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Athenagoras
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Introductory Note to the Writings of Athenagoras
[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.
[832] [Comp. cap. xxxi., supra, p. 146. The science of their times lent itself to the notions of the Fathers necessarily; but neither Holy Scripture nor theology binds us to any theory of the how, in this great mystery; hence Plato and Pythagoras are only useful, as showing that even they saw nothing impossible in the resurrection of the dead. As to “the same elements,” identity does not consist in the same particles of material, but in the continuity of material, by which every seed reproduces “its own body.” 1 Cor. xv. 38.]
[833] [It is a fair inference that The Discourse was written after the Embassy. “In it,” says Kaye, “may be found nearly all the arguments which human reason has been able to advance in support of the resurrection.” p. 200.]
Chapter XXXVII.—Entreaty to Be Fairly Judged.
[834] [1 Tim. ii. 1, 2. Kaye, p. 154. They refused worship, however, to imperial images; and for this they suffered. “Bend your royal head” is an amusing reference to the nod of the Thunderer.]
Chapter I.—Defence of the Truth Should Precede Discussions Regarding It.
[835] [This argument was adapted to the times, and to those to whom it was addressed, with great rhetorical art and concealment of art. Its faults arise from the defective science of the age, and from the habits of thought and of public instruction then in fashion. He does not address himself to believers, but to sceptics, and meets them on their highest levels of speech and of reason.]
Chapter V.—Reference to the Processes of Digestion and Nutrition.
[836] The common reading is “excessive.”
Chapter XIII.—Continuation of the Argument.
[837] [The calm sublimity of this paragraph excels all that ever came from an Athenian before. In the Phœdon we have conjectures: here is certain hope and patient submission as our reasonable service.]
[838] [Kaye, p. 199. Compare Embassy, cap. xxvii., supra, p. 143.]
Chapter XIV.—The Resurrection Does Not Rest Solely on the Fact of a Future Judgment.
[839] [This chapter of itself establishes the fact that Christians have a right to demand the evidence for what they are required to believe. It refutes the idea that what any single bishop or saint has said or thought is doctrine, for that reason only; but it leaves the fact that concurrent testimony is evidence, on certain conditions, in all its force.]
[840] [Not strong enough for the force of the original: ουδ᾽ ἐκ τῶν τισί δοκοὐντων ῆ δεδογμένων.]
[841] [From the natural common sense of the thing.]
[842] [A beautiful and cogent argument for his proposition, and a precious testimony to the innocence of babes falling asleep in Christ. See Kaye, 190.]
Chapter XVI—Analogy of Death and Sleep, and Consequent Argument for the Resurrection.
[843] [Job xix. 25. On which see St. Jerome, Ad Paulinum, cap. 10, tom. iv. 569, ed. Bened. And, on the text itself, see Pusey on Daniel, p. 504, London, 1864. A fine passage in Calvin, ad locum: “En igitur qualis debate esse nostra Fides,” etc. Opp., tom. ii. p. 260, ed. Amsterdam, 1676.]
[844] [Homer, Iliad, b. xiv. 231, and Virgil, Æn., vi. 278.]
[845] [Noble testimony to a minute and particular Providence. Kaye, p. 191.]
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