Apologists of the time. Under its moderating influence MILTIADES, the sophist of the Churches, wrote a now lost Apology addressed to the Rulers of this World. The rulers to whom this learned plea for toleration was offered were probably Marcus Aurelius and Verus.

The brilliant and versatile MELITO, "the philosopher," bishop of Sardis, d. 177, joined the ranks of the literary apologists in 170, by offering to the Emperor, probably Caracalla, a Personal Plea, containing a skilful, courteous, modest and well-informed argument for the Faith. In this address he claimed that idols are not gods:

For, if a man call fire God, it is not God, because it is fire; and, if a man call water God, it is not God, because it is water; . . . . and, if he so call those pieces of wood which we burn, or those stones which we break, how can these things be gods?

Thence he passed to the origin of idols, and finally to a plea that the Emperor might believe the true God.

For, according as thou hast acknowledged Him here, will He acknowledge thee there; and, if thou account Him here superfluous, He will not account thee one of those who have known Him and confessed Him.

Two years later, 172, MELITO addressed Marcus Aurelius, in a strongly social or political Apology, of which only a few fragments exist. He is credited with many other works. The Treatise on the Incarnation was a definite contribution to the development of theology, and gained for its author a reputation as one of the greater lights of Christian Asia.

The Key ascribed to MELITO, which has been called one of the most curious writings of the ancient Church bearing on the subject of the allegorical interpretation of Scripture, and which "consists of a catalogue of many hundreds of birds, beasts, plants, and minerals, that were symbolical

of Christian virtues, doctrines, and personages,' known to be a work of the Middle Ages.

"4 is now

Another Christian philosopher, ATHENAGORAS by name, also appealed to Marcus Aurelius. His work, entitled The Embassy, 176-177, carefully describes and indignantly repudiates the three charges of atheism, cannibalism, and lust, which were commonly urged against Christians in connection with their midnight Eucharists. ATHENAGORAS pleads for an impartial trial that would lead to a just verdict; he then makes a vigorous assault on the demon-inspired idolatries and wickednesses of paganism.

To the Emperor, for whom his book was intended, he

says:

May you, by considering yourselves, be able to discover the heavenly kingdom also! For as all things are subservient to you, father and son, who have received the kingdom from above (for 'the king's soul is in the hand of God,' saith the prophetic Spirit), so to the one God and the Logos proceeding from Him, the Son. apprehended by us as inseparable from Him, all things are in like manner subjected.

ATHENAGORAS is decidedly superior to most of the Apologists. "Elegant, free from superfluity of language, forcible in style, he rises occasionally into great power of description, and his reasoning is remarkable for clearness and cogency."

Towards the end of The Embassy, ATHENAGORAS says, "let the argument upon the Resurrection stand over." He fulfilled the promise implied by these words by writing a Treatise on the Resurrection.

The name of CLAUDIUS APOLINARIUS (or Apolinaris) f1. 160-180, is associated with various Apologies: Against the Greeks; On Truth; Against the Jews; Against the Montanists; but little of them is left. His Apology to Mar4 W. E. H. Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, Vol. I., p. 264, note 1.

cus Aurelius, 172, is represented by three fragments only. He is, however, memorable in literary history as the preserver of the earliest known version of the story of the Thundering Legion.

THEOPHILUS of Antioch, 115-183, is described as "one of the precursors of that group of writers who, from Irenaeus to Cyprian, not only break the obscurity which rests on the earliest history of the Christian Church, but alike in the east and in the west, carry it to the front in literary eminence, and distance all their heathen contemporaries"."

He wrote an Apology to Autolycus, in order to convince him that Christianity was true and of divine authority, and at the same time to show that paganism was false and foolish. Like ATHENAGORAS he indignantly denies the horrible calumnies made against the Christian fellowship and worship; but unlike many of the Apologists he draws his arguments mainly from the Old Testament, making but few references to any of the writings of the New Testament. The three parts of the Apology were written at different times; the last part soon after the death of Marcus Aurelius, i.e. 180.

5 W. Sanday, Studia Biblica, p. 90.

CHAPTER VII

THE MARTYROLOGIES

The literature of Apology not only served to expose the injustice of persecution, but also to quicken an intellectual interest in the philosophy of Christianity.

The practical interest of the Church was, however, diverted into other than philosophical channels, by the increasing violence of hostility. Written defences might arm the minds of believers, but they failed to sheath the sword of the persecutor. When persecution became the settled policy of Rome, Christian literature became an exultant record of the fidelity of the confessors, and a monument to their spiritual conquest over cruelty and death.

The New Testament contains the germs of martyrology.

Antipas my witness, my faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan dwelleth.

I saw underneath the altar the souls of them that had been slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held.

I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. And I saw.... the souls of them that had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God (Rev. ii.13; vi.9; xvii.6; xx.4).

The earliest authentic Martyrology, after these brief notices in the New Testament, is contained in a Letter to the Church of Philomelium, 155, which gives an account of the trial and death of POLYCARP, as reported by an eye-witness

from Smyrna. The whole narrative is vitally graphic, and is a most valuable human document.

When he came near, the proconsul asked him whether he was Polycarp: who, confessing that he was, he persuaded him to deny the faith, saying, 'Reverence thy old age'; with many other things of the like nature, as their custom is: concluding thus, 'Swear by Caesar's fortune. Repent, and say, take away the wicked.' Then Polycarp, looking with a stern countenance upon the whole multitude of wicked Gentiles that was gathered together in the lists, and shaking his hand at them, looked up to heaven, and groaning, said, 'Take away the wicked.' But the proconsul insisting and saying 'Swear, and I will set thee at liberty; reproach Christ;' Polycarp replied, 'Eighty and six years have I now served Christ, and He has never done me the least wrong; how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?'

IRENAEUS, 120 or 130-202, was most probably the author of a Letter from the Churches of Lyon and Vienne to the Churches of Asia and Phrygia, telling them of the persecution in Gaul in 177. This glowing and pathetic story well deserves the eulogium of Renan: "The enthusiasm, the mystic tone of the style, the spirit and sweetness and good sense which mark the whole recital inaugurate a new rhetoric, and make this piece the pearl of the Christian literature of the second century"."

The heroine of the story is the little slave, of whom the author says:

the blessed Blandina, last of all, after having like a noble mother encouraged her children, and sent them on before her victorious to the King, trod the same path of conflict which her children had trod, hasten6 Marcus Aurelius, chap. xx.