Canonical Gospels, to be found in the works of Justin Martyr. Before beginning this, it may be well to direct the reader's attention to the real point at issue; and this I shall have to do continually throughout my examination. The work is entitled "Supernatural Religion," and is an attack upon what the author calls "Ecclesiastical Christianity," because such Christianity sets forth the Founder of our Religion as conceived and born in a supernatural way; as doing throughout His life supernatural acts; as dying for a supernatural purpose; and as raised from the dead by a miracle, which was the sign and seal of the truth of all His supernatural claims. The attack in the book in question takes the form of a continuous effort to show that all our four Gospels are unauthentic, by showing, or attempting to show, that they were never quoted before the latter part of the second century: but the real point of attack is the supernatural in the records of Christ's Birth, Life, Death, and Resurrection.

SECTION III.

THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS.—HIS RELIGIOUS VIEWS.

The examination of the quotations in Justin Martyr of the Synoptic Gospels occupies nearly one hundred and fifty pages; and deservedly so, for the acknowledged writings of this Father are, if we except the Clementine forgeries and the wild vision of Hermas, more in length than those of all the other twenty-three witnesses put together. They are also valuable because no doubts can be thrown upon their date, and because they take up, or advert to, so many subjects of interest to Christians in all ages.

The universally acknowledged writings of Justin Martyr are three:—Two
Apologies addressed to the Heathen, and a Dialogue with Trypho a Jew.

The first Apology is addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius, and was written before the year 150 A.D. The second Apology is by some supposed to be the first in point of publication, and is addressed to the Roman people.

The contents of the two Apologies are remarkable in this respect, that Justin scruples not to bring before the heathen the very arcana of Christianity. No apologist shows so little "reserve" in stating to the heathen the mysteries of the faith. At the very outset he enunciates the doctrine of the Incarnate Logos:—

"For not only among the Greeks did Logos (or Reason) prevail to condemn these things by Socrates, but also among the barbarians were they condemned by the Logos himself, who took shape and became man, and was called Jesus Christ." [10:1] (Apol. I. 5.)

In the next chapter he sets forth the doctrine and worship of the
Trinity:—

"But both Him [the Father] and the Son, Who came forth from Him and taught these things to us and the host of heaven, the other good angels who follow and are made like to Him, and the Prophetic Spirit, we worship and adore, knowing them in reason and truth." [10:2]

Again:—

"Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, Who was also born for this purpose, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judaea, in the time of Tiberius Caesar; and that we reasonably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the True God Himself, and holding Him in the second place, and the Prophetic Spirit in the third." (Apol. I. ch. x. 3.)

Again, a little further on, he claims for Christians a higher belief in the supernatural than the heathen had, for, whereas the heathen went no further than believing that souls after death are in a state of sensation, Christians believed in the resurrection of the body:—

"Such favour as you grant to these, grant also unto us, who not less but more firmly than they believe in God; since we expect to receive again our own bodies, though they be dead and cast into the earth, for we maintain that with God nothing is impossible." (Apol. I. ch. xviii.)

In the next chapter (xix.) he proceeds to prove the Resurrection possible. This he does from the analogy of human generation, and he concludes thus:—

    "So also judge ye that it is not impossible that the bodies of men
    after they have been dissolved, and like seeds resolved into earth,
    should in God's appointed time rise again and put on incorruption."

In another place in the same Apology he asserts the personality of
Satan:—

"For among us the prince of the wicked spirits is called the serpent, and Satan, and the devil, as you can learn by looking into our writings, and that he would be sent into the fire with his host, and the men who followed him, and would be punished for an endless duration, Christ foretold." (Apol. I. ch. xxviii.)

In the same short chapter he asserts in very weighty words his belief in the ever-watchful providence of God:—

"And if any one disbelieves that God cares for these things (the welfare of the human race), he will thereby either insinuate that God does not exist, or he will assert that though He exists He delights in vice, or exists like a stone, and that neither virtue nor vice are anything, but only in the opinion of men these things are reckoned good or evil, and this is the greatest profanity and wickedness." (Apol. I. ch. xxviii.)

Shortly after this he tells the heathen Emperor that the mission and work of Jesus Christ had been predicted:—

"There were amongst the Jews certain men who were prophets of God, through whom the Prophetic Spirit published beforehand things that were to come to pass, ere ever they happened. And their prophecies, as they were spoken and when they were uttered, the kings who happened to be reigning among the Jews at the several times carefully preserved in their possession, when they had been arranged in books by the prophets themselves in their own Hebrew language…. In these books, then, of the prophets, we found Jesus Christ foretold as coming, born of a virgin, growing up to man's estate, and healing every disease and every sickness, and raising the dead, and being hated, and unrecognized, and crucified, and dying and rising again, and ascending into heaven, and being, and being called, the Son of God. We find it also predicted that certain persons should be sent by Him into every nation to publish these things, and that rather among the Gentiles (than among the Jews) men should believe on Him. And He was predicted before He appeared, first 5,000 years before, and again 3,000, then 2,000, then 1,000, and yet again 800; for in the succession of generations prophets after prophets arose." (Apol. I. ch. xxxi.)

Then he proceeds to show how certain particular prophecies which he cites were fulfilled in the Jews having a lawgiver till the time of Christ, and not after; in Christ's entry into Jerusalem; in His Birth of a Virgin; in the place of His Birth; in His having His hands and feet pierced with the nails. (Ch. xxxiii., xxxiv., xxxv.)

Again, immediately afterwards, he endeavours to classify certain prophecies as peculiarly those of God the Father, certain others as peculiarly those of God the Son, and others as the special utterance of the Spirit. (Ch. xxxvi.-xl.)

Then he proceeds to specify certain particular prophecies as fulfilled in our Lord's