- vinced Cæcilius of the truth of the new faith, is the principal
piece in the work and the part to which reference is specially made here, and it admirably voices many of the views of the second and gentler school of early Christianity. The criticism of Renan on the view of Christianity taken by Octavius is striking, and fairly accurate. It is, he says, "the conception of the new religion of amiable advocates wishful to enrol in the Christian ranks, men of culture and position. Such men as the Octavius of the Dialogue would never have written the Gospels or the Apocalypse; but, on the other hand, without such liberal interpreters, the Gospels, the Apocalypse, and the Epistles of Paul would have never penetrated beyond the circle of a narrow sect, and in the long run the sect of Christians would have disappeared." "Minucius Felix," the great French writer, goes on to say, "represented in those early years the preacher of Nôtre Dâme (in Paris) in our own time, addressing men of the world."[1]
Christianity, in the eloquent presentment of Octavius, by no means requires the believer to put aside the philosophers and pagan writers whose works he admired. In the argument of Octavius, Christian teaching lives in the pages of Aristotle and Plato. He points out with rare skill and ingenuity that the new religion makes no claim on men to give up their callings and professions; for instance, advocates like Minucius, the author of "the Dialogue," never dream, save in times of vacation, of leaving the Forum the scene of their life-work. Christians, like other men, busy themselves with the same occupations; so society may surely accept them without any scruples. The cultivation of Art—the study of Letters—are by no means incompatible with the profession of Christianity. The religion of Jesus uses all these things, and using them sanctifies them.
Eminent teachers, such as Clement of Alexandria at the close of the second century in his Pædagogus, give directions to believers to enable them to live a Christian life in the world. Origen, in many respects a "Rigourist," is far from emulating Tertullian in his stern denunciations and warnings; and even such men as the saintly Cyprian, who closed his beautiful life by a voluntary martyrdom, shows
- ↑ See Renan, Marc-Aurèle, chap. xxii.
