SECTION IV.

Christianity was taught as philosophy by Tatian and his preceptor Justin, both laymen. The letter of Vienne and Lyons, differently represented; Pothinus a presbyter, goals, and Irenæus the same.-Melito and Athenagoras professed the new philosophy, and Hermias wrote "The Discordance of Philosophers."-Theophilus of Antioch speaks of no officer in the church.— Irenæus was a presbyter, at Lyons, hitherto there is no other higher ordination, or office.-The evidence given by Irenæus makes presbyter and bishop the same office, and that the succession from the apostles was by presbyters.

That "destructive superstition" which Tacitus had pronounced almost repressed by the Neronian persecution, surviving also the edicts of his successors, obtained some respite in the last thirty years of the second century, the period assigned to this section. The philosophic Pliny had expressed a sentiment, too prevalent in the second century, that Christianity was a crime fit to be expiated by death. Entitled to no legal toleration, though sometimes screened by the ignorance or caprice of a Galleo, the profession could be avowed only at the hazard of life. The only possible motive to accept or exercise an office in the church, under such circumstances, must have been duty, not dignity; conscience, not interest. Paul had saved his life, by claiming to teach the Athenians the knowledge of their own God. Many, with more success than Socrates, taught, bearing no office among Christians, a philosophy deemed to have originated among barbarians. An appetite for saving knowledge values offices, as means subordinate to a higher end, the acquisition of truth. Every Christian applauds Justin, receiving, in the habit of a philosopher, the crown of martyrdom.

D

'Tatian was his disciple, axponins hearer, says Irenæus, who charges him with apostacy after the death of his patron. "An oration to the Greeks," is the only surviving production of Tatian. Written with elegance and point, and not far distant from orthodoxy, it pleases, but contains nothing that bears upon the present inquiry. He calls himself, in a philosophic sense, a preacher of the truth, xnçuxa ins aanbelas (p. 64.) certainly neither as Noah nor Paul, of whom the same expression is used. After representing himself born among the Assyrians, and educated among the Greeks, he again says, that he preached xnpu77ew, professing to know God and his works. The good sense of the "Oration" is justly commended by Clement of Alexandria, and by Origen. Justin was a philosopher, not a presbyter; yet he taught: and Tatian, a hearer of Justin, preached, but as a layman. If laymen did, at this period, preach without censure, it is not probable that there were presbyters restricted from a privilege so

common.

b

Large fragments of a letter, purporting to have been written by the churches of Vienne, and Lyons, in Gaul, have been preserved by Eusebius and Nicephorus. It describes some most affecting scenes of sufferings, in the persecution which took place, it is said, in the 17th year of Mark Antonine, A. D. 177. There has been nothing found in the letter concerning our subject, except the mention of the offices of two of the martyrs. The first is of Sanctus, who is styled a deacon from Vienne, διακονος απο Βιεννης: the other of the venerable Pothinus, who died in his ninetieth year, in prison, from the abuse he received at his trial. He is said in the letter, according to Eusebius, to have been "intrusted with the ministry of the episcopate in Lyons," i rηv diaxoviav της επισκοπης εν λυγδύνω πεπιςευμενος. Nicephorus has given the same portion of the letter, with more simplicity in these words: "Pothinus, a minister of the

• Iren. lib. i. Ch. 30. 31.—αποςτας της εκκλησίας.

b Tertullian's complaint was afterwards,

church at Lyons,”Ποθεινος δε ὁ διακονος της λυγδυνων εκκλησι as." If Nicephorus wrote from the letter itself, the last is the truth; or if he compiled from Eusebius, his was probably still the original reading both of Eusebius and the letter; and the term diaxovos may have been subsequently changed into διακονία», and επισκοπης inserted. We have shown, in a former section, that Eusebius was unfaithful in his quotations of ancient writings. That Pothinus was the gо575, or presiding presbyter, and consequently a bishop of the church at Lyons, is very possible. The church appears to have been small, and the cause of truth an object of hatred and contempt, in that region; it is, therefore, improbable that a diversity in orders, which, as yet, existed nowhere else, should have originated there. Also, Irenæus, who was a presbyter in the same place, will presently be found to have known no difference between presbyter and bishop. As there appears in this letter no order above that of presbyter, which hitherto always had the oversight, so we find no lay presbyters.

