NOTE.

As a further illustration of the characters and sufferings of the primitive professors of Christianity, it has been judged desirable to close the present volume with a selection from the learned Author's elaborate work entitled "Apostolici, or History of the Lives, &c. of those who were contemporary with, or immediately succeeded the Apostles, as also of the most eminent Fathers, for the first three hundred Years."

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ST. JUSTIN THE MARTYR.

JUSTIN the Martyr was one, as of the most learned, so of the most early writers of the eastern church, not long after the apostles, as Eusebius says of him;' near to them xpóvų ǹ åpɛry, says Methodius, bishop of Tyre, both in time and virtue. And near indeed, if we strictly understand what he says of himself, that he was a disciple of the apostles;3 which surely is meant either of the apostles at large, as comprehending their immediate successors, or probably not of the persons, but doctrine and writings of the apostles, by which he was instructed in the knowledge of Christianity. He was born at Neapolis; a noted city of Palestine, within the province of Samaria, anciently called Sichem. His father was Priscus, the son of Bacchius, a Gentile, and (as Scaliger probably thinks") one of those Greeks which were in that colony transplanted

1 Hist. Eccl. ii. c. 13, p. 50.

2 Ap. Phot. Cod. ccxxxiv. col. 921.

3 Epist. ad Diognet. p. 501. 'Aπоsóλwv yivóμɛvos μadŋτὴς γίνομαι διδάσκαλος ἐθνῶν.

Apol. ii. p. 53.

5 Animadv. ad Eus. Chron. N. MMCLVII. 219.

thither, who took care together with religion to have him educated in all the learning and philosophy of the Gentile world. And indeed how great and exact a master he was in all their arts and learning, how thoroughly he had digested the best and most useful notions which their institutions of philosophy could afford, his writings at this day are an abundant evidence.

In his younger years, and, as is probable, before his conversion to Christianity, he travelled into foreign parts for the accomplishment of his studies, and particularly into Egypt, the staple place of all the more mysterious and recondite parts of learning and religion, and therefore constantly visited by all the more grave and sage philosophers among the heathens. Among the several sects of philosophers, after he had run through and surveyed all the forms, he pitched his tent among the Platonists,' whose notions were most agreeable to the natural sentiments of his mind, and which no doubt particularly disposed him for the entertainment of Christianity, himself telling us, that the principles of that philosophy, though not in all things alike, were not yet alien or contrary to the doctines of the Christian faith. But alas, he found no satisfaction to his mind either in this, or any other, till he arrived at a full persuasion of the truth and divinity of that religion which was so much despised by the wise and the learned, so much opposed and trampled on by the grandees and powers of the world. Whereof, and of the manner of his conversion to the Christian religion, he has given us a very large and punctual account in his discourse with Trypho. 2 Ib. p. 51.

Apol. i. (revera ii.) p. 50.