A Literary History of Early Christianity, Vol. 2 of 2: Including the Fathers and the Chief Heretical Writers of the Ante-Nicene Period; For the Use of Students and General Readers (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

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Excerpt from A Literary History of Early Christianity, Vol. 2 of 2: Including the Fathers and the Chief Heretical Writers of the Ante-Nicene Period; For the Use of Students and General Readers

Few, if any, of the apologists are so well known as Justin, and few, if any, deserve their reputation better. He is not, indeed, a great man, and he can scarcely be called a great writer; but he is a man of transparent frankness and sin cerity, and a writer whose sole aim is to explain and defend the truth. What he lacks in depth of thought he makes up by breadth of sympathy. If his rhetorical skill is imperfect, he is persuasive from his simple earnestness. In his youth he had been devoted to philosophy, and after his conversion he saw no cause either to forego the pursuit or to abandon its distinctive dress. To the last he calls himself Justin the Philosopher, a title which the Church has superseded by the more glorious one of Justin the Martyr. The key to his mind is its thirst for intellectual satisfaction. He is no original genius who can think out a system for himself no bold critic who, while accepting a system, can see through its weak points; but he is pre-eminently the fair-minded student, the man of large culture, to whom the philosophic presentment of truth is so necessary that he cannot rest until he finds it. And so to him the Christian revelation comes in the guise of the true philosophy. He is not blind to its other aspects, but this is the one that holds him. And it is to the quiet but unflinching persistency with which he puts it forward that the effect of his writings upon the Church is mainly due.

We shall include in our notice of him a brief account of his life and works, and then endeavour to estimate his posi tion in Christian literature.

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