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Athenagoras
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Introductory Note to the Writings of Athenagoras
[811] i.e., Æsculapius.
[812] Pyth., iii. 96 sq.
[813] Ascribed by Seneca to the Bellerophon of Eurip.
[814] From the Ino, a lost play of Eurip.
Chapter XXX.—Reasons Why Divinity Has Been Ascribed to Men.
[815] i.e., after Gaïa and Ouranos, Earth and Heaven.
[816] Oracc., Sibyll., iii. 108–113. [Kaye, p. 220, and compare cap. vii., supra. The inspiration of Balaam, and likewise that of the ass, must, in my opinion, illustrate that of the Sibyls.]
[817] Callim., Hym. Jov., 8 sq. [Tit. i. 12. But St. Paul’s quotation is from Epimenides.]
Chapter XXXI.—Confutation of the Other Charges Brought Against the Christians.
[818] [“Thyestian feasts” (p. 130, supra); a charge which the Christian Fathers perpetually repel. Of course the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper lent colour to this charge; but it could not have been repelled, had they believed the material body and blood of the “man Christ Jesus,” present in this sacrament. See cap. iii., note.]
[819] [1 Cor. xv. 44. A very clear representation of the apostle’s doctrine. See Kaye, 199; and compare On the Resurrection, cap. xiii.]
Chapter XXXII.—Elevated Morality of the Christians.
[821] Otto translates: “which has made us and our neighbours attain the highest degree of rectitude.” The text is obscure, but the above seems the probably meaning; comp. Matt. xxii. 39, etc.
[822] [Hermas, p. 47, note, and p. 57, this volume; Elucidation, ii.]
[823] [The Logos never said, “it excludes us from eternal life:” that is sure; and the passage, though ambiguous, is not so interpreted in the Latin of Gesner. Jones remarks that Athenagoras never introduces a saying of our Lord in this way. Compare Clem. Alexandrin. (Pædagogue, b. iii. cap. v. p. 297, Edinburgh Series), where he quotes Matt. v. 28, with variation. Lardner (cap. xviii. sec. 20) gives a probable explanation. Jones on The Canon (vol. i. p. 436) is noteworthy. Kaye (p. 221) does not solve the puzzle.]
[824] Probably from some apocryphal writing. [Come from what source it may, it suggests a caution of the utmost importance to Americans. In the newer parts of the country, the practice, here corrected, as cropped out among “brothers and sisters” of divers religious names, and consequent scandals have arisen. To all Christians comes, the apostolic appeal, “Let it not be once named among you.”]
Chapter XXXIII.—Chastity of the Christians with Respect to Marriage.
[825] [This our Lord commends (Matt. xix. 12) as a voluntary act of private self-devotion.]
[826] [There is perhaps a touch of the rising Phrygian influence in this passage; yet the language of St. Paul (1 Tim. v. 9) favoured this view, no doubt, in primitive opinion. See Speaker’s Comm. on 1 Tim. iii. 2. Ed. Scribners, New York.]
[828] [But Callistus, heretical Bishop of Rome (a.d. 218.), authorized even third marriages in the clergy. Hippolytus, vol. vi. p. 343, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Edinburgh Series.]
Chapter XXXIV.—The Vast Difference in Morals Between the Christians and Their Accusers.
[829] [An allusion to the fable of the Sargus; and see Burton’s Anat. Mel., p. 445.]
Chapter XXXV.—The Christians Condemn and Detest All Cruelty.
[830] [See Tatian, cap xxiii., supra, p. 75. But here the language of Gibbon is worthy to be quoted: though the icy-hearted infidel failed to understand that just such philosophers as he enjoyed these spectacles, till Christianity taught even such to profess a refined abhorrence of what the Gospel abolished, with no help from them. He says, “the first Christian emperor may claim the honour of the first edict which condemned the art and amusement of shedding human blood; but this benevolent law expressed the wishes of the prince, without reforming an inveterate abuse which degraded a civilized (?) nation below the condition of savage cannibals. Several hundred, perhaps several thousand, victims were annually slaughtered in the great cities of the empire.” He tells the story of the heroic Telemachus, without eulogy; how his death, while struggling to separate the combatants abolished forever the inhuman sports and sacrifices of the amphitheatre. This happened under Honorius. Milman’s Gibbon, iii. 210.]
[831] [Let Americans read this, and ask whether a relapse into heathenism is not threatening our civilization, in this respect. May I venture to refer to Moral Reforms (ed. 1869, Lippincotts, Philadelphia), a little book of my own, rebuking this inquity, and tracing the earliest violation of this law of Christian morals, and of nature itself, to an unhappy Bishop of Rome, rebuked by Hippolytus. See vol. vi. p. 345, Edinburgh Series of Ante-Nicene Fathers.]
Chapter XXXVI.—Bearing of the Doctrine of the Resurrection on the Practices of the Christians.
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