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Apol. c. 5. 21. Apol. 2. Exerc. 16. n. 154. Aâ—â—l c. 21. L. 1. c. 13. V. Baron An. 31. n. 60. V. Vales. Not. in l. 1. c. 13. Euseb. Eccles. Hist. l. 2. c. 3. Lib. 1. p. 21 item 68. p. 345. p. 502. Apol. c. 37. Cap. 7. Lib. 2. Annot. in Euseb. p. 62. De Emend Temp. l. 6. Annot. in Euseb. p. 34. Adv. Heres l. 1. c. 3. Lib. 2. Hist. Eccles. L. 1. c. 3. John 9. 29. Lib. 2. p. 92. Praep. Evang. Lib. 3. Sect. 6. Contra Cels. l. 1. p. 34. Acts 2. 32. De Bello Jud. l. 7 12. Apol. 1. Adv. Haeres l. 2. c. 56 57. Apol. c. 23. Animad Euseb p. 222. l. 1. p. 5. p. 7. p. 35. p. 80. l. 3. p. 124. l. 7. Euseb. adv Hier. l. 1. Demonst. Evang. prop. 9. cap. 39. sect 2. V. Euseb. Dem. Ev. l. 3. § 6. Lib. 1. Orig. adv Cels. l. 2. Demonst. Evang. c. 142. § 6. In Vitâ Vespas Lib. 5. Histor. Suet. in Vespas c. 5. Euseb. Eccles. Hist. l. 3. c. 12. Philost l. 5. c. 9. l. 3. c. 3. c. 5. c. 8. c. 14. c. 2. Demonst. Ev. c. 147. § 4. Proâ—os 1. Sect. 5. l. 8. c. 4. l. 8. c. 13. Adv. Haeres l. 3. c. 3. Haeres 27. Hist. Eccles. l. 5. c. 12. Praescript Haeret. c. 32. c. 36. Hist. Eccles. l. 5. c. 12. Apud Euseb. l. 4. c. 23. Strom. l. 1. p. 201. Hist. l. 3. c. 16. 38. Apud Euseb. Hist. l. 4. c. 23. Adv. Haeres l. 3. c. 3. Strom. l. 4. Animad Euseb p. 221. Apud Euseb. l. 3. c. 39. Apud Euseb. l. 4. c. 3. Apud Euseb. l. 4. c. 8. c. 22. Apud Euseb. l. 3. c. 29. Ruari Ep. 93. l. 2. c. 23. 12. 20. Annot. in Euseb. p. 40. Orig. adv Celsus l. 2. Justin Martyr dial cum Tryp p. 249. John 21. 3. Lib. 1. In Matt. 22. 23. Acts 5. 39. Sueton. in Domit. c. 10. c. 1 Euseb. l. 3. c. 20. Animad Euseb. Anno MMCXII In Augusta c. 94. Apud Euseb. l. 3. c. 32. Apol. c. 35. Euseb. l. 5. c. 1. Apol. 2. Cyril contra Jul. l. 6. Epist. 15.
little agreement among themselves concerning the manner of the preparatory Fast before Easter and yet this variety being of long standing among them no Man thought himself obliged to impose his own particular conceit upon others in such an indifferent thing and last of all minds him of the prudence and moderation of his Predecessours especially Policarp and Anicetus who did not so much as go about to perswade one another to change the ancient custom of their Church And the effect of these Epistles from all places especially of this of Irenaeus probably was this that they diverted Victor from pursuing his design For we do not find that he ever actually excommunicated the Asian Churches but onely that he threatned it But whether he did or did not it is a worthy piece of ingenuity to charge the folly of one furious and intemperate Man upon the whole Church and that in spite of their own protestation against it And yet this is all the grossness and folly wherewith our Innovatours have made so much noise against them And thus having removed this poor Objection which I could not avoid because it has of late appear'd among us with so much huff and confidence I proceed to the remaining Witnesses of our primitive Tradition And here I cannot pass by Papias for though he were a Person of no great Learning or Judgment yet he was a Man of clear Honesty and Simplicity and living near the time of the Apostles themselves did not search after their Story in Books but made it his particular business to enquire of their familiar acquaintance after their Sayings and Customs If any came in my way says he that was a follower of the Apostles forthwith I enquired of him after the Sayings of the Ancients what Andrew what Peter what Philip what Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lords Disciples what Ariston and John the Elder distinguisht from John the Evangelist and out of the Catalogue of the Apostles Disciples of the Lord were wont to say for I did not think I could profit my self more by reading their Books than by the more lively report of those Persons who are still alive and heard their discourses This is a peculiar sort of Testimony given in to a matter of Fact by a Man plain and simple and yet curious and inquisitive who inform'd himself of the truth of the things so lately transacted not onely by reading the Narratives that were written of them but from the more lively information of such who received it from Eye-witnesses I will easily grant that he was as Eusebius describes him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Person of a small Judgment and by consequence of little Authority as to his Opinion especially of the Millennium of which yet himself was not the first Authour but was betrayed into it by the Tradition of the Jews who generally believed that their Messias should reign a thousand years upon Earth in all manner of greatness and glory and therefore it was no wonder if those who were converted from Judaism to Christianity brought this Opinion along with them onely understanding the Jews more gross and carnal Notion in a more refined and spiritual sense and this was the dispute in those early days against the Jewish Hereticks particularly Cerinthus who believed of our Saviour as they had of the Messias that