To the last speech of Christian, Justin replies by asking if this is not the same with that which Plato darkly intimates in his Timæus; referring to a passage in which Plato speaks of the special origination by the supreme God of the creatures whom it behoves "to be of immortal rank, being called divine, taking the lead among those who ever follow a just example." And Justin remarks: “God alone is uncreated and incorruptible, and therefore he is God; but all other things besides him are created and corruptible. For this reason souls both die and are punished. For if they were uncreated, they could not sin, nor be guilty of folly; nor could they be timorous, and then bold again." IIe then digresses into an argument for monotheism from the principles of the philosophers, to which Christian replies: "I neither regard Plato nor Pythagoras, nor indeed any of their way of thinking. For that this [which he had before said] is the truth, is evident from hence. The soul either has life in itself, or it receives it from something else. But if it has life in itself, it would be the cause of life to something else, and not to itself; as motion may rather be said to move something else, than itself. That the soul lives, no one can deny. But if it lives, it lives not as being itself life, but as receiving life. Now, whatever partakes of any thing, is different from that of which it partakes. But the soul partakes of life, because God wills it to live; and just so too it will no longer partake of life, whenever He does not desire it to live. For it cannot live of itself, as God does. But as the personal man does not always exist, and body and soul are not ever conjoined; but, whenever this harmony must be dissolved, the soul leaves the body, and the man is no more; so likewise whenever it is necessary that the soul should no longer be, the vital spirit leaves it, and the soul is no more, but itself returns again thither, whence it was taken" (cc. 4-6).

These passages, compared with those previously cited, show an unsettled opinion; which may appear also in the following, where he speaks of eternal punishment without naming it as conscious suffering. Thus he says that Christ became man, that

ment of the case: "Justin appears to regard it as possible that the souls of the angodly will be at some time wholly annihilated."

"that wicked serpent which did sin from the beginning, and the angels that have become like him, might be destroyed (karavoσi) and death despised, and finally at Christ's second coming cease from those who believe and live according to His will, and afterwards be no more; when some shall be sent unto the condemnation and judgment of fire to be punished unceasingly, and others shall dwell together in incorruption, and immortality, free from pain and sorrow" (c. 45; comp. c. 100). Again: "If they should choose such things as are well pleasing in His sight, He would place them in a state of incorruption, where they should not be liable to any pain or punishment; but if they should do that which is evil, He would inflict such punishment upon them as He should think proper" (c. 88). Again: "He shall raise up all mankind, and shall make some incorruptible, immortal, and free from pain, and place them in an eternal and indissoluble kingdom; but shall consign over others to the punishment of eternal fire" (c. 117). With these should be compared the expression in the second Apology: "God delays the breaking up and dissolution of the world, so that evil angels and dæmons and men may cease to be (μŋkéτi dσt), for the sake of the Christians, who are, in His mind, the [final] cause of nature" (c. 7). Here we cannot, with Semisch, regard the phrase as an "inconsiderate hyperbole," but rather as betraying a latent persuasion of Justin's mind.

Yet a single passage in the Dialogue forbids the belief that this was his settled opinion, while it discovers a most crude and contradictory exegesis. He says: "We have learned from Esaias that the members (@2a, limbs) of those that have transgressed shall be devoured by the worm and by the unceasing fire, remaining ever immortal that they may be a spectacle to all flesh" (c. 130). This is quite as good reasoning as the similar arguments from parallel passages, which we have already examined. Taken together with other facts it justifies the remark of Bunsen, speaking of the Christians of this period, that "scarcely any one of the eminent men who might have become

1 Life, Writings, and Opinions of Justin Martyr, b. 4, c. 7.

good scholars, understood Hebrew; none had a clear idea of the laws of interpretation, and of the limits between exegesis and speculation, fact and idea. Thus all, more or less, fell into the abyss of allegorical mysticism, which is a declaration of exegetical bankruptcy, with a certain amount of intellectual capital to be spent in making it good."1

$ 8. RESULTS IN THE EASTERN CHURCH.

Tatian, the Syrian, regarded his master Justin as "a most wonderful man." But after Justin's martyrdom he was, according to Irenæus, elated with pride, and ambitious to promote a peculiar form of doctrine. Eusebius mentions a current saying that he made bold to put the sayings of Paul into more elegant language. He was also bitterly censured as blasphemously asserting that Adam, sinning not ignorantly, was not saved.

