of whom we cannot speak but under the head of the first century, although they made themselves heard also in the second. After all, it has appeared most convenient to classify both the one and the others by the most active years of their ministry.

SECTION FIRST.

JUSTIN MARTYR.

900. At the middle of the second century, if we go back till towards the end of Trajan’s reign, (who died in 117,) in traversing the long reigns of Antoninus Pius and Hadrian, we arrive at a more extensive diffusion of the gospel, — at the first general persecutions, and the first Apologies published in order to arrest their course, — and likewise at the first great Gnostic sects, and the writings, already numerous, which combated them. This period, so important from its proximity to the origin of Christianity, and yet so troubled by imperial violence without, and by heresies within, gave birth to numerous publications which are now lost, letters, chronicles, controversies, treatises, dogmatic essays, and especially apologies, all written in Greek. It might be styled “the age of Greek Apologists.” Almost all these books have perished, and we have scarcely any knowledge of the writers and their writings excepting by the accounts of Eusebius. If we cast our eyes over the list of the fathers, (Prop. 168,) we shall see that, confining ourselves to those who were born in the second century, and reserving the apostolic fathers for the following section, there remains scarcely any one to be noticed here but Justin Martyr. In fact, though Theophilus of Antioch was born about the year 110, we have been obliged to place him in the latter half of the second century, because he was not converted from paganism till about the year 150. And, on the other hand, we cannot adduce as testimonies with Justin any of the contemporary authors enumerated by Eusebius, because there are none of their works extant. Neither that Hegesippus, who, after Luke, is the most ancient ecclesiastical historian; nor that Dionysius of Corinth, of whom there were eight letters,¹ and of which we regret, above all, that which he wrote to the church of Nicomedia against the errors of Marcion, because it would, no doubt, have furnished us with abundant quotations from the New Testament; nor that Quadratus, bishop of Athens, who by his Apology, presented in 131 to the Emperor Hadrian, stayed, it is said, the course of that persecution; nor that Aristides, a Christian philosopher of the same city, who had addressed one to the same prince, five years before, in 125; nor even, which is still more to be regretted, that Philip,² bishop of Gortyna, who also wrote against Marcion; nor that Agrippa Castor, still more ancient, whom Eusebius calls most celebrated, (γνωριμώτατον,) and who composed, he says, twenty-four books on the Gospels.³ “A most able refutation,” (ἱκανώτατος ἐλεγχος) published by him about the year 132, against the exegetic books of Basilides, would, no doubt, have also furnished us with very copious quotations from the New Testament.

Yet we shall presently say a few words about these authors whose works are now lost, because the fragments Eusebius has preserved for us remarkably confirm, brief as they are, the testimony of Justin Martyr, and lead us to admire that beautiful and strong chain of testimonies which by successive links reaches from Origen to the apostles.

201. Nevertheless, if, by the loss of these literary monuments, Justin presents himself to us in this important period as an almost isolated witness, it would be difficult to imagine one better qualified. We shall not repeat here what we have already said on the subject of anagnosis, (Prop. 161.) His career embraces the first sixty-seven years of the second century, and more especially the thirty-four years which elapsed from his conversion till his martyrdom. The son of a Greek family resident in Samaria, Justin was born at Neapolis (the ancient Shechem) under the reign of Trajan, in the same year in which the apostle John died. He was so near the days of the apostles, that in his time, as he said himself, the prophetic Charisms still existed. Thirty years afterwards, converted in Egypt from the pagan philosophy of Plato to the living faith of Jesus Christ, at the end of seven years he established himself in Italy — in Rome itself — on Mount Viminal, to give lectures on what he called “the Christian philosophy.” There, in the year 144, he had the courage to present to the emperor, to his son, and to the Roman senate, his first and most important Apology.⁴ At a later period, having removed to Asia Minor, he held in the Xystus of Ephesus that apologetic conference with the most celebrated Jew of his time, which he published under the title of “A Dialogue with Trypho the Jew.” He went back to Italy to continue his public teaching, and, in the year 163, — that is to say, twenty-three years after his first Apology, — he published the second, addressed to Marcus Aurelius. At last, four years after this fresh act of Christian fidelity, Justin, brought before the Prefect of Rome by the wicked machinations of Crescens, the Cynic philosopher, suffered martyrdom in 167. At that time Clement of Alexandria was but seventeen, and Irenæus had only attained his forty-seventh year.

