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Athenagoras
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Introductory Note to the Writings of Athenagoras
[694] But Lardner tells the whole story much better. Credibility, vol. ii. p. 193.
[695] The dogmatic value of a patristic quotation depends on the support it finds in other Fathers, under the supremacy of Scripture: hence the utility of Kaye’s collocations.
[696] The fragment in which the notice occurs was extracted from the works of Philip by some unknown writer. It is published as an appendix to Dodwell’s Dissertationes in Irenæum.
[697] [Here a picture suggests itself. We go back to the times of Hadrian. A persecution is raging against the “Nazarenes.” A boyish, but well-cultured Athenian saunters into the market-place to hear some new thing. They are talking of those enemies of the human race, the Christians. Curiosity leads him to their assemblies. He finds them keeping the feast of the resurrection. Quadratus is preaching. He mocks, but is persuaded to open one of St. Paul’s Epistles. “What will this babbler say?” He reads the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, and resents it with all the objections still preserved in his pages. One can see him inquiring more about this Paul, and reading the seventeenth chapter of the Acts. What an animated description of his own Athens, and in what a new light it reflects the familiar scenes! He must refute this Paul. But, when he undertakes it, he falls in love when the intrepid assailant of the gods of Greece. Scales fall from his own eyes. How he sees it all at last, we find in the two works here presented, corresponding as they do, first and last, with the two parts of the apostle’s speech to the men of Athens.]
[698] Literally, “embassy.” [By this name best known to scholars.]
Chapter I.—Injustice Shown Towards the Christians.
[699] There are here many varieties of reading: we have followed the text suggested by Gesner.
[700] We here follow the text of Otto; others read ἡμῖν.
[701] [Kaye, 153.]
[702] [For three centuries the faithful were made witnesses for Jesus and the resurrection, even unto death; with “spoiling of their goods,” not only, but dying daily, and “counted as sheep for the slaughter.” What can refuse such testimony? They conquered through suffering.
The reader will be pleased with this citation from an author, the neglect of whose heavenly writings is a sad token of spiritual decline in the spirit of our religion:—
“The Lord is sure of His designed advantages out of the sufferings of His Church and of His saints for His name. He loses nothing, and they lose nothing; but their enemies, when they rage most and prevail most, are ever the greatest losers. His own glory grows, the graces of His people grow; yea, their very number grows, and that, sometimes, most by their greatest sufferings. This was evident in the first ages of the Christian Church. Where were the glory of so much invincible love and patience, if they had not been so put to it?” Leighton, Comm. on St. Peter, Works, vol. iv. p. 478. West’s admirable edition, London, Longmans, 1870.]
Chapter II.—Claim to Be Treated as Others are When Accused.
[703] [Kaye, 154.]
[704] [Tatian, cap. xxvii., supra, p. 76.]
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