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Athenagoras
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Introductory Note to the Writings of Athenagoras
[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.]
[705] [Tatian, cap. xxvii., supra, p. 76.]
Chapter III.—Charges Brought Against the Christians.
[706] [See cap. xxxi. Our Lord was “perfect man,” yet our author resents the idea of eating the flesh of one’s own kind as worse than brutal. As to the Eucharist the inference is plain.]
[707] Thus Otto; others read, “if any one of men.”
Chapter IV.—The Christians are Not Atheists, But Acknowledge One Only God.
[708] [Kaye, p. 7.]
Chapter V.—Testimony of the Poets to the Unity of God.
[709] [De Maistre, who talks nothing but sophistry when he rides his hobby, and who shocked the pope himself by his fanatical effort to demonstrate the papal system, is, nevertheless, very suggestive and interesting when he condescends to talk simply as a Christian. See his citations showing the heathen consciousness of one Supreme Being. Soirées de St. Pétersbourg, vol. i. pp. 225, 280; vol. ii. pp. 379, 380.]
[710] From an unknown play.
[711] From an unknown play; the original is ambiguous; comp. Cic. De Nat Deorum, ii. c. 25, where the words are translated—“Seest thou this boundless ether on high which embraces the earth in its moist arms? Reckon this Zeus.” Athenagoras cannot so have understood Euripides.
[712] Not found in his extant works.
Chapter VI.—Opinions of the Philosophers as to the One God.
[713] Common text has ὂψει; we follow the text of Otto. [Gesner notes this corruption, and conjectures that it should be the name of some philosopher.]
[714] One, two, three, and four together forming ten.
[715] Timæus, p. 28, C.
[716] Timæus, p. 41, A.
[717] [We must not wonder at the scant praise accorded by the Apologists to the truths embedded everywhere in Plato and other heathen writers. They felt intensely, that “the world, by wisdom, knew not God; and that it was their own mission to lead men to the only source of true philosophy.]
Chapter VII.—Superiority of the Christian Doctrine Respecting God.
[718] [See cap. xxx., infra. Important, as showing the degree of value attributed by the Fathers to the Sibylline and Orphic sayings. Comp. Kaye, p. 177.]
Chapter VIII.—Absurdities of Polytheism.
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