they expected that he should come once more upon Earth and reign at Jerusalem in all manner of pomp and grandeur but be that as it will Papias was ever thought of as a Man of a downright and untainted Integrity and had both the advantage of conversing with those that conversed with the Apostles and the curiosity of recording all the Traditions which they delivered to him by word of mouth and lastly was satisfied in that way of information of the truth of all those things that were registred concerning Jesus and his Apostles To him ought to be ranked Quadratus who wrote an Apologetick to the Emperour Adrian in which he positively avers that many of the Persons cured by our Lord of their Diseases were alive in his time and Aristides a Christian Philosopher at Athens who at the same time presented a learned and eloquent Apology to the same Emperour in behalf of the same cause § XXXII This is the first file of Witnesses next and immediately after the Apostles though I might have reckoned the following rank into the same Catalogue because they are twisted with them as they are with one another for as these that I have already mentioned are not all precisely of the same Age yet being of Antiquity enough to be competent Witnesses of the Tradition of the Apostles may be join'd together into one complicated Testimony of it so their next Successours followed them by the same degrees as they followed one another for Succession is not conveyed down like a Chain by certain Links but like a Cord by the same continued interweaving every part being some part of the part above it And though the Ages of the Church are distinguisht by Centuries yet the Lives of Men are not and the beginning of the next series lived with some of the former as they lived with the first that lived with the Apostles so that there is no possibility of making an Interruption any where between the Chanel and the Fountain head whereever we find the Stream that alone will certainly lead us up to its own Original But this will appear more distinctly by the degrees of its Conveyance having therefore brought the Tradition down to the time of M. Aurelius that is a considerable time beyond that of Trajan to which time Scaliger and some others are pleased to complain of a defect of Records but with what reason we have in part already seen and shall now further discover by our following Witnesses who were not onely able to testifie of their own times but of the foregoing Ages Among whom Hegesippus deserves the first place not onely for his great antiquity but for his manner of writing as an Historian and so not concern'd meerly to give an account of the Affairs of his own Age but to make a diligent enquiry into the Records and Transactions of former times He wrote five Books of Ecclesiastical History which he styled Commentaries of the Acts of the Church wherein he has in a plain and familiar style given an account of the Tradition of the Church and the most remarkable passages in it from our Lord's Death till his own time which was about or rather before the Reign of M. Aurelius for he says he came to Rome and stayed there till the time of Anicetus now Anicetus according to the latest computation succeeded in that See at the beginning of the Reign of Aurelius but according to the earlier account under Antoninus Pius so that it is probable that he was at Rome before Policarp And this description he has given of his Voyage that coming to Rome he
in the Gospel that other Historians are concern'd to record as well as the Christians are exactly true that is at least a very fair probability that the Christian Writers were faithfull in those other Relations that are peculiar to their own History And this is all that can be expected from foreign Testimony for if such Writers had been exact in the Records of our Saviour's Actions they had then been Christians and not Jews or Heathens Supposing them therefore as they were no Friends to Christianity they have given in all that suffrage to it that can be reasonably demanded from them And now as for the proof hereof it had been much more easie than it is had it not been for the pride and vanity of some of our modern Criticks who care very little what becomes of the truth or falshood of things so they can shew their censuring Faculty upon words and particularly they have in this case set themselves with their utmost critical Severity to disparage or destroy the most eminent Testimonies cited by the Ancients out of foreign Writers in behalf of Christianity Scaliger the Father of them all led the Dance upon what motive I cannot imagine unless it were out of Envy to the Fame and Glory of Eusebius against whom he particularly set himself and his endeavours but however the design looking like a Novelty and carrying in it an ostentation of Learning for that reason alone he could not want a great number of Followers among that sort of Men. But to what little purpose they have spent all their pains and peevishness I now come to represent And here first Josephus the Jew who was contemporary