Justin wrote much. Eusebius,⁵ who gives the titles of ten of his works, and recommends them to be read to the men of his time, adds that they were worthy of attention even to the ancients, (σπουδῆς ἄξιοι καὶ τοῖς παλαιοῖς,) and that Irenæus was fond of quoting them. Other writings of Justin which Eusebius has not named were circulated also among a great number of the brethren, (πλεῖστα δὲ καὶ ἕτερα παρὰ πολλοῖς φέρεται ἀδελφοῖς τῶν αὔτοῦ πὸνων.) Before he became a Christian, he had studied very ardently the different systems of philosophy propagated in his time, and was, above all, devoted to that of the Platonists, and after his conversion he continued to hold this human wisdom in higher esteem than became, in our opinion, a minister of the divine word. We know that he adhered all his life to the dress and manners of the philosophers. This was a means of recommending himself to the Greeks, and also of escaping the violence of a persecuting government. ‘Yet, in his writings, he censures those Christians who concealed their faith to save their lives, and he himself did not conceal it when he was called to confess it before the Prefect of Rome. Belonging both to the East and West, he professed Christianity twenty years in Rome, after having been personally known among the most celebrated churches at that time in Africa, Europe, and Asia. He wrote against the unbelievers from among the pagans who persecuted the Church, against the Jews, who stirred them up, and against the heretics, who, with much boldness, made themselves conspicuous at Rome. He had, more than any other persons, the means of being wellinformed, and consequently, he was eminently qualified to be listened to as representing the opinions of his age.

Let us now admire how abundantly the three only writings of his which remain to us render testimony to the Scriptures, and especially to the Gospels.

202. And, first, as to the Scriptures in general, he declares distinctly, under various forms of expression, their moral excellence and Divine inspiration. In his Dialogue with Trypho,⁶ we may hear him give his own account of his happy transition from darkness to light.

For a long time he had sought in vain for peace of mind and the truth of God in all the Greek philosophies, when at last he met, in a lonely spot, with a venerable old man, who discoursed with him of the sacred books, written, as he said, by men who were friends of God, who spoke by the Divine Spirit, (θειῳ πνεύματι λαλήσαντες) and who had uttered predictions that were still in process of acomplishment. They alone, he added, had seen the truth, and declared it to men — not fearing any man, not seeking their own glory, and speaking only of things which they had seen and heard, having been filled with the Holy Spirit, (ἁκγῖῳ πληρωθέντες πνεύματι.) . . . . . And, moreover, they were most worthy of being believed on account of the miracles they performed. They glorified God the Father, the Creator of all things, and Christ His Son, whom He had sent. “But,” added the aged Christian, “above all things pray that the gates of light may be opened to thee, (Εὔχου δέ σοι πρὸ πάντων φωτὸς ἀνοιχθῆναι πύλας,) for these things are not understood by all; but only by men to whom God and His Christ grant the knowledge of them.” Justin prayed, and the gates of light were opened to him. “Then I found,” he says, “that this is the only certain and profitable philosophy, (Ταύτην μόνην εὕρισκον φιλοσοφίαν ἀσφαλῆ καὶ σύμφορον) It is thus, and by these means that I am a philosopher, (Οὕτως δὴ καὶ διὰ ταῦτα φιλόσοφος ἐγώ.) And I wish that all agreeing in heart with me would not stand aloof from the words of the Saviour (μὴ ἀφίστασθαι τῶν τοῦ Σωτῆρος λόγων,) for they have in them something that inspires awe; they are sufficient to abash those who turn out of the right way, and the sweetest rest ensues to those who meditate on them, (ἀνάπαυσίς τε ἡδίστη γίνεται τοῖς ἐκμελετῶσιν αὐτούς.)” And, further, when Trypho assured him that he had been deceived: “I will prove to you,” he said, “if you will listen to me, that we have not believed vain fables, nor undemonstrable words, (οὐ δὲ ἀναποδείκτοῖς λὸγας,) but words full of the Divine Spirit, teeming with power, and exuberant with grace, (ἀλλά μεστοῖς πνεύματος θειου καὶ δυνάμει βρύουσι, καὶ τεθηλόσι χάριτι.)” He then appeals distinctly to the internal excellence of the New Testament to establish our faith in its divinity.

So again, in the same Dialogue,⁷ Justin, speaking to the Jews of those passages of Scripture which prove the divinity of our Saviour, says, “Pay attention to those words, from the Holy Scriptures, I am about to mention, which do not require to be explained, but only to be heard, (ἀπὸ τῶν ἁγίων γραφῶν οὑδὲ ἐξηγηθῆναι δεομένων, ἀλλά μόνον ἀκουσθῆναι.)”

Further on,⁸ he speaks of “the absurdity of those who think themselves able to produce anything better than the Scriptures, (ἀλλ’ ἡγεῖσθαι ἑαυτὸν βέλτιον τῆς γραφῆς γεννήσαντα εἰπεῖν.)”

Elsewhere,⁹ after having represented to the Gentiles how little confidence could be put in their philosophers, who all contradicted one another, he shews them, on the contrary, the great harmony of. our sacred writers. “For having received,” he says, “the knowledge which comes from God, they teach us it without strife, and without party-spirit. In fact,” he adds, “it is not possible for men to know such great and divine things by nature, or by human thought, but by a gift at that time descending from on high on holy men of God, (οὔτε γὰρ φύσει οὔτε ἀνθρωπίνῃ ἐννοὶᾳ οὕτω μεγάλα καὶ θεῖα γινώσκειν ἀνθρώποις δυνατόν, ἀλλὰ τῇ ἄνωθεν ἐπὶ τοὺς ἁγίους ἄνδρας τήνικαῦτα κατελθούσῃ δωρεᾷ.)”

