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CHAPTER II.

[From A. D. 150, to A. D. 190.]

A. D. 150. I. Heresies had now multiplied to such a number, and spread to such an extent, as to become troublesome to the regular and approved churches; and several sects had established separate communities, in distinction from the common body. Most of these were of the Gnostic kind, already described; but there was one which, though small, deserves particular mention, as consisting of that part of the original church at Jerusalem, which continued to adhere, with unyielding tenacity, to the practice of the Mosaic rituals. This was the Nazarene, or Ebionite, sect, which is said to have held the simple humanity of Jesus Christ.

But from the heretics, of all kinds, we return to a view of the doctrine and character of the orthodox. Many of the vulgar superstitions of the Gentiles began to prevail among them, concerning magic, the demons, and the poetical regions of the infernal world; and the Greek philosophy, which had begun to mingle with the doctrine of Christ, was rapidly modifying his religion to its own perverse genius. The credulity of this age was rank, and the learning of the day, at least that of

a This is evident from the circumstance that Agrippa Castor wrote a book against the heretics some years before this period, and Justin Martyr a little after.

the fathers, was too superficial to prove either a preventive or remedy. Apostolical tradition also began to be urged as proof, when it was so far lost or corrupted, that even they who had been disciples of the apostles, adduced contrary traditions on one and the same point; and yet upon this very precarious authority some whimsical notions prevailed. To these shades in the picture we must add a still darker: the christians, orthodox, as well as heretics, appear to have employed, in some cases, known falsehood in support of their cause. This pernicious artifice they are said to have derived from the Platonic paradox, that it is lawful to lie for the truth; but one would suppose it suggested by their own intemperate zeal, rather than by any maxims of philosophy. They had already begun to forge books in support of their religion, a practice which, it is thought, they borrowed from the heretics; and they now proceeded to propagate accounts of frequent miracles, concerning which, all the earlier writers, after the apostles, had been entirely silent.

II. In the works which we have hitherto had under examination, we can discover little that belongs to the Grecian literature, except the language. All their fanciful conceits, all their extravagances, are either of that peculiar character which denotes a Jewish, at least Asiatic, origin; or else are the natural effusions of a stupidity

b Polycarp visited Anicetus, bishop at Rome, about A. D. 150, and held an amicable discussion with him on the proper time for holding Easter Each, according to Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. lib. v. cap. 24,) alleged Apostolical tradition for his own time, in opposition to that of the other; and they parted, but in friendship, without coming to an agreement on the point. c The doctrine of the proper Millen arians, for instance.

that needs not the aggravation of false learning to render itself ridiculous. But when we pass the Shepherd of Hermas, we enter immediately on a new series of ecclesiàstical writings, in most of which the learning of the Athenian and Roman schools is divested of its elegance and converted into christianity. This, however, we shall have occasion to exemplify, in detail, as we pursue the course of our examination.

The works which have descended to us from the period embraced in this chapter, and which succeed those of the Apostolical fathers, are The Sibylline Oracles, The Writings of Justin Martyr, A Relation of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, The Oration of Tatian, The Letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienna, Two productions of Athenagoras, A Treatise of Theophylus, and The Works of Irenæus. Through these, successively, we shall now attempt to follow the traces of our general subject.

A. D. 150,

&c.

III. It will be difficult to give the reader a just notion of the first work, The Sibylline Oracles. They were forged by some christian or christians, generally supposed orthodox, for the purpose of convincing the heathens of the truth

d The book of one Hermias in ridicule of the heathen philosophers, though often mentioned among the ecclesiastical works of this period, is, by all, acknowledged to be of uncertain date, and by the best critics, considered the production of a later age. e Cave thinks the larger part of them composed about A. D. 130, and the rest before A. D. 192. Du Pin places them at about A. D. 160. Lardner thinks they may have been completed before à. D. 169, though possibly not till A. D 190. Justin Martyr repeatedly refers to them; and Hermas probably alluded to them in Book i. Vis. ii.

of christianity. The Sibyls were considered as very ancient prophetesses, of extraordinary inspiration, among the Romans and the Greeks; but their books, if they indeed existed, had always been carefully concealed from the public, and consulted only upon emergencies, and by order of the government. The great veneration in which these supposed, but unknown, prophecies were held among the vulgar, induced some zealots to fabricate, under the name of the sibyls, and in the form of ancient predictions, a narrative of the most striking events in sacred history, and a delineation of what was then considered the christian faith. This work, which we now have with some variations,f in eight books of coarse Greek verses, was then sent into the world to convert the heathens by the pretended testimony of their own prophetesses. It appears to have been seized with avidity by the orthodox christians in general; and all their principal writers quoted it as genuine, and urged its testimonies as indubitable evidence. It is mortifying to relate that not one of them had the honesty to discard the fraud, even when it was detected by their heathen opponents.

These books, though brought forth in iniquity, serve

f So think Fabricius, Du Pin, Le Clerc, Lardner and Jortin. Others speak of these now extant as wholly the same with the ancient. Paley, who by calling them Latin verses, betrays his ignorance of them, supposes they cannot be that ancient work, because such is the manifestness of their forgery, that these could not have deceived the early fathers into a belief of their genuineness. (Evidences of Christian. Part i. chap. 9, sect. xi.) But all this he might have said, with equal propriety, of the very passages which they actually quoted. They were probably aware of the forgery. g Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch, Clemens Alexandrinus, and the succeeding fathers.

to show what sentiments existed among the christians; which is, indeed, about all the utility of the genuine productions of this period. They contain the earliest explicit declaration extant of a restoration from the torments of hell. Having predicted the burning of the universe, the resurrection of the dead, the scene before the eternal judgment-seat, and the condemnation and horrible torments of the damned in the flames of hell, the writer proceeds to expatiate on the bliss and the privileges of those who are saved; and he concludes his account by saying that, after the general judgment, "the omnipotent, incorruptible God shall confer anoth"er favor on his worshippers, when they shall ask him : "he shall save mankind from the pernicious fire and "immortal agonies. This will he do. For, having "gathered them, safely secured from the unwearied "flame, and appointed them to another place, he shall "send them, for his peoples' sake, into another and an "eternal life, with the immortals on the Elysian plain, "where flow perpetually the long dark waves of the deep sea of Acheron "."

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This work is full of the fables of the Greeks concerning demons, the Titans or giants, and the infernal regions. The world was to be burned about the end of the second century; and then all mankind were to be brought forth from the secret receptacle of the dead to judgment; when the vicious and abominable should be condemned to an intense fiery torment, repeatedly called everlasting, and described much

h Sibyll. Oracula, Lib. ii. p. 212. Edit. Opsopœi, Paris. 1607.

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