[6] Mr. Harris's discovery is not the first find of this ancient apologist in modern times. The Armenian Mechitarites of Venice published what they called two sermons of Aristides in 1878; which Cardinal Pitra, the learned librarian of the Vatican, reprinted in 1883, in his Analecta Sacra, t. iv., pp. x, xi, 6-11, 282-86. One of these sermons was a fragment of the Apology of Aristides, which the Mechitarites scarcely at first recognised as such. M. Rénan, in his Origines de Christianisme, vol. vi., p. vi (Paris, 1879), scoffed at this fragment, declaring that, from the technical theological terms, such as Theotokos, therein used, it was evidently posterior to the fourth century. Doulcet, in the Revue des Questions Historiques for October 1880, pp. 601-12, made an effective reply with the materials at hand at the time; but Mr. Harris's publication of the complete work triumphantly demonstrates that M. Rénan's objections were worthless (see Harris, pp. 2, 3, 27). It is another proof that Christians have everything to hope and nothing to fear from such discoveries of early documents. Mr. Harris's preface is specially interesting, because it shows that we have had the Apology of Aristides all the time, though we knew it not, as it was worked in the quasi-oriental tale of Barlaam and Joasaph printed among the works of St. John of Damascus.
[7] The apologists of the second century will be found in a collected shape in Otto's Corpus Apologetarum, in nine vols. (Jena, 1842-72). Most of those mentioned above will be found in an English shape in Clarke's Ante-Nicene Library. See also Harnack in Texte und Untersuchungen, bd. i., hft. i. (Leipzig, 1882).
[8] St. Jerome, in Ep. 70, addressed to Magnus, a Roman rhetorician, expressly says that Justin Martyr imitated Aristides. The Cohortatio ad Græcos attributed to him is much liker the treatise of Aristides than Justin's admitted first and second apologies.
[9] Overbeck, Zeller, and Schwegler fix the composition of the Acts between 110 and 130, the very date of the Apology of Aristides. See Zeller's Acts of the Apostles, p. 71 (London: Williams & Norgate, 1875).
[10] For an account of the Jewish controversy in the second century see Gebhardt and Harnack's Texte, bd. i., hft. 3 (Leipzig, 1883), where Harnack seeks to critically restore the substance of the dialogue between Jason and Papiscus. An article on "Apologists" in the Dictionary of Christian Biography, vol. i., pp. 140-47, and another on "Theophilus" (13) in the same work, vol. iv., p. 1009, should be consulted.
[11] See a copious account of this strange second-century forgery in Dr. Gwynne's article on Thecla in the fourth volume of the Dictionary of Christian Biography. Dr. Salmon, in his Introduction to the N.T., chap. xix., gives a most interesting description of the apocrypha Acts of the Apostles, which even the unlearned can enjoy.
[12] The Irish people are very Oriental in the tenacity with which they retain ancient traditions, transmitting them intact to posterity. Abundant instances have proved this, the traditions having been perpetuated in some cases for five hundred years or more. The following case has come under the writer's notice in his own neighbourhood. There is near Dublin a village called Finglas, celebrated for its ancient Abbey. A cross stood there which had been venerated from the earliest times. When Cromwell's soldiers were advancing to attack Dublin about the year 1648, their iconoclastic fame reached the inhabitants of Finglas, who took the ancient cross and buried it in one of the glebe fields. Some one hundred and sixty years later a vicar of Finglas of antiquarian tastes heard traditions of this event. He learned from an extremely old man that his grandfather when a boy had been present at the burial of the cross, and had shown him the spot where it was concealed. The vicar made excavations, and duly found the cross, which he re-erected some time about 1810, in a spot where it is still to be seen. This instance will show how two long lives could cover the space between St. Paul's middle age and Tertullian's mature years. See Fingal and its Churches, by Rev. R. Walsh, D.D., pp. 147-49. Dublin, 1888. St. Jerome, De Vir. Illust., 53, mentions a similar case in his time. St. Jerome knew an old man who when young had himself known one of St. Cyprian's secretaries. St. Jerome wrote about A.D. 400, St. Cyprian died in 257; the difference exactly between Tertullian and St. Paul.
[13] See two articles on St. Columbanus and his library in the Expositor for June and August 1889.
[14] Dr. Salmon, in his Introd. N.T., pp. 48-54, describes the Muratorian Fragment.
[15] See Dr. Sanday's The Gospels in the Second Century, and Dr. Salmon's Introd. N.T., pp. 204-208.