We see, then, it is not to tradition, but to Divine grace, to the influence of the Holy Spirit received by each individual, that Justin appeals as to the interpretation of the Scriptures. “O men!” he exclaims in his Dialogue, “do you think that we should ever have understood these things in the Scriptures unless, by the will of Him who has been pleased to give them, we had received the grace of understanding them, (εἰ μὴ θελήματι τοῦ θελήσαντος αὐτοὶ ἐλάβομεν χάριν τοῦ νοῆσαι.)”¹⁰

And in his Discourse to the Greeks: “Come and be instructed; be as I am, for I also was as you are.”¹¹ In the Greek these are the express words of Paul to the Galatians, (iv. 12.) “These are the things that elevated me — the inspiration of the doctrine, and the power of the word, (Ἐλθετε, παιδεύθητε γενεσθε ὡς ἐγώ ὅτι κάγὼ ἤμην ὡς ὑμεῖς. Ταῦτα με εἷλε, τό τε τῆς παιδείας ἔνθεον, καὶ τὸ τοῦ λόγου δυνατόν.) “The Divine Word (ὁ θεῖος Λόγος) was that,” he exclaimed, “which put to flight my evil passions; the doctrine was that which extinguished the fire of my soul!” —

203. In the second place, we have already seen¹² that the books of Justin only thirty-seven years after the death of John, attested solemnly in the name of the whole contemporaneous Church, and before the emperor and senate of Rome, the public use which the Christians throughout the world then made of the apostolic Scriptures in their assemblies for worship.¹³ It was in the year 140 that Justin had heard them read every Sunday at Rome, in Egypt, Palestine, Asia Minor, and Greece. “The Memoirs of the apostles, or Gospels, are read,” he says, “every Sunday in the town and in the country; they are read with the books of the prophets;¹⁴ and in every assembly, after they have been read, the president (ὁ προεστώς) makes them the subject of his exhortations.”

These Memoirs of the Apostles, of which Justin Martyr speaks three times to the Emperor Antoninus in his Apology, could not be better described to a pagan stranger. We should do just the same in the present day if we addressed a defence of Christianity to the king of Siam or. the emperor of Burmah. But Justin takes care to add twice that these memoirs were called Gospels, and that the apostles were their authors. “At that time,”¹⁵ he says, “an angel of God, sent to the Virgin, announced the good news to her, saying, Behold, thou shalt conceive by the Holy Spirit, and shalt bear a son, and he shall be called Son of the Highest; and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins, as those have taught who have written¹⁶ memoirs on all the things concerning our Saviour Jesus Christ, and whom we have believed.”¹⁷ And again, explaining further on to the same emperor our holy supper, he says, “For the apostles, in the Memoirs composed by them and called Gospels,¹⁸ have informed us that Jesus instituted that ordinance: Having taken bread and given thanks, he said, Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same manner, in his Dialogues, Justin speaks fifteen times of the Memoirs of the apostles, but takes care to repeat ten times that they were written by the apostles. He even goes so far as to make a more precise distinction between those Gospels which had apostles, properly so called, for their authors, as Matthew or John, and those which (such as the two Gospels of Luke and Mark) were composed by their companions. “In the Memoirs,”¹⁹ he writes, “which I have said were composed by the apostles, and by those who accompanied them, it is written that the sweat fell from Him like drops of blood while He prayed and said, Let this ‘cup pass from me.” And the distinction which Justin makes is so much more worthy of attention because not one of the various spurious Gospels which were given to the world in the second century ever professed to be the work of “a companion of the apostles.”

Lastly, Trypho the Jew himself also knew our Gospels, for he said to Justin, “I know that your precepts, contained in what is called the Gospel,²⁰ are so great and admirable that no one can observe them, for I have myself taken care to meet with them.”²¹

We have entered into so many details in order to anticipate the difficulties which an eager negative criticism in Germany has attempted to raise against these testimonies of Justin.

We shall say a few more words about it presently.

