Tatian's treatise in substance was an invective against the pagans, on the absurdity and iniquity of the pagan theology and its recent origin, with a running comparison between it and Christianity.
The object of Athenagoras was to plead for toleration; and consequently he employed himself in vindicating the Christians from various charges, such as incest, Thyestean banquets; and retaliated the charges on the heathen.
The little work of Hermias, the date of which is uncertain, [pg 457] (see Lardner, Cred. ch. xxv. and Cave, Hist. Lit. lxxxi. is a kind of sermon on St. Paul's words, “The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” In an amusing manner, not unlike Lucian, he criticised the heathen philosophy, arguing its falsehood from the contradictory opinions held in it.
The form of Theophilus's work Ad Autolycum is not unlike some of those which have preceded. Indeed the form was suggested by circumstances; being a defence of Christianity against particular charges, and the retaliation of similar ones on the heathens. He drew out the attributes of the true God, b. i; and afterwards exhibited the falsehood of the heathen religion and history, b. ii; defending Christians from the absurd charges made against them; and attempting to show the originality and antiquity of the Hebrew history and chronology, b. iii.
The next group of Apologists, which comprises the writers of the African church, Tertullian and Minucius Felix, differs from the last in spirit, though resembling them in purpose. It is the defence made by rhetoricians instead of philosophers. The purpose too, like that of the preceding Apologists, is partly to effect conviction, partly to obtain toleration; but there is a consciousness of the presence of danger, hardly perceivable in the former writers. We feel, as we read these early African writers, that they write like men who felt themselves in the presence of persecution, and who were brought more nearly than the former writers into the face of their foe.
Tertullian's Tract, which is analysed both by Mr. Woodham in his edition of it, and by Mr. T. Chevallier in his translation of it, is chiefly defensive. He claims toleration, ch. i-vii; refutes the miscellaneous charges against Christianity, ch. x-xxvii; and the charge of treason (xxviii-xxxvii); explains the nature of Christianity (xvii-xxiii); and compares it with philosophy, ch. xlv-xlvii.
The work of Minucius Felix is a dialogue between a heathen, Cæcilius, and a Christian, Octavius. The heathen opens by denying a Providence; next inveighs against the Christians, by a series of charges such as were named in Note [15]; and then attacks the Christian doctrines and condition. The Christian Octavius is made to answer each point successively.
In passing now from the African school of Apologists to the Alexandrian, we leave the rhetoricians, and meet with the philosophers, Clement and Origen. Clement precedes Tertullian by a few years; Origen succeeds Minucius Felix.