with the Apostles agrees all along with the Evangelists in the History of that time He gives the same account and description of John the Baptist as we reade in the Gospels He gives us the same narration of Herod the Tetrarch and particularly of his marrying his Brother's Wife He mentions the Tax of Cyrenius He records the Acts of the several Governours of Judaea Pontius Pilate Felix and Portius Festus and describes the succession of the several High priests Caiaphas Joha and Alexander the death of Herod Agrippa and of Saint James the Brother of our Lord nay he gives not onely a just History but an high Character of our Lord himself All which our learned Men are willing enough to pass as certain and warrantable History excepting onely that passage concerning our Saviour Onely there is one difficulty in the Tax of Cyrenius which Saint Luke says was about the time of our Saviour's Nativity but Josephus not till after the Banishment of Archelaus which hapned at least nine years after the Death of Herod so that which way to reconcile this difference learned Men have been much puzled and towards its solution have started variety of Conjectures And therefore though it is of no very great concernment I shall give some account of it before I proceed to the Testimony concerning Jesus § XII And first of all Baronius tells us plainly that Josephus is mistaken but then this is to cut the Knot not to untie it for our business is to reconcile him and the sacred History but if we utterly reject him instead of answering the Objection we grant it viz. that there are irreconcileable differences between him and the Evangelists Though here I cannot but wonder at the unusual disingenuity of Casaubon who whereas Baronius affirms that Josephus does in many things of Chronology contradict Saint Luke and therefore if we must stand to his Authority that will enforce us to reject the Evangelist he I say inveighs and declaims upon this as if it were Baronius his Assertion and not his Argument and rates him severely as if he had positively affirm'd that the Testimony of Josephus was sufficient to oblige us to quit that of the Evangelist Whereas he onely makes use of it as a forcible Objection against appealing to Josephus in any matters wherein he contradicts the Scriptures for in such cases says he we cannot admit him without rejecting them Now I say from hence to infer that Baronius affirm'd that we were obliged so to doe became not the ingenuity of a learned Man But the truth of it is to observe once for all Casaubon was little less partial towards one Extreme than Baronius towards the other For as it was the custom of that learned Cardinal and the Writers of the Church of Rome to rake together every thing that might serve their Cause embracing the forged and spurious as well as the true and undoubted records of Antiquity So Casaubon and the learned Men of his way have been as diligent to weaken the Authority of all the most ancient and most authentick Writers so that there is not the least slip in any of the Ancients that they have not observed in their critical Notes upon them and beside that they reject whole Books of the best and earliest Antiquity But by this means they have between them both done this great service to the Christian Church that as they have discover'd the fraud of supposititious Books so they have confirm'd the Authority of the true and genuine And it is by occasion of their disputes that we are come to a certain knowledge of all the sincere records of Antiquity So that at last the Epistles of Ignatius and the Apostolical Canons that have been most of all opposed have by those great endeavours that have been employed to destroy their Authority gain'd and will for ever keep as undoubted a credit as the most unquestion'd pieces of Justin Martyr or Irenaeus The next guess is that of Beza which is followed and variously emproved by Scaliger Casaubon Grotius and others viz. That Cyrenius was employed by Augustus to take two several Musters of the People one with a Tax and the other without it and that was it that was made at the time of our Saviour's Birth For Augustus designing that compendious Account of the Roman Empire which Historians so often speak of and which he left as a guide and direction to his Successours in the Empire sent several Officers through the several Provinces to take an exact account of the number and condition of the Inhabitants and for this purpose though Quintilius Varus were then Prefect of Syria Cyrenius was join'd in Commission with him as a Person that was by reason of his residence in Syria and his Wars in Cilicia exactly acquainted with the Affairs of the East as afterwards he was sent with C. Caesar on the same Errand and when Judaea was reduced into the form of a Province after the Banishment of Archelaus and the first Tax to be imposed immediately by the Romans upon the People he was particularly singled out as the Person most able to manage it So that it is not unlikely that he might be employed in this business though not himself but Quintilius Varus was then Prefect of Syria And if this be so then