204. In the third place, the books of Justin, though all three were addressed to men hostile to Christianity, present, compared with their size, an extraordinary abundance of quotations from the Gospels. We have counted fifty in his Apology, and more than seventy in his Dialogue. But the quotations are evidently almost all taken from our three synoptical Gospels, and report with many of the details, the facts of the life and death of the Saviour, and also the greater part of His moral teachings, This was his rational task in a defence of Christianity. It was necessary to shew to his opponents in all the facts relating to Christ the striking accomplishment of ancient prophecies, and in the in comparable excellence of His teachings, the Divine character of a religion that had descended from on high. And this is what directed him in the choice of quotations; he took them almost. exclusively (as we have just said) from our three synoptic: Gospels; that of John (the spiritual Gospel, as it has been called) being too profound to be often cited in an Apology addressed to pagans or Jews. Notwithstanding this, many of Justin’s expressions recall to us a reader of St John; he even goes so far as to name this apostle and his Apocalypse²² “There is also among us,” he says to Trypho, “a man of the name of John, an apostle of Jesus Christ, who, in a revelation (apocalypse) made to him, has prophesied that those who have believed in our Christ will live a thousand years in Jerusalem.” But Justin’s principal citations are taken from Matthew and Luke; they are made with freedom, and often in long passages. Being addressed to pagans and Jews, he was not obliged to a literal exactitude, provided he gave the true sense. In these 120 quotations you never find a single passage which has a legendary taint, or which could be referred to some apocryphal Gospel. They are all reminiscences of our Gospels; he knows only what these know; he reports only what these have reported — the infancy of Jesus according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, His descent from Abraham by Mary²³ the sending of the angel Gabriel, the accomplishment of the prophecy of Isaiah, (vii. 14,) the vision that appeared to Joseph to prevent his putting away his wife, the prediction of Micah about Bethlehem, the enrolment, the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, Cyrenius, the inn, the stable, the manger, the Magi, their offerings and adoration, the name of Saviour given to the holy infant, the flight into Egypt, the massacre of the infants, the prophecy of Jeremiah on the lamentation of Rachel, Archelaus, the return from Egypt, the thirty years of Jesus, all the history of John the Baptist, the Elias who was to come, the baptism of Jesus, His temptation in the wilderness, His miracles of healing, the dancing of the daughter of Herodias, and the death of the prophet. . . . .

Justin also, in his Dialogue, relates with the same fulness the closing scenes of our Lord’s ministry, — His triumphal entrance into Jerusalem accomplishing a prophecy, His visit to the temple, the institution of the Supper, the singing of a hymn, the three disciples taken apart, the prayers and agony of Gethsemane, the bloody sweat, the coming of Judas, the flight of the disciples, the silence of Jesus before Pilate, His being sent to Herod, the cross, the division of the garments by casting lots, the taunts,²⁴ the cry of Jesus, His last words, His burial on the evening of Friday, His resurrection on Sunday,²⁵ His shewing himself, His explanation of the Scriptures to the apostles, the calumnies of the Jews, the commission given to the apostles,²⁶ the ascension.

Yet the most copious quotations of Justin have for their object the teachings of the Saviour. We find, for example, among them, almost the whole of the Sermon on the Mount, His calls to repentance, His directions to the seventy disciples, His words on the sign of Jonah, on the value of the soul, on marriage, on the tribute to Caesar, on the false teachers, on the resurrection, on chastity, on the love of enemies, on the future punishment of the wicked, on the scribes and Pharisees, on His own divinity. “It is written in the Gospel, All things have been delivered to me by the Father, and no one knoweth the Father but the Son, and no one knoweth the Son but the Father, and those to whom the Son shall reveal him.”²⁷

In his larger Apology,²⁸ to shew the admirable morality of the Scriptures, he cites a good part of the Sermon on the Mount. “If ye love them that love you, what new thing do ye do? for even fornicators do this. But I say unto you, Pray for your enemies, love them who persecute you, bless,” &c. And on the duty of giving away our property, and doing nothing for one’s own glory, he adds, “Christ says, Give to them that ask you, and turn not away. And as for you, treasure not up for yourselves treasure upon earth, where moth and rust corrupt. . . . And what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul,” &c.

Besides these extended citations, we find many passages in Justin which call to our recollection other books of the New Testament. His part as an apologist does not require him to speak of the Acts of the Apostles, or of Paul’s Epistles; but his language often reminds us in passing that his mind had been nourished by them. Thus, in relation to the Epistle to the Colossians, (i. 15-17,) he calls Jesus Christ in four or five different places, the first-born of God, the first-born of all creatures, He who was before all creatures,²⁹ (τὸν πρωτότοκον τῶν πάντων ποιημάτων, πρωτότοκον μὲν τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ πρὸ πάντων τῶν κτισμάτων.) So it is with the Epistle to the Romans: he shews that Abraham, being yet uncircumcised, was justified on account of his faith in which he believed God, (ἐν ἀκροβυστία ὤν διὰ τὴν πίστιν ἥν ἐπίστευσε τῷ Θεῷ, ἐδικαιώθη,)³⁰ and thus it is that he cites his description of the moral misery of all men, Jews and Greeks:³¹ “They are all gone out of the way; they are all become unprofitable; there is none that understandeth, not one; their throat is an open sepulchre,” &c.

Thus, again, with the Epistle to the Corinthians, (1 Cor. v. 7) he says that Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us,³² and complains of some saying that there is no resurrection of the dead. So it is with the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, (ii. 3,) he speaks of Christ, who will come from heaven in glory, when also the man of apostasy, (ὁ τῆς ἀποστασιάς ἄνθρωπος,) the man of sin, who utters strange things and blasphemies against the Most High, will manifest his audacious iniquity against us Christians.³³

And thus with the Epistle to the Hebrews, he says of Christ that He is the Son and Apostle of God,³⁴ and, in his Dialogue,³⁵ that He is according to the order of Melchisedec, King of Salem, and perpetual Priest of the Most Hugh.

