138. Immediately after this Antoninus adopted Marcus Aurelius, who was now styled Marcus Aelius Aurelius Verus Cæsar (Smith's Dict.). Dr Donaldson infers that because Verissimus is addressed in the Apology without the appellation Cæsar, the document must have been written before the year 139 (II. 83). This is not conclusive to myself. The time of the adoption and of the imposition of the dignity of Cæsar synchronize, and I cannot see how it should have been thought necessary to address Aurelius before his adoption. The omission of his title, then, may have been due to oversight. In fact, the referring to him thus familiarly by his cognomen Verissimus, in so important a document, without even giving him his proper names, is an evidence of looseness such as can scarcely have really occurred. Lucius, it furthermore appears, though termed a "philosopher," was but in his eighth or ninth year at the assumed date, an anomaly which Dr Donaldson endeavours to defend (II. 83). Why, it must be asked, on such an occasion, could it have been thought necessary to introduce the name of a child? And there being the emperor himself to look to as all sufficient, what was to be gained but the passing a slight upon him to call also for the interposition of his adopted sons, the senate, and even the whole Roman people? These blemishes, it appears to me, afford room to call in question the reality of the document.

The most various opinions have been expressed as to the genuineness of the writings ascribed to Justin, and part of them have by common consent been rejected as "unquestionably spurious" (Donaldson, II. 74). Dr Donaldson himself accepts both the Apologies, but he shows there is a great conflict of opinion as to the so-called second Apology, the tendency being to incorporate it with the first; but whether as an introduction, an integral portion, or an appendix thereto, seems to be uncertain. This opinion involves the inference that the true second Apology spoken of by Eusebius has been lost (Ibid. II. 75-82).

The scheme and handling of the Apology ill accord with the conditions out of which the address purports to have arisen, and with its avowed aim. We have the representation that Christians were ordered out to suffer death without trial, without evidence of offence, and on the mere ground that they

were Christians (First Apol. chap. 2-4, 68; Second Apol. chap. 2). Justin, then, had only to make known his position as a Christian to incur the penalty, and yet is able to indite and present this long address scathlessly, and even, as it is said, to put forth a second such Apology. In the production we have before us the writer carries the war, needlessly, and provokingly, into the enemy's country. He describes what he terms demons, addicted to the grossest sensualities and false arts, and says that these are the gods of those whom he addresses, and their instigators against the innocent and virtuous Christians (First Apol. chap. 5, 6, 14, 25; Second Apol. chap. 12). He says he has no design to please or flatter the exalted personages he is addressing, and in fact indulges in what amounted to actual offensiveness towards them. "But, as we before said," he observes, "we are persuaded that these things are prompted by evil spirits, who demand sacrifices and service even from those who live unreasonably; but as for you, we presume that you who aim at (a reputation for) piety and philosophy, will do nothing unreasonable. But if you also, like the foolish, prefer custom to truth, do what you have power to do. But just so much power have rulers who esteem opinion more than truth, as robbers have in a desert” (First Apol. 2, 12). When the writer had to be conciliatory, and to induce the ruling power to deal with his people fairly and justly, would he go out of his way to provoke hostility? He was concerned with obtaining protection and tolerance for the Christians, and we find him raking up the tales of the sensualities and crimes of the pagan gods, and thrusting these before the emperor and the whole Roman people publicly (First Apol. chap. 21, 25; Second Apol. chap. 12). He makes the ridiculous and provoking assertion, that the whole framework of the Roman theology was devised by demons, in imitation of the circumstances prophesied as to Christ, in order to defeat the mission of Christ when he came (First Apol. 54, 62, 64). Then he has long expositions of the prophecies concerning Christ, and describes the tenets and practices of Christians, in which those addressed could have taken no possible interest, and he even repeatedly introduces to them the altogether foreign subject of those with whom the Christians, in their inner circle, had clashed as heretics, such as Simon Magus, his consort

Helena, his disciple Menander, and Marcion (First Apol. chap. 26, 56, 58; Second Apol. chap. 15).

The reputed Apology has thus little the character of a genuine address of the description alleged for it. It is not from one with a sense of peril hanging over him, for himself and his co-religionists, endeavouring to conciliate the arbiters of their fate. The writer is quite at his ease, lecturing those he addresses, setting forth the gods they adored in the most odious colours, and entering into lengthened descriptions of the tenets and practices of his people, which no one not of themselves would care to look into. There is nothing to turn aside an oppressor to a fair and righteous course; there is nothing to commend the objects of the alleged persecution to his favour or tolerance. So mischievous an interference with the oppressors' creed could but provoke hostility, and arm the authorities with further motive for putting down a pestilent sect, itself incapable of countenancing any faith but its own. Nor will the testimonies of Melito and Lactantius, to which I have already referred, allow of the supposition that a remonstrance of the kind in question was needed in the time of Antoninus Pius.