met with many Bishops and found them all of one Mind and teaching the same Doctrine and having given some account of Clement's Epistle to the Corinthians he adds that the Church remain'd after that in the pure and right Doctrine untill the time of Primus Bishop there with whom sayling to Rome I conferred and abode many days being come to Rome I stayed there till the time of Anicetus whose Deacon was Eleutherius whom Soter succeeded and after him Eleutherius In all their Succession and in every one of their Cities it is no otherways taught than as the Law and the Prophets and the Lord himself preached This is a singular Testimony of the sincere Tradition not onely of one or two or a few Churches but of the Catholick Church And as he described the Ecclesiastical Succession every where so has he the rise and birth of Heresies and particularly in the Church of Jerusalem After that James sirnamed the Just had suffer'd Martyrdom his Uncle Simeon the Son of Cleophas was chosen Bishop being preferred by the unanimous Vote of all because he was the Lord's Kinsman And hitherto that Church was call'd a pure Virgin because as yet it had not been deflour'd with any false Doctrines But Thebalis being displeased that he was not chosen Bishop secretly endeavour'd to debauch it from whom sprang those many Heresies that he afterward reckons up and so having elsewhere described the Martyrdom of Saint Simeon he adds untill those times the Church of God remain'd a pure and undefiled Virgin For such as endeavour'd to corrupt the perfect Rule and the sincere delivery of the Faith hid themselves till that time in secret and obscure places but after that the sacred Company of the Apostles was worn out and that generation was wholly spent that by special favour had heard with their Ears the heavenly Wisedom of the Son of God then the conspiracy of wicked and detestable Heresies through the fraud and imposture of such as affected to be masters of new and strange Doctrines took rooting And because none of the Apostles were then surviving they published with all imaginable confidence and boldness their false conceits and impugned the old plain certain and known truth At these passages I must stop a little because though they are a great Testimony of the purity of the primitive Church yet I find them very confidently made use of by Innovatours as unanswerable Arguments for rejecting its Authority Thus Gittichius an eager Socinian contending with Ruarus both concerning Grotius his way of writing in making so much use of citations out of the ancient Fathers in his Commentaries and withall concerning the primitive Fasts of the Church which Schliclingius and some of that party began to imitate condemns it not onely as altogether useless but dangerous De antiquitate in Religionis negotio statuo extra ipsas sacras novi foederis literas in iis exempla Apostolorum nullius omnino antiquitatis habendam cuiquam Christiano ullam rationem And then proves his Assertion from this passage of Hegesippus and the more ancient he says the Tradition is after the time of the Apostles so much the worse it is because from the very time of their dissolution the Church was overrun with Heresie and Superstition So peevish are Men against the honour and authority of the ancient Church when they are sensible of their own Apostasie from it And the truth is all our Innovatours agree in this one principle and that for this one very good reason because the ancient Church if it were permitted to give judgment upon them condemns them all For these Men finding errours and corruptions in the Church of Rome instead of reforming them as they ought to have done according to the Constitution of the primitive Church they fall to contriving new Models and Bodies of Divinity out of their own brains And among others Socinus disliking the Calvinian Theology as contrary not onely to the holy Scriptures but to the first principles of natural Religion sets up a new Divinity of his own contrivance without ever enquiring into the Doctrine and Discipline of the ancient Church and being advised of his flying so wide of it he together with his followers rather than part with their own fine new Notions of which they had the honour to be the first Authours and Abettours will by no means allow of any such thing as a true and uncorrupted Church ever since the time of the Apostles But with what vanity and arrogance it is none of my present task to enquire onely in answer to this Objection I must reply that it is a very wide and I am sure very far from a civil Inference to conclude that because there were Heresies in the primitive Church there was nothing else And they might with as much reason have applied the Objection against the Apostolical Church it self because then as the Apostles themselves complain the Tares were sowing though it seems not so openly and so impudently as afterwards Nay upon these terms it is impossible their should ever be any such thing as a true Church