Athenagoras: A Plea for the Christians

Literally, “embassy.” [By this name best known to scholars.]

There are here many varieties of reading: we have followed the text suggested by Gesner.

We here follow the text of Otto; others read ἡμῖν.

[Kaye, 153.]

[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.]

[Kaye, 154.]

[Tatian, cap. xxvii., supra, p. 76.]

[Tatian, cap. xxvii., supra, p. 76.]

[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.]

Thus Otto; others read, “if any one of men.”

[Kaye, p. 7.]

[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.]

From an unknown play.

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.

Not found in his extant works.

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.]

One, two, three, and four together forming ten.

Timæus, p. 28, C.

Timæus, p. 41, A.

[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.]

[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.]

i.e., Do several gods make up one God?—Otto. Others read affirmatively, “God is one.”

i.e., the world.

i.e., the Creator, or first God.

[Kaye, 179. An important comment; comp. cap. vii., supra.]

Isa. xli. 4; Ex. xx. 2, 3 (as to sense).

Isa. xliv. 6.

Isa. xliii. 10, 11.

Isa. lxvi. 1.

“Or, by Him and through Him.” [Kaye, pp. 155, 175.]

[Kaye, p. 166.]

Prov. viii. 22.

[Compare Theophilus, supra, p. 101, and Kaye’s note, p. 156.]

[Heb. i. 14, the express doctrine of St. Paul. They are ministers to men, not objects of any sort of worship. “Let no man beguile you,” etc. Col. ii. 4, 18.]

Luke vi. 27, 28; Matt. v. 44, 45.

[Kaye, pp. 212–217.]

The meaning is here doubtful; but the probably reference is to the practices of the Sophists.

Hom., Il., xvi. 672.

Luke vi. 32, 34; Matt. v. 46.

[Harmless as flowers and incense may be, the Fathers disown them in this way continually.]

[This brilliant condensation of the Benedicite (Song of the Three Children) affords Kaye occasion to observe that our author is silent as to the sacraments. p. 195.]

Hom., Il., ix. 499 sq., Lord Derby’s translation, which version the translator has for the most part used.

Comp. Rom. xii. 1. [Mal. i.11. “A pure Mincha” (Lev. ii. 1) was the unbloody sacrifice of the Jews. This was to be the Christian oblation: hence to offering of Christ’s natural blood, as the Latins now teach, was unknown to Athenagoras.]

[Kaye, p. 172.]

Thus Otto; others render “comprising.”

[The Ptolemaic universe is conceived of as a sort of hollow ball, or bubble, within which are the spheres moving about the earth. Milton adopts from Homer the idea of such a globe, or bubble, hanging by a chain from heaven (Paradise Lost, ii. 10, 51). The oblique circle is the zodiac. The Septentriones are referred to also. See Paradise Lost, viii. 65–168.]

Some refer this to the human spirit.

Polit., p. 269, D.

We here follow the text of Otto; others place the clause in the following sentence.

ii. 53.

Or, Koré. It is doubtful whether or not this should be regarded as a proper name.

Or, Koré. It is doubtful whether or not this should be regarded as a proper name.

The reading is here doubtful.

[There were no images or pictures, therefore, in the earliest Christian places of prayer.]

[This was a heathen justification of image-worship, and entirely foreign to the Christian mind. Leighton, Works, vol. v. p. 323.]

Hom., Il., xx. 131.

[See Kaye’s very important note, refuting Gibbon’s cavil, and illustrating the purpose of Bishop Bull, in his quotation. On the περιχώρησις, see Bull, Fid. Nicænæ, iv. cap. 4.]

Prov. xxi. 1.

Hom., Il., xiv. 201, 302.

Hom., Il., xiv. 246.

τισάσθην.

Orpheus, Fragments.

Plat., Tim., p. 27, D.

Literally, “by nature.”

i.e., Minerva.

Or, “have accurately described.”

Fragments.

Hom., Il., iv. 23.

Ibid., iv. 24.

Ibid., xxii. 168 sq.

Ibid., xvi. 433 sq.

Ibid., xvi. 522.

Ibid., v. 376.

Hom., Od., viii. 308 sq., Pope’s transl.

Hom., Il., v. 858.

Hom., Il., xv. 605.

Hom., Il., v. 31, 455.

Hom., Od., viii. 296–298, Pope’s transl.

Hom., Il., ii. 820.

[οἰκονομίαν. Kaye, p. 174. And see Paris ed., 1615.]

Hom., Il., xiv. 315 sqq.

Eurip., Alcest., 1 sq.

Ibid., 8 sq.

From an unknown play of Æschylus.

Perhaps ἡρ (αηρ) α.

Tim., p. 40, D.E.

Pseudo-Plat., Epist., ii. p. 312, D.E. The meaning is very obscure.

Plat., Phœdr., p. 246, E.

[Comp. cap. xxvii., infra.]

[Kaye, 192. And see cap. x., supra, p. 133. Divine Providence does not exclude the ministry of angels by divine appointment. Resurrection, cap. xviii., infra.]

[The Paris editors caution us against yielding to this interpretation of Gen. vi. 1–4. It was the Rabbinical interpretation. See Josephus, book i. cap. 3.]

Hesiod, Theog., 27. [Traces of the Nephilim are found in all mythologies.]

Eurip.; from an unknown play.

Ibid.

Eurip., Cycl., 332 sq.

[Kaye, p. 190.]

Or, “powers of reasoning” (λογισμός).

From an unknown tragedian. [A passage which I cannot but apply to the lapse of Tatian.]

Hom., Il., iii. 39.

[see note to Theophilus, cap. x., supra, p. 92.]

[Kaye, p. 191; and comp. cap. xxiv., supra, p. 142.]

[Comp. On the Resurrection, cap. xiii., infra., p. 439 of ed. Edinburgh. Also Kaye, p. 199.]

[Kaye, p. 190.]

ii. 144. Mr. Rawlinson’s translation is used in the extracts from Herodotus.

ii. 50.

ii. 156.

ii. 41.

ii. 3. The text is here uncertain, and differs from that of Herodotus. [Herodotus, initiated in Egyptian mysteries, was doubtless sworn to maintain certain secrets of the priests of Osiris.]

ii. 61. [The name of Osiris.]

ii. 170.

ii. 86.

Hom., Od., xxi. 28. sq.

Hesiod, Frag.

i.e., Æsculapius.

Pyth., iii. 96 sq.

Ascribed by Seneca to the Bellerophon of Eurip.

From the Ino, a lost play of Eurip.

i.e., after Gaïa and Ouranos, Earth and Heaven.

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.]

Callim., Hym. Jov., 8 sq. [Tit. i. 12. But St. Paul’s quotation is from Epimenides.]

[“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.]

[1 Cor. xv. 44. A very clear representation of the apostle’s doctrine. See Kaye, 199; and compare On the Resurrection, cap. xiii.]

Matt. v. 28.

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.

[Hermas, p. 47, note, and p. 57, this volume; Elucidation, ii.]

[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.]

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.”]

[This our Lord commends (Matt. xix. 12) as a voluntary act of private self-devotion.]

[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.]

Matt. xix. 9.

[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.]

[An allusion to the fable of the Sargus; and see Burton’s Anat. Mel., p. 445.]

[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.]

[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.]

[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.]

[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.]

[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.]