It is thus with the Epistle to Titus, (iii. 4,) and the Epistle to the Romans, employing the remarkable expressions of the apostle, he speaks of the goodness and philanthropy of God, and the abundance of his riches, (ἡ γᾶρ χρηστότης καὶ ἡ φιλανθρωπία τοῦ Θεοῦ)³⁶ It is thus that, in his address and exhortation to the Gentiles, we find allusions: to the Acts, and the Epistles to the Corinthians and to the Colossians. It is thus, in a word, that we observe many remarkable coincidences between Justin and Paul, on the Epistles to the Philippians and to Timothy, as also to the Galatians and Ephesians, in their common quotations from the Septuagint. In a word, we may say that, with the exception of the catholic epistles, and the Epistle to Philemon, there is no book of the first canon of which some trace may not be found in this ancient father.

205. Still, to be able to appreciate duly all the value of his testimony, we must not forget that, of all his works, we possess only, complete and authentic, his two Apologies and his Dialogue — all three addressed, not to Christians, but to unbelievers. All his other numerous writings, composed for the members of the Church, are almost entirely lost. These would doubtless have furnished us with a testimony far more abundant and precise; for he lived many years in the same city as the three greatest leaders of the contemporary heresies, and combated them.³⁷

If we possessed the treatise he wrote against Marcion, of which Eusebius³⁸ tells us, or the lost portion of his book on the Monarchy of God, we should certainly have many more numerous quotations by him from the New Testament. Of this last-named work Eusebius tells us that the author proved his thesis by passages taken from our Scriptures, (ἐκ τῶν παρ’ ἡμῖν γραφῶν,) but. this portion has been lost.

Two features especially distinguish his three apologetic treatises from those of his books which have not come down to our time.

And, in the first place, these three treatises, and more especially the Dialogue, must needs quote the Old Testament much more frequently than the New. We may count, it is said, 314 quotations of the Old Testament against 120 of the New. This was quite natural; for, in analogous circumstances, we should have acted just as he has done. If you are speaking to Jews, the Old Testament alone is an authority; and you quote the New merely to shew them that it fulfils Moses and the prophets. If you are speaking to pagans, still it is by the Old Testament that you prove to them the high antiquity of revelation, and its divine superiority above all the teachings of their philosophers regarding the origin, the duties, and the destiny of mankind. This was the method, a hundred years before Justin, of Philo and the Jewish school at Alexandria, in their controversies with the pagan world; as it was, after him, that of Theophilus of Antioch, Tatian, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria.

A second feature which must characterise the quotations of Justin in his apologetic writings is, that they are made under designations less precise than would be employed in addressing Christian churches. We might expect that he would scarcely ever indicate the authors by their proper names; that what Christians called Gospels he would call Memoirs of the apostles; that he would cite them from memory; that he would faithfully give the sense without believing himself always bound to the same expressions; that he would condense, combine, or transpose certain sentences; that he would often join two passages in one quotation; and that if he repeated several times the same sentence from the Gospels, he would repeat it without feeling himself bound to quote it every time in the same terms. But, in the course of all these liberties, he would preserve the characteristics and the phraseology of the New Testament, without using any foreign element, any apocryphal recital, any trace of contemporary legends. This is what Justin has done.

206, It is necessary to understand why we have entered into all these explanations respecting this, father, which might at first sight seem superfluous. His testimony is of such great importance from its antiquity, from the extent and copiousness of his citations from the Gospels, and from the perfect authenticity of the books which transmit it to us, that it might be expected the modern opponents of our canonical scriptures would not neglect any means of weakening it. This is what they have done, especially in Germany. No one till these latter days has called in question the very clear and numerous testimonies which Justin gives to our synoptic Gospels; but the negative criticism of modern Neologism, by studying with the greatest care the hundred and twenty clear and full quotations made by this father, by collecting all the expressions which differ ever so little from the text of Scripture, by finding fault with all the liberties of citation which Justin has allowed himself, and by exaggerating the difficulties, — this criticism, we say, has gone the length of asserting that he had not our four Gospels before him, but some other document: according to some, a certain primitive Gospel from which our four evangelists have drawn their fourfold narrative; according to others, the apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews, as it is called; according to others, a harmony or combined narrative of our canonical Gospels; and, lastly, according to Credner, a Gospel according to St Peter, which, under different forms, was circulated among the Jewish Christians.