in the World for as long as there are such things as Pride and Vanity among Mankind there will be such Men in all Societies as will be tainted with their own idle dreams and conceits and then rub their itch upon the common People But though there were Heresies in the primitive Church which I say was not to be avoided as long as it consisted of Men yet they were never able to prevail but after some struggling for admittance were sooner or later utterly stifled And we have as certain a Tradition of the Birth Growth and Death of Heresies as we have of the true Doctrines of the Church and it is very considerable that all the ancient Doctours of the Church overwhelm the Hereticks with this one Argument by convicting them of apparent Innovation and deriving down their own Doctrines from the Apostles themselves So that though there were Heresies in the primitive Church yet its Apostolical Tradition was never mixt or tainted with them but run down in a pure and clear chanel by it self And therefore it is a very childish as well as disingenuous Objection against its Authority that there were some Men in it that would have been corrupting the purity of its Doctrine but were never able to compass their design especially when they were so far from passing undiscover'd or uncontroul'd that we have as certain an account both of the Men and of their Opinions and their inconsistency with the Apostolical Tradition as we have of the new fangled conceits of our own present Innovatours And therefore there is no more danger of our swallowing down old Heresies together with the Tradition of the Church than there is of sucking in their new ones whilst we adhere faithfully to that And thus having upon occasion of this particular passage of this ancient Authour cleared the Authority of the ancient Church in
general it remains that I make good the credit of his own Testimony in particular that has been assaulted by the great Scaliger with too fierce and concern'd a keenness for though he is a very diligent reprover of Eusebius yet he is much more severe upon Hegesippus for what reason I cannot imagine unless that by reason of his so very great nearness to the Apostolical times he was an unexceptionable Witness of the primitive Tradition for that seems to have been Scaliger's main design to weaken its Authority by picking out faults and oversights in its Records and for what end he has been so diligent in it is shrewdly to be suspected though perhaps it was not out of any bad intention but onely to gratifie his critical pride which naturally delights in nothing so much as the humour of correction The particular passage that he has cull'd out for the exercise of his critical faculty is the Narrative of the Martyrdom of James the Just transcribed by Eusebius in which he says beside extream heedlesness the Historian is guilty of many absurd falshoods To which I first answer in general That the whole Story as to the substance of it agrees with the account of Josephus and that being as it ought to be passed by Scaliger for authentick is an evident proof of its reality Secondly It is possible that Hegesippus might meet with the common fate of the best Authours to be either corrupted or interpolated and though we could not discover it yet the very likelihood of it is enough to keep any prudent Man back from any such harsh censure of such an ancient and venerable Authour and since Scaliger's time learned Men have made several grammatical Emendations which if he had known or observed himself might have saved a considerable part of his pains As for his particular exceptions they are chiefly these First That out of respect to the singular holiness of James the Just he should be familiarly admitted into the Holy of Holies whereas says Scaliger it was not lawfull for any to be admitted thither but onely the High-priest and that as every one knows but once a year But this whole exception proceeds from a meer mistake of Scaliger's for Hegesippus does not say that he was admitted into the Holy of Holies but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the holy place viz. That part of the Temple in which the Mercy-seat the Shew-bread the Candlesticks and the Altar of Incense were placed where it was ordinarily lawfull for the Priests alone to come and that they did in their daily ministrations And this is it that Hegesippus observes as a remarkable Testimony from the Jews themselves of the singular holiness of this good Man that purely out of respect to that though he were not of the priestly Order yet in the worship of God he was admitted a place among the Priests themselves which was a very unusual dignity and peculiarly remarked as such by Hegesippus To which I might add the observation of Petavius that it was no unusual thing for the Ancients to give the title of Holy of Holies to this place that was peculiar to the Priests Station but the former answer does so utterly blow up the foundations of the Objection as to make this needless Secondly to say nothing of James's wearing the priestly