whether any of these
philosophers perused the apologies [1911] which the primitive Christians
repeatedly published in behalf of themselves and of their religion; but
it is much to be lamented that such a cause was not defended by
abler advocates. They expose with superfluous with and eloquence the
extravagance of Polytheism. They interest our compassion by displaying
the innocence and sufferings of their injured brethren. But when they
would demonstrate the divine origin of Christianity, they insist much
more strongly on the predictions which announced, than on the miracles
which accompanied, the appearance of the Messiah. Their favorite
argument might serve to edify a Christian or to convert a Jew,
since both the one and the other acknowledge the authority of those
prophecies, and both are obliged, with devout reverence, to search for
their sense and their accomplishment. But this mode of persuasion loses
much of its weight and influence, when it is addressed to those who
neither understand nor respect the Mosaic dispensation and the prophetic
style. [192] In the unskilful hands of Justin and of the succeeding
apologists, the sublime meaning of the Hebrew oracles evaporates in
distant types, affected conceits, and cold allegories; and even their
authenticity was rendered suspicious to an unenlightened Gentile, by the
mixture of pious forgeries, which, under the names of Orpheus, Hermes,
and the Sibyls, [193] were obtruded on him as of equal value with the
genuine inspirations of Heaven. The adoption of fraud and sophistry
in the defence of revelation too often reminds us of the injudicious
conduct of those poets who load their invulnerable heroes with a useless
weight of cumbersome and brittle armor.

[Footnote 1911: The emperors Hadrian, Antoninus &c., read with astonishment
the apologies of Justin Martyr, of Aristides, of Melito, &c. (See St.
Hieron. ad mag. orat. Orosius, lviii. c. 13.) Eusebius says expressly,
that the cause of Christianity was defended before the senate, in a very
elegant discourse, by Apollonius the Martyr.--G. ----Gibbon, in his
severer spirit of criticism, may have questioned the authority of Jerome
and Eusebius. There are some difficulties about Apollonius, which
Heinichen (note in loc. Eusebii) would solve, by suppose lag him to have
been, as Jerome states, a senator.--M.]

[Footnote 192: If the famous prophecy of the Seventy Weeks had been
alleged to a Roman philosopher, would he not have r