Great exertions have been made in Germany to uphold these strange hypotheses, and great exertions to put them down;³⁹ and thus the study of Justin has been completed with great exactness. We shall not enlarge further in this controversy.40 There are in the path of the defenders of the Holy Word serious objections which must be met at all times; but there are others which have only a special place and time, and do not need to be refuted with fulness except in their own time and place. The objections we have just noticed are, as we think, of this class. They have made a noise, but they have also done too much violence to historical statements to be repeated. How can it be maintained that Justin employed apocryphal Gospels at the very time when, close by his

side, in the same city of Rome, the heretic Valentine made use only of our four evangelists and a complete canon, (integro instrumento,) as Tertullian⁴¹ affirms? How — when, at the very time, he declared to the emperor that the Gospels, or Memoirs of the apostles, — memoirs without doubt known and fixed, — were read every Sunday in all the churches of the empire? How — when they were everywhere so known, that Trypho the Jew, when Justin named them to him, knew them, and said he had read them? How — at a time when Irenæus, then at Lyons in the prime of life, constantly spoke of the quadriform Gospel, (τετράμορφον εὐαγγέλιον,) as a whole, unique of its kind, and everywhere acknowledged with incomparable constancy, (tanta est circa evangeluwm haec firmitas neque autem plura numero quam haec sunt, neque rursus pauciora captt esse evangelia?)⁴² How — when we recollect that Irenæus, on betaking himself to Lyons, had passed through Rome during Justin’s long sojotrn there, and that he returned thither about the year 177, ten years only after the martyrdom of that father, in order to visit Bishop Eleutherus? How, again, can it be supposed that Justin made use, for his two Apologies, of Gospels which were not the same? How can it be supposed that he and Irenæus used different Gospels? How can we imagine that the immediate disciples of Justin and all the Church spoke of a collection different from his in precisely the same terms? How can it be pretended that, in so short a time, an immense revolution took place in the Christian world unperceived, and was effected without leaving the slightest trace? How can we suppose that all the churches consented, without any noise, at this epoch to change their sacred books all over the world, so that those which were read publicly every Sunday in the year 140 were not the same in 167, when Justin died, though they were still designated by the same expressions? Certainly nothing can more deplorably betray the forlorn condition of a system, than the attempt to prop it up by such impossible suppositions.

SECTION SECOND.

OBJECTIONS AGAINST THE TESTIMONY OF JUSTIN MARTYR.

207. We shall say only a very few words on the three principal objections alleged by our opponents when they maintain that Justin in his 120 quotations had before him different Gospels from our own⁴³ In the first place, they say, though Justin once⁴⁴ names the apostle John as author of the Apocalypse, he never designates Matthew, Mark, or Luke by their proper names, even when he quotes at length their own words, such as we read in their respective Gospels. But we reply, that such a mention of their names would have been out of place in such a work; none of the other apologists who came after him ever did it; neither Tatian, the disciple of Justin, nor Athenagoras, nor even Tertullian in his “Apologeticus,’ who names them so often in his other writings, nor Theophilus of Antioch in his books to “Autolycus,” nor Clement of Alexandria in his “Exhortation to the Gentiles,” nor Cyprian in his treatise “Ad Demetrianum,” nor Origen in his books against Celsus, nor Lactantius, nor Arnobius, nor even Eusebius in his Evangelica Praeparatio. Theophilus and Clement, like Justin, have named only St John, and like him but once. Lactantius goes to the length of blaming Cyprian for having quoted Scripture in a controversy with a pagan.⁴⁵

In the second place, they say, see the extreme liberty with which Justin makes his quotations from the Gospels; he quotes them from memory; often if he gives the sense it is in other phrases, or by abridging and combining them. But the reply to this is as simple as it is decisive; and it is sufficient in order to give it to study this author more closely. This is what Semisch and Credner have done in comparing with the citations from the New Testament by Justin, those which the same father has taken from Moses and the prophets. But it is absolutely the same liberty whether in the Apology or in the Dialogue with Trypho. You may read in these authors more than sixty passages where you will see Justin treat the Old Testament in the same manner as he has done the New — giving passages from memory, paraphrasing them in order to make them clearer, transposing or combining them, and paying more attention to the sense than to the words. In like manner, when he cites them on different occasions, it is with remarkable verbal alterations in order to apply them with more force to his object. If, then, he thus cites Moses and the prophets, so well known to the Jewish people, why should he cite otherwise the apostles and evangelists?

Lastly, a third objection is founded on the following words, which Justin cites as if uttered by Jesus Christ, and which are not found in our gospels: — *“Our Lord,” he writes in the 47th chapter of his Dialogue with Trypho, “has said, In what things I convict you, in them I will also judge you;”⁴⁶ and in chap. 35, “Christ has said, there shall be schisms and heresies.” We reply (1.) that neither of these sentences can be found in any of the apocryphal Gospels; (2.) that Justin says not a word here of having read them in the Memoirs of the apostles; (3.) we need not be astonished if this father, writing a very few years after John’s death, while there remained unwritten remembrances of the words of Christ, recited traditionally this sentence of the Lord, as Paul himself recited that which we read in the 20th chapter of the Acts, and which is not to be found in the Gospels, “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

208. In a word, it is beyond all doubt that in the year 140 of the Christian era, Justin, in his Apology, and a few years after in his Dialogue, cites with extreme copiousness our synoptic Gospels, declaring them to be written by apostles of Christ, and companions of the apostles; and informing the Roman emperor that every Sunday all the Christians throughout the world read them publicly with the writings of the Old Testament in their public assemblies, before offering their prayers to God, celebrating the supper, and receiving the alms of the faithful.

SECTION THIRD.

OTHER HISTORICAL MONUMENTS OF THE CANON IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE SECOND CENTURY.