Habit because that is the same with the former Objection Scaliger excepts against the Gentiles meeting together with the Jews at the Passover as Hegesippus affirms whereas the Gentiles never resorted to that Feast But here our learned Critick does not onely fall into a gross absurdity himself but betrays manifest ignorance when every child knows that the Gentile Proselytes attended the worship of the Temple as constantly as the Jews and had a peculiar Court to themselves erected for that purpose and this he might have learnt concerning the Passover from Saint John himself And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship at the Feast Nay beside this express Text he might have been inform'd of it out of his own Josephus out of whom Valesius has noted several Examples of it The third Objection is That the twelve Tribes should be said to be present at this action of the Martyrdom of Saint James at the time of the Passover whereas it is well known that there were but two remaining the other ten being long since lost in Captivity But I am sure it is as well known that this was then the vulgar phrase for all the People of Israel for though the main Body of ten Tribes were transported yet many that were left behind and many that return'd back mixed with the two that remained and so kept up the name and title of the twelve Tribes and therefore Saint James directs his Epistle to the twelve Tribes i. e. to all the People of the Jews and Saint Paul in his defence before King Agrippa pleads thus And now I stand and am judged for the hope of the Promise made of God unto our Fathers unto which promise our twelve Tribes instantly serving God day and night hope to come In the fourth place It is objected that at Saint James's declaring Jesus to be the Messias the People cryed out Hosanna to the Son of David which the Critick says they were never wont to doe unless at the Feast of Tabernacles But though that might be the first rise of this custom yet it grew afterwards as Io Paean among the Greeks to be the common form of joy and exultation and so was used by the People at our Saviour's entrance into Jerusalem But this Acclamation says our learned Man could not be given to James though why he might not be saluted the Son of David I know not when he was so very near akin to our Lord. But however to save our selves the trouble of answering this little scruple this Acclamation was not made to James himself but to our Lord upon his confession of him But in the next place Hegesippus quotes a Text out of Esaias that he ought to have cited out of the Wisedom of Solomon viz. Let us remove the just Man because he is an offence or reproach unto us But this at worst is but a slip of memory to which all our Authours are liable and yet it is not so much but it is to be punctually read in the third Chapter of the Prophet Esaias from whom the Authour of the Book of Wisedom borrowed it But Hegesippus says James the Just was a Nazarene and neither ate Flesh nor drank Wine which if true says Scaliger he could not have eaten the last Supper with our Lord and his Apostles But this is as slender as all the rest for though the Nazarenes in their common course of life neither ate flesh nor drank Wine yet they abstein'd not from the rites and solemnities of their Religion but ate the Paschal Lamb as all other Jews did in that it was indispensably injoyn'd them by God himself antecedently
to their Vow But one of the Priests a Recabite says Hegesippus interposed to save James from the fury of the People But this says Scaliger could not be for the Recabites were of the Tribe of Judah and so uncapable of the Priesthood As if the Original constitution of either had been exactly observed at that time especially of the Priesthood when it is so well known that ever since the time of Herod the Great those Offices even of the High-Priesthood it self were entirely disposed of by their Governours who at pleasure put them in and out as they did any other Officers of State But they placed him says Hegesippus on the Pinacle of the Temple whither great numbers of the People went up to cast him down which says Scaliger they could not do because it was as Josephus tells us so very thick set with pointed Irons as to keep the Birds from setling upon it And so it is probable the greatest and highest Battlement of all was but it is very far from being in the least probable that James should be placed there to Preach to the People when it was impossible to be heard from so great an height or that he should not be dasht apieces when he was cast thence instead of falling alive upon his Knees as the Historian reports And therefore this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies any covering or Battlement must have been some lower frame of building from which he might be most conveniently heard of the People Now as from these Objections says Scaliger we may learn what to think of this Hegesippus so say I from these Replies to them may we learn what to think of this Scaliger that upon such poor surmises as