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This writer has left us a great many monuments of a mind educated and
practiced in divine things, which are replete with profitable matter of
every kind. To them we shall refer the studious, noting as we proceed
those that have come to our knowledge. There is a certain discourse of
his in defense of our doctrine addressed to Antoninus surnamed t the
Pious, and to his sons, and to the Roman senate. Another work
contains his second Apology in behalf of our faith, which he offered
to him who was the successor of the emperor mentioned and who bore the
same name, Antoninus Verus, the one whose times we are now
recording. Also another work against the Greeks, in which he
discourses at length upon most of the questions at issue between us and
the Greek philosophers, and discusses the nature of demons. It is
not necessary for me to add any of these things here. And still
another work of his against the Greeks has come down to us, to which
he gave the title Refutation. And besides these another, On the
Sovereignty of God, which he establishes not only from our
Scriptures, but also from the books of the Greeks. Still further,
a work entitled Psaltes, and another disputation On the Soul, in
which, after propounding various questions concerning the problem under
discussion, he gives the opinions of the Greek philosophers,
promising to refute it, and to present his own view in another work.
He composed also a dialogue against the Jews, which he held in the
city of Ephesus with Trypho, a most distinguished man among the
Hebrews of that day. In it he shows how the divine grace urged him on
to the doctrine of the faith, and with what earnestness he had formerly
pursued philosophical studies, and how ardent a search he had made for
the truth. And he records of the Jews in the same work, that they
were plotting against the teaching of Christ, asserting the same
things against Trypho: "Not only did you not repent of the
wickedness which you had committed, but you selected at that time
chosen men, and you sent them out from Jerusalem through all the
land, to announce that the godless heresy of the Christians had made
its appearance, and to accuse them of those things which all that are
ignorant of us say against us, so that you become the causes not only
of your own injustice, but also of all other men's." He writes also
that even down to his time prophetic gifts shone in the Church. And
he mentions the Apocalypse of John, saying distinctly that it was the
apostle's. He also refers to certain prophetic declarations, and
accuses Trypho on the ground that the Jews had cut them out of the
Scripture. A great many other works of his are still in the hands of
many of the brethren. And the discourses of the man were thought so
worthy of study even by the ancients, that Irenaeus quotes his words:
for instance, in the fourth book of his work Against Heresies, where
he writes as follows: "And Justin well says in his work against
Marcion, that he would not have believed the Lord himself if he had
preached another God besides the Creator"; and again in the fifth
book of the same work he says: "And Justin well said that before the
coming of the Lord Satan never dared to blaspheme God, because he
did not yet know his condemnation." These things I have deemed it
necessary to say for the sake of stimulating the studious to peruse his
works with diligence. So much concerning him.
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