Melito of Sardis wrote, about A. D. 182, several works, the titles of which Eusebius has preserved, with a fragment of his Apology for what he calls the new philosophy, and an important catalogue of the books of the Old Testament. But there remains nothing from him on our subject.

Athenagoras is a writer who also falls within our present period. The proofs in support of his Apology for Christians, and of his Discourse on the Resurrection are few and modern; yet no one can read the book, and doubt its genuineness. The Apology, being directed to Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, sufficiently determines its own date. Written to idolaters, its arguments

e Mons. Blondel (Apol. p. 23-32) has proved, that it was nine years after Irenæus had been placed in the chair, #gloxadedgia, of Pothinus, a bishop and martyr, at Lyons, when he was represented in a letter written by that church to Eleutherius, as their brother and a presbyter of the church, ως πρεσβύτερον εκκλησίας κα Euseb. Lib. v. C. 4.

are as they should be, chiefly drawn from reason. This writer styles himself an Athenian,d and a philosopher, and the Apology speaks itself the work of a Christian, and well suited to its period. His arguments, in the discourse concerning the resurrection, are worthy of attention even in the present day. Of church of ficers, we have been able to find no mention in either of his productions.

66

The tract of Hermias, called the "Irrisio Gentium," or "Alaoveμos," which is more properly the discordance of philosophers, is of uncertain time, but very ancient; and is probably the genuine, though unsupported production of a Christian. The various opinions of the nature of the soul, the chief good, and our future condition, are well contrasted, and with great effect. It terminates abruptly, but not before it has well established the position with which it commenced, that "The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God." It touches not our subject.

There are three small books, written by Theophilus of Antioch to his friend Autolycus, an idolater. The writer had been himself a heathen, and appears to have had much Greek learning. The first is a general defence of the nature and perfections of the true God, of his work of creation, and of the resurrection. The second is against idolatry, and the different opinions of philosophers; and compares the cosmogony of the poets with that of Moses. He speaks of the "Trinity (Tecados) of God, and of the Logos, and of wisdom." He says it was the Logos who appeared in Paradise; and though he describes him as an effect, yet represents him as being at the first in God. In the third, after vindicating Christians from aspersions, he compares the profane with the Scriptural chronology. There is no claim of an ecclesiastical office by the writer, nor even the mention of any

d Phillip Sidetes (apud Dodwell, p. 489) says, that he studied the Scriptures on purpose to confute them, but became convinced of their truth.

in either of the books. They bear all the marks of genuineness. His death has been placed at periods somewhat different, but the weight of probability seems to determine it to about the year of Christ 182, which is but two years later than the death of Marcus Aurelius, expressed in the end of his third book, as the last period of his chronological calculation.

Irenæus was a Greek of Asia Minor, for he remembered there to have seen, when a youth, the venerable Polycarp. He spent his advanced life in Gaul, at Lyons. That he was a presbyter, we learn from his own church. That he received any other ordination, or held any other office, there is no competent proof, nor have we found any evidence of such occurrence in his day. That he was a "disciple of Polycarp," and was "raised to the episcopal chair" upon the death of Pothinus, ought neither to be assumed, nor granted without evidence brought from the second century. That he died a martyr, has been often said, but gratuitously, because asserted too lately. His death may be placed with sufficient correctness, after many vain efforts at precision on the point, about the commencement of the third century. He wrote five books against the wild opinions of Valentinus, and other Gnostics. Of these a Latin version censured by different writers as feverish, faulty, and barbarous; and some Greek fragments, in Eusebius, Epiphanius, John Damascenus and Nicephorus, together with some portions of letters, yet remain. The moral endowments of this father were much greater than his intellectual. Under all disadvantages, the facts, so far as given from his own observation, are worthy of belief.

In a fragment of an epistle written to Florinus on the subject of the errors of Valentinus, and preserved by Eusebius, he says: "These doctrines, they who were presbyters before us, δι προ ήμων πρεςβύτεροι, and who were the followers of the apostles, never delivered unto thee. If that blessed and apostolic presbyter Polycarp, had heard any such thing, &c. he would