these will not stick to destroy and villifie the best and most Ancient Records of the Christian Church And now the credit of this Ancient Author being fully Vindicated it does not only make good his own Testimony but of all others that were Recorded in his History between our Saviour's time and his own and to mention no more his account of the Bishops of Jerusalem goes a great way For next to James the Just he informs us that Simeon the Son of Cleophas and Cousen German to our Lord succeeded in the Bishoprick and sat there till the Reign of Trajan under whom he suffered Martyrdom only for the old jealousie of Vespasian and Domitian of being of the Line of David and so a Rival to the Empire So that here the Tradition of the Church was conveyed down to that time by as short a Succession as we have already shewn it to have been in the Church of Corinth from St. Paul to Clement and from Clement to Dionysius and in the Asian Church from the Apostles by Policarp to Pothinus and Irenaeus § XXXIII Next to Hegesippus follows Justin Martyr though had not the other been an Historian he might as being somewhat his Senior have gone before him being converted to Christianity in the time of Adrian about the end of the First Century after our Saviour's Passion and within Eight years after addrest an excellent Apology to Antoninus Pius in behalf of the Christian Faith and afterwards a Second to M. Aurelius his Son and Successor He was a Person of Eminent Parts and Learning the most judicious Philosopher of his time that had Surveyed all the Tenets of the several Sects and studied all kinds of useful Learning for the settlement and satisfaction of his own mind and having passed through the Schools of the Stoicks the Peripateticks the Pythagoreans and the Platonists of which himself hath given a pleasant account in the beginning of his Dialogue with Trypho he was at last advised by an unknown Grave Old Man that met him in his retired Walks to consider the Christian Philosophy to which he had no sooner applyed himself but he found it the only certain and satisfactory Philosophy In short he was such a Proficient in all kinds of Learning that his own Writings make good Photius his Character of him that as he was admirably furnisht with all sorts of Reading and History so he was arrived to the Perfection both of the Christian and Heathen Philosophy and therefore immediately after his Conversion gave a Learned and Rational account of the Vanity of the Gentile Religion As afterwards in his Apologies and his other Writings he did of the certain truth and Divine Authority of the Christian Faith both from the undoubted Miracles that in his time were wrought for the demonstration of it and from the certain Proof of our Saviour's Resurrection and the uninterrupted conveyance of it down to his own time And the assurance of his Faith he frequently avows with the greatest freedom and courage of mind and at last Seal'd it with his Blood And though he foresaw and foretold it not from any Spirit of Prophesie that he pretended to in it but from the probable course and most natural event of things yet notwithstanding this he did not in the least slacken his Zeal for the Christian cause but went on with all assurance of mind in its defence till it brought him to the encounter of Death which he did not only meet with his Eyes open but with all Joy and Alacrity as being Arrived at the end of his hopes and the beginning of his happiness Next to Justin Martyr Irenaeus follows in order who lived much about or a little after the same time but of him I shall need to say the less because I have already shewn the certainty of the Tradition that he had of the things that he believed from Policarp and Pothinus and his acquaintance with other Apostolical men only some few Remarks remain to make up his perfect Character and make out his perfect knowledge and for this that excellent Epistle of his to Florinus deserves to be consider'd in the first place This Doctrine of thine O Florinus that I may frankly declare the truth savoureth not of the sincere Faith disagreeth from the Church and betrayeth such as listen to it into extream Impiety This Doctrine no not the Hereticks which were out of the Church durst ever Publish this Doctrine such as were Elders before us and Disciples of the Apostles never delivered unto thee I saw thee when I was yet a Youth with Policarp in the lesser Asia living Gorgeously in the Emperour's Palace and mightily buisying thy self to get into favour and credit with him For I remember better the things of old than latter affairs for the things we learn in our younger years sink deepest into our minds and grow together with us So that I particularly remember the very place where Policarp sate when he taught his going out and his coming in his course of life the figure and proportion of his Body the Sermons he made to the People the report he made of his Conversation with John and others which knew the Lord how he remembred their sayings and what he heard from their mouths concerning the Lord