209. Justin, moreover, is not the sole witness of this epoch. Though he is the only one of the fathers of whom any writings have come down to us entire and authentic, yet we find in Eusebius many traces of other writers of the same period who, in passing, bear witness to the canon, and who, bringing us back for a moment to the banks of that stream to whose source we are remounting, allow us to see it again still majestic, and thus to appreciate by a glance the distinguished place the sacred collection of the Scriptures already held in the usages of the people of God.

Thus, for example, in his third book, chap. 37, Eusebius tells us that, under the reign of Trajan, at the beginning of the second century, in the remote days of the minister and martyr Ignatius, and when that Quadratus flourished in the Church “who had received miraculous charisms with the daughters of Philip,” “a great number of the disciples rendered themselves celebrated among the first successors of the apostles by going forth to spread through the whole earth the salutary seeds of the kingdom of heaven.” “The majority of them,” he adds, “having had, by the divine Word, (πρὸς τοῦ θείου λόγου) the soul penetrated with an ardent love of the (true) philosophy, (σφοδροτέρῳ φιλοσοφίας ἔρωτι τὴν ψυχὴν πληττόμενοι,) followed the exhortation of the Lord by distributing their goods to the poor; then, abandoning their country and setting out on their travels, they fulfilled the work of evangelists among those who had never heard the word of faith, because they were ambitious to announce Christ, and to transmit the scripture of the divine Gospels, (καὶ τὴν τῶν θείων εὐαγγελίων παραδιδόναι γραφήν.)”

Thus you see these holy men of God, at the beginning of the second century, successors and imitators of the apostles, at the period when John was himself bearing the testimony of Jesus Christ in the province of Asia, at Ephesus, and when the charisms of the Spirit still accompanied the preaching of the gospel, you see them travelling with the scriptures of the divine Gospels in their hands, carrying them into barbarous countries, (ἐπὶ ξένοις τισὶ τόποις.) You see them not only penetrated in their own souls by the divine Word, as Eusebius says, but leaving it behind them in writing, and “transmitting” it to these distant populations. So also Eusebius⁴⁷ informs us that Pantanus, when he penetrated into India towards the end of the second century, found that the Gospel of Matthew had preceded his arrival almost a hundred years, having been left written in Hebrew letters (Ἑβραίων γράμμασι) by Bartholomew, one of the twelve, and had been the means of bringing a certain number of men there to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

By this recital of Eusebius we are again brought to the margin of the Scriptures, and ascend nearly to the point where its beneficent and pure current first escaped from the apostolic lake, to receive yet some additional streams, and soon to proceed, complete and majestic, to carry its living waters to all the nations of the earth.

It is sufficiently evident that Eusebius here speaks of definite and acknowledged Gospels which had not been changed on their way; in a word, of the Gospels which from his days have been reverenced by the whole Christian world.

210. But if by various accidents only so small a number of the monuments of the fathers of the second century remain to us, the providence of God has provided others still more important, and, perhaps, more indisputable. They have. been left to us by the most violent enemies of these same fathers, Their testimony will speak to us in stronger accents, since it was involuntary, and will render service to the gospel in the present day in spite of all the hatred that these men bore to it. They little suspected, these unbelievers of the two first centuries, that even their attacks would serve in the most remote ages to confound those who resembled them. In almost all their features they were like the men of the nineteenth century, whose systems they now overturn, and it is by them that the holy convictions of the primitive Church on the subject of the canon are most strongly attested to us against all the negations of modern unbelief.

These opponents in the age of Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius, were of two sorts: the one, unbelievers among Jews and pagans, calumniated the Church from without; the others, heretics among the Ebionites and Gnostics, harassed it within by doctrinal errors in the name of what they called with self-laudation Gnosis or Science, — “Science falsely so called,” (ψευδωνύμου γνώσεως,) said the apostle Paul.⁴⁸

But it must be remarked that, as ordinarily happens, the enemy excited this double war of unbelievers and heretics at the time of the greatest progress of the gospel. It was also in making this attack, so audacious and so violent, that these men left behind them, in the literature of their age, such precious monuments of the canon. Their distant attempts have again led us to the banks of the river, though they were occupied only in troubling the waters with their feet, and rendering them turbid; but these very attempts, contrary to their expectations, have turned to the honour of the Scriptures. Not only will they serve to establish their course in the second century, but we shall see all the contemporary churches reverently stationed on the same banks, to guard the stream, and to draw with eagerness the waters that spring up to everlasting life.

1) Mentioned by Eusebius, H. E., iv., 23, and by Jerome, De Scriptor. Ilustr., cap. 27.

2) Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., iv., 25.

3) Book vi., ch. vii, &c., ch. xxv.

4) The longest, which the old editions of Paris, 1636, and Cologne, 1686, print after the other. In the edition of London, 1722, it is placed first, [and in Otto’s, Jena, 1847.] 2

5) Hist. Ecel., iv., 18.

6) Edit. Cologne, 1686, pp. 224, 225. Opera, ed. Otto, Jena, 1848; tom. i., pars. i, p. 30.