The dialogue with Trypho is attributed to Justin by Eusebius. Some dispute its genuineness, but Dr Donaldson is not of the number. It is also a question whether it is a real or a fictitious representation. Dr Donaldson, while holding to its reality, allows that it looks like an imitation of a dialogue of Plato or of Cicero, as others have remarked. It opens, he observes, nearly in the same way as Cicero's Brutus. “While I was walking in the morning in the walks of the Xystus, some one, accompanied by others, met me with the words, 'Hail, Philosopher!' and on this he turned round and walked along with me, and his friends also turned round along with him." Who Trypho was, it appears, is not known, neither is Marcus Pompeius, to whom the dialogue was addressed. It is impossible to fix the date of the composition, the only indications of its time being that it was posterior to the longer Apology, and occurred after the conclusion of a Jewish war, which is considered to have been that of Barchochebas, when Jerusalem finally fell in the reign of Hadrian (Donaldson, II. 86-89, 198).

The marks to guide us to the conclusion that this dialogue is not the report of an actual discussion appear to me insurmountably strong. We have no certainty who wrote it, or when. Neither party to the discussion is known, nor the individual to whom it purports to be dedicated. The resemblance to such productions already occurring in literature raises a presumption that this may be a similar resort to a fictitious vehicle of thought. A Jew was not likely to seek enlightenment from one who was seemingly a Gentile philosopher, as is here represented to have been the case. He would feel so strong in the divinity of his own creed and its supports, that he would scarcely come out in the character of an inquirer from one who was outside the limits of the calling of God. He is made to address for instruction whom he knew not, but apparently one who stood in Paganism. The so-called Justin indulges him with an account of the course of tuition he had gone through ere embracing the Christian faith. At first, he says, "I surrendered myself to a certain Stoic," in pursuit of the "knowledge of God." I left him, and betook myself to another, who was called a Peripatetic." Then he states, "I came to a Pythagorean, very celebrated-a man who thought much of his own wisdom." This man dismissed him because, forsooth, he was ignorant of music, astronomy, and geometry. 'In my helpless condition," he goes on to say, "it occurred to me to have a meeting with the Platonists, for their fame was great. I thereupon spent as much of my time as possible with one who had lately settled in our city-a sagacious man, holding a high position among the Platonists—and I progressed, and made the greatest improvements daily." After this, he says, While I was disposed, when I wished at one period to be filled with great quietness, and to shun the path of men, I used to go into a certain field not far from the sea. And when I was near that spot one day, which having reached I purposed to be by myself, a certain old man, by no means contemptible in appearance, exhibiting meek and venerable manners, followed me at a little distance;" and this person, after discussing with him the measure of knowledge derivable from the philosophers with whom he had been, converted him to Christianity. It is, I think, apparent that in these repre

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sentations the author is not dealing with true actualities. He has a scheme before him for the exhibition of all he holds to of the Christian faith, and he thus introduces it. He passes through the hands of the great philosophic schools of Greece, and finding no satisfaction in what was there taught, eventually lays hold of the true knowledge of God and his ways towards mankind as centring in and revealed in Christ. But his various teachers are ideal personages without a name. The places where they are met with are all equally vague. Who was the renowned Pythagorean, or who the celebrated Platonist he studied under, we might, at all events, have been told, and it would have been interesting to know who the early Christian was, who so impressed him. From what community did he come, and what were his relations with those who may have been the actual companions of Jesus? After this the assumed Justin deals with the so-called Trypho. The latter makes but a poor stand for his own sacred code, and does little to search out the Christian advocate, to whom he ever yields with courteous facility. The narrator reports the very words that passed on either side on these occasions. His dialogue with the Christian teacher occupies eight pages octavo in the translation given in the Antenicene Christian Library. would be a feat in any one after a considerable interval to report such a conversation verbatim to another. The discussion that follows with Trypho extends over one hundred and eighty-one pages, with every word that was uttered on either side recorded. We are here in the presence of an impossibility, which, without other grounds, should determine the question before us. It is plain this is no real dialogue, but merely an ideal representation, through the channel of which the author has ventilated his opinions. In an historical point of view, therefore, the document possesses no value. We know not whose views we have thus put before us, or when the author lived antecedent to the time of Eusebius.

It

We have now a number of writers reputed to be of the period of Marcus Aurelius. There is Tatian, of whom Dr Donaldson says, "We know nothing of the time of his birth, or of his parents, or of his early training." "Irenæus tells us that Tatian was a hearer of Justin. He speaks as if he knew very little about him." There are two allusions to Justin in