but, if I bring my proofs from repeated Scriptural authorities, you will then be convinced of hard-heartedness in regard to understanding the mind and the will of God."*

The exactly concurring testimony of Pliny, regularly founded upon the strictness of legal depositions, will bring this testimony within three years after the death of the apostle John; and in the next instance, will carry it back, even seventeen years before his death. For St. John died in the year 100; and from the Bithynian Nicomedia, in the year 103, was written the well known letter of Pliny to Trajan.

"Some of the Asiatic christians affirmed before me," says Pliny, in his official report to Trajan, "that the sum total of their fault or error was this: On a stated day, they were wont to assemble together before sunrise, and alternately to sing among themselves a hymn to Christ, as to God." On this evidence, says Faber, it is important to remark, that the persecutor does not speak from vague hearsay. He officially reports to the Emperor the depositions of the prisoners themselves, regularly taken down from their own mouths, at a public examination. On the face of the depositions, therefore, it appears that in the age of Trajan, at the very beginning of the second century, and therefore, immediately after the death of St. John, the Catholic Church, in her ordinary stated assemblies, and through the medium of her familiar appointed ritual, was regularly accustomed to worship Christ as God. This divine adoration of Christ as God prevailed, it will be observed, not in some remote corner of the world which might have been less under the apostle's superintendence, but in a province of Asia Minor, which may justly be deemed to have specially appertained to his own Patriarchate.

Nor yet, is even such the whole result of the evidence now under consideration. Pliny tells the Emperor, that of the persons who were brought before him, and who all made the deposition in question, some professed to have abjured Christ, or have ceased to be christians, three years; some more than three years; and some even twenty years, previous to their appearance at his tribunal. Our evidence, therefore, now specifies, on the personal knowledge of the deponents, that full seventeen years before the death of St. John, no less than three years after it, the Catholic Church, in the apostle's own immedi

*Justin, Dial, Cum. Trypho, Oper., p. 228.

†Plin. Epist., lib. x., epist. 97.

ate jurisdiction, was liturgically accustomed to worship Christ as God."

"How numerous, moreover," says Eusebius, "are the hymns and the songs of the brethren, written by the faithful, from the beginning, which celebrate Christ the Word of God, ascribing to him divinity." Such hymns, as we learn from Origen, still continued to be used by the faithful, in the middle of the third century. "We recite hymns," says he, "to the alone God, who is over all, and to his only begotten Son, God the Word; and thus we hymn God and his only begotten."

The faith of the primitive church is also attested by the early apologies. In the composition of these works, some accredited champion of the common faith stepped forth: and appearing as the acknowledged representative of his brethren, described and vindicated, in the general name of the Church, those doctrines which, by common consent, were universally taught and believed. In the same class with the ancient Apology, may be fitly arranged all evidence of a kindred description.

According to this arrangement, let us now first hear Arnobius, who flourished about the year 303, and who has left us a controversial work in defence of christianity against Paganism. "If Christ were God, they object: why was he put to death after the manner of a man?" To this I reply: Could that Power, which is invisible, and which has no bodily substance, introduce itself into the world, and be present at the councils of men, in any other way, than by assuming some integument of more solid matter, which, even to the dullest eyesight, might be capable of visibility? He assumed, therefore, the form of man, and shut up his power under the similitude of our race, in order that he might be viewed and seen; in order that he might utter words and teach; in order that he might execute all these matters, for the sake of performing which he had come into the world, by the command and disposition of the highest Sovereign. "But they further object, that Christ was put to death after the manner of a man.' "****** Not in absolute strictness of speech, Christ himself, I reply: for that which is divine, cannot be liable to death; nor can that which possesses the attribute of perfect unity and simplicity, fall asunder by the dissolution of destruction. Who, then, was seen to hang upon the cross? Who was the person that died? Doubtless,

Euseb. Hist. Eccles., lib. v., c. 28. #Orig. Cont. Cels., lib. viii., p. 422.

the human being, whom he had put on, and whom he himself bore in conjunction with his own proper self."*

We may next hear the official letter addressed to Paul of Samosata, by the fathers of the Council of Antioch, in the year 269.

"This, the begotten Son, the only begotten Son, who is the image of the invisible God; begotten before the whole creation; the Wisdom, and the Word, and the Power of God; who existed before the worlds; not by mere foreknowledge, but in substance and in person, God, the Son of God; him having known, both in the old and in the new covenant, we confess, and we preach," &c.

From the public letter of the Antiochian Fathers, let us pass to the Elenchus and Apology of Dionysius of Alexandria, as we find some fragments of that work preserved by Athanasius, A. D. 260.

"There never was a time when God was not a Father." ******"Christ, in as much as he is the Word, and the Wisdom, and the Power, always existed. For God did not at length beget a Son, as being originally ungenerative of these; but only the Son was not of himself; for he derives his being from out of the Father," &c. "He, then, is the eternal Son of the eternal Father, in as much as he is light from light. For, since there is a Father, there is also a Son. But, if there were no Son, how, and of whom could the Father be a Father? Both, however, exist; and both exist eternally."