7) Page 274, Tom. i, pars. ii., p. 178, ed. Otto.

8) Pp. 311, 312. Tom. i., pars. ii., p. 296, ed. Otto.

9) Exhortation to the Gentiles, p. 9, ed. Cologne. Tom. ii, p. 38, ed. Otto.

10) Opera, tom. i., pars. ii., p. 398, ed. Otto.

11) Tom, ii, p. 14.

12) Prop. 160.

13) First Apology, § 67, (Edit. Bened., Paris, 1742.) P. 98, ed. Cologne, 1686. Tom. i., pars. i, p. 158, ed. Otto.

14) Καὶ τὰ ἀπομνημονεύματα τῶν ἀποστόλων, ἤ τὰ συγγράμματα των προφητων ἀναγινώσκεται μέχρις ἐγχωρεῖ.

15) P. 75, B, ed. Cologne. Tom. i., pars. i, p. 86, ed. Otto.

16) He combines, in fact, the narrative in Luke i. 31 and in Matt. i. 20, 21.

17) Ὡς οἶ ἀπομνημονεύσαντες πάντα, τὰ περὶ τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐδιδαξαν οἷς ἐπιστεύσαμεν.

18) Α καλεῖται Εὐαγγέλια, that is, this is the common name of these Memoirs among the churches.

19) Ἐν τοῖς ἆπομιι . . . . ἃ φήμη ὑπὸ τῶν ἀποστόλων αὐτοῦ καὶ τῶν ἐκεινοις παρακαλουθησάντων συντέταχθαι.

20) Ὑμῶν δὲ καὶ τὰ ἐν τῷ λεγομένῳ εὐαγγελίῳ παραγγελ ματα — Ρ. 227, ed. Cologne. Tom. i., pars ii., p. 38, ed. Otto.

21) Ἐμοὶ γὰρ ἐμελησεν ἐντυχεῖν αὐτοῖς.

22) Ἔπειτα καὶ παρ̛ ἡμῖν ἀνήρ τις, ᾧ ὄνομα Ἰωάννης . . . . εν Ἀποκαλύψε γενομένῃ αὐτῷ γενομένῃ αὐτῷ. . . . προεφήτευσε.

23) Ἐξ ὦν, he says, κατάγει ἡ Μαρια το γένος, — Dial., c. 100, 120, Tom. i, pars. ii, p. 340, ed. Otto.

24) And in the Apology, i., 38.

25) Ibid., i., 69.

26) Ibid., i., 50.

27) Dial,, p. 826. Tom. i., pars, ii, p. 340.

28) Page 28.

29) Apol., i., 46, ii, 6. Dial., pp. 310, 311, 326. Paris, 1636. Tom. i, pars. ii p. 292, ed. Otto.

30) Dial., ch. xxiii.

31) Rom. iii. 11, 12.

32) Dial., pp. 338, 339. Tom. i., pars. ii., p. 874, ed. Otto.

33) Dial., p. 338.

34) Καὶ ἅγγελος δὲ καλεῖται καὶ ἀπόστολος. This name is nowhere given to him except in Heb. iii, i.

35) Dial., p. 341. Tom. i, pars. ii, p. 382, ed. Otto.

36) Dial, p. 266. Tom. i., pars. ii, p. 154, ed. Otto.

37) Cerdo, Marcion, and Valentine.

38) Cap. xxxvii., Hist. Eccl., iv. 18, (pp. 140, 141, ed. Valesius, 1672.)

39) See and compare Semisch’s Denkwürdigkeiten Justins, (Hamburg, 1848;) Credner’s Beitrige, i., 92-267, (Halle, 1832;) Schwegler Nachapostolische Zeitalter, i., 217-231.

40) Semisch has treated it with ability, p. 16-83. We may also find it explained and discussed in Mr Westcott’s learned work on the canon, entitled, “A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament; Cambridge, 1855.”

41) De Praescript. Haereticor., cap. xxxviii.

42) Contra Haeres., lib. iii., cap. ii; The whole passage shews, says Olshausen, (Aechtheit d. 4 can. Evang., p. 272,) that Irenæus absolutely could not have known a time when there was not a collection of the Gospels.

43) Semisch has examined these strange hypotheses with ability, in his Denkwürdigkeiten Justins, (Hamb., 1848.) The whole controversy has been handled with much care in the learned work of Mr Westcott on the Canon of the New Testa ment. He has made use, in a very luminous manner, of the labours of German writers, (pp. 112-216.)

44) In his Dialogue, p. 308. Tom. i., pars. ii, p. 282, ed, Otto.

45) Instit., v., 4,

46) Ἐν οἷς ἂν ὑμᾶς καταλάβω ἐν τούτοις καὶ κρινῶ. Some persons have seen in this expression a paraphrase of those words of our Lord, “Where the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.” Three others have been adduced which are disputable. See Kirchhofer, Quellensammlung, &c., p. 104.

47) Hist. Eccl., v., 10.

48) 1 Tim, vi. 20.