His doctrine of the soul appears to be a compound of the opinions of Justin and of the Gnostics. In his "Discourse to the Greeks" he says man was made "an image of immortality, in imitation of his Maker; so that, as God hath immortality, man likewise, receiving a divine portion of God, might have that which is immortal" (c. 10). Again: "The spirit is not preserved by the soul, but itself preserves the soul. . . . For the Word is the divine light, and the soul without understanding is darkness. Wherefore if it be alone, it inclines toward matter, and dies with the flesh. . . . The spirit of God is not received by all, but descending upon those who live justly, and embracing their soul, renders it akin to itself" (c. 22). Again: "The heavenly spirit, together with the soul, will attain to the putting on of immortality instead of mortality, which other souls did not know of" (c. 35). But he is not always consistent with himself. "We recognize," he says, "two kinds of spirit; one of which we call the soul; but the other is nobler than the soul, — the image and likeness of God; each of which was given to men at the first, that they might at the same time have a body, and be masters of it" (c. 18). This spirit as a power of "immor

1 Hippolytus and his Age, I. 233.

tality for the sake of punishment," he may have regarded as imposed upon those who did not otherwise receive it. This inconsequence in the reasonings of the early apologists may explain the opinion of a German writer, that all of them understood by the mortality of the soul simply its inferior and dependent nature, and not its actual liability to death for sin.1

Tatian is known as the leader of the sect of Encratites, whose ascetic views were a practical Manichæism. His extravagances are doubtless due in part to a wild and fanatical temper. But his deprecation of marriage was, perhaps, only too consistent. with the notion that a friend or a child might suffer for ever.

The Apology of Theophilus, addressed to Autolycus, consists of three books which appear to have been written at different times. The progress of the argument shows, we think a progress of doubt respecting the destiny of the lost.

In the first book he says: "When thou shalt have put off mortality and put on immortality, thou wilt worthily see God. For God shall raise up thy flesh immortal, with thy soul; then, having become immortal, thou wilt see IIim who is immortal, if thou believe on him now. And then wilt thou know that thou

hast unjustly reviled Him" (c. 7). "Whom do thou obey, if thou wilt, believing Him; lest, disbelieving now, thou be persuaded then when compelled by eternal punishments." Which punishments he claims that the poets and philosophers stole from the prophets, to sanction their own teachings. Evil doers "shall at last be held in eternal fire. Since, my friend, thou hast said, Show me thy God, this is my God; and I counsel thee to fear Him, and to believe in Him" (c. 14).

In the second book he cites Gen. ii. 7, with the remark : "Whence the soul is called by many immortal" (c. 19). Man was placed on probation, "that, growing, and finally attaining perfection, and being manifest as a god he might thus ascend into heaven, in the possession of eternity. For man had been

1 Ullmann, in the Studien und Kritiken, 1828, No. II. p. 425. His article is translated in the Am. Bib. Repos., Oct, 1837.

2 Words suggested, perhaps, by Rom. viii. 19: "The manifestation of the sons of God.”

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made intermediate; neither absolutely mortal, nor altogether immortal; but capable of either; just as the garden where he was placed was, for its beauty, intermediate between earth and heaven" (c. 24). Death was a merciful provision; " God bestowed it as a great blessing upon the man, that he might not remain for all time in sin; but he banished the transgressor from paradise, as in exile, that when he should by this punishment in due time expiate his sin, he might be reinstated." Death is reconstructive: "Just as a vessel, if, when finished, it has some blemish, is recast and made over, so as to be new and whole, — death does the same for man; for he is, after a sort, broken in pieces, that in the resurrection he may appear sound; by which I mean, pure, just, and immortal" (c. 26). In the next chapter he reasserts the middle nature of man, in the words before cited. In a single instance he speaks of the just man as escaping "eternal punishments," and proving "worthy of an eternal life from God" (c. 34). But at the close, quoting the poets and the Sybilline leaves at large, he says much of punishment and death, but nothing of eternal pain.

The third book opens with a noble argument from the Christian life and example. The doctrine of metempsychosis is called the reproach of this world's wisdom (c. 7); but scarcely a word is said of man's immortality or of his destiny.

The germs of restorationism which we find in Theophilus are still more apparent in Athenagoras. We know little of his history; but according to Philip of Sida, he was a catechist at Alexandria, before Clement.

A marked feature of his writings is the prominence he gives to that which is positive, in the doctrine of salvation. Man is saved for an infinite good. The nearest approach he makes to the modern doctrine of punishment is in the following passage of his "Embassy for the Christians:" " Knowing that when released from this life, we shall either live another nobler life, not earthly but heavenly (since we shall dwell before God and with God as heavenly spirits, embodied, yet not fleshly, free from all change and suffering of soul); or, if we share the ruin of others, a worse life, even in fire (for God did not create us like