Contemporary with Dionysius of Alexandria, was Dionysius. of Rome. Part of a controversial work, written by this author against the patripassianising Sabellians, has been preserved by Athanasius. "I hear," he says, "that there are among you some teachers of the Divine word, who run into an error diametrically opposite to that of Sabellius. For he blasphemously asserts the Son to be identical with the Father: but they, in a manner, set forth three Gods in three alien essences altogether separate from each; thus dividing the sacred unity. Now, the divine Word must inevitably be united with the God of all things; and the Holy Ghost must inevitably cohere and dwell in the Deity. Thus is it altogether necessary, that the divine Trinity should unite and coalesce in one, as it were in a certain head, namely, the Almighty God of the universe."

*Arnor. Adv. Gent., lib. i., pp. 37, 38. See also lib. i., p. 41.

Cyprian was elected bishop of Carthage, A. D. 248, and suffered martyrdom in 258. In the numerous writings put forth in this interval, he has much that bears on our subject. I only quote a few passages.

"The Lord says, I and the Father are one thing. And again, concerning the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, it is written, And these three are one thing."* "The Lord, after his resurrection, sending forth his disciples, instructed and taught them how they ought to baptize, saying: Go, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. He insinuates the Trinity, in whose sacrament the nations should be baptized." "How, then," he asks, "do some assert, both without the Church and against the Church, that a Gentile, provided he be baptized anywhere, and any how, in the name of Christ, can obtain. remission of sins; when Christ himself commanded that the nations should be baptized in the full and united Trinity?"

Hippolytus, the pupil of Ireneus, who received his theology from the apostle John, through the medium of Polycarp, flourished about the year 220. He asks, "Why was the temple desolated? Because the Jews put to death the Son of the Benefactor: for he is co-eternal with the Father. This, then, is the Word, who was openly shown to us. Wherefore we behold the incarnate Word; we apprehend the Father through him: we believe in the Son: we adore the Holy Ghost."

"The Father," says this same writer, "is indeed one: but, there are two persons, because here is also the Son; and the third person is the Holy Spirit: for the Father commands; the Son obeys; the Holy Spirit teaches. The Father is over all; the Son is through all; the Holy Spirit is in all. We cannot understand the one God, otherwise than as we truly believe in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

Tertullian, A. D. 200, composed, in the name of the suffering Church at large, a public Apology, addressed to the reigning Emperors. In this he says: "the Word, we say, was produced out of God; and, in his prolation, was generated from the unity of substance; therefore, he is called both God and The Son: for God is a Spirit, * * * * * *; ******; what hath proceeded from God, is both God, and the Son of God; and they two are one God."

*Cyprian, de Unit. Eccles. Oper., vol. i., p. 109. +Cyprian. Epist. lxxiii.

#Hippol. Cont. Noet. § xii., Oper. vol. ii., pp. 14, 15.

From the controversial works of this author, it were easy to produce testimonies to the same effect, enough to fill a volume. But these will suffice.

We now adduce the testimony of Clement, of Alexandria. This ancient Father professed to be a scholar of Pantonus: who, by some of the early theologians, is said to have been a disciple of the apostles; and who, doubtless, conversed with the Fathers denominated Apostolical. Clement is thought to have died about the year 220; and those who had been taught by the apostles might have been alive in the year 150. "Because," he says, "the Word was from above, he both was and is the Divine principle of all things. This Word, the Christ, was both the cause of our original existence, for he was God; and also the cause of our well-existence, for this very Word hath now appeared unto men, he alone being both God and man." ********** Believe, then, O, man, in him who is both man and God; believe, O, man, in the living God, who suffered and who is adored."*

From the attestation of Clement of Alexandria, we may proceed to that of Ireneus, of Lyons, the scholar of Polycarp, the disciple of the apostle John. This, we shall find in the controversial work, which, with the approbation of the Catholic Church, that eminent writer, about the year 175, published against the existing heresies. "Man," he says, "was formed according to the likeness of God; and he was fashioned by his hands. That is to say, he was fashioned through his Son, and through his Spirit: to whom also he said, Let us make man."† "Therefore, in all, and through all, there is one God, the Father, and one Word, and one Son, and one Spirit, and one faith and salvation to all who believe in him." "With him, i. e., God, are ever present, his Word and his Wisdom, his Son and his Spirit, through whom, and in whom, he freely and spontaneously made all things; to whom, likewise, he spoke, when he said, Let us make man after our own image and likeness."§ "Man was made and fashioned after the image and likeness of God, who is uncreated: the Father approving: the Son ministering and forming: the Spirit nourishing and augmenting."** Let us now proceed still higher, in the list of primitive writers, and adduce the testimony of Athenagoras. This writer