healed the blind, and the lame, and demoniacs,' and ' to have rebuked the winds, and walked upon the waves of the sea.' He endeavors indeed to diminish these works ; but in vain. The consequence is un- deniable : such works are good proofs of a divine mission. He endeavors also to lessen the number of the early believers in Jesus, and yet he acknowledgeth, that there were ' multitudes of such men in Greece and Italy,' before St. John wrote his gospel. He likewise affects to diminish the quality of the early believers; and yet acknowledgeth, that beside 'men- servants, and maidservants,' Cornelius, a Roman centurion at Csesarea, and Sergius Paulus, proconsul of Cyprus, were con- verted to the faith of Jesus before the end of the reign of Claudius. And he often speaks with great indignation of Peter and Paul, those two great apostles of Jesus, and sucess- ful preachers of his gospel. So that, upon the whole, he has undesignedly borne witness to the truth of many things re- corded in the books of the New Testament : he aimed to over- throw the Christian religion, but has confirmed it : his argu- ments against it are perfectly harmless, and insufficient to unsettle the weakest Christian. He justly excepts to some things introduced into the Christian profession by the late pro- § 9. JDXIAn's attack UPOxVI CHRISTIANITY. 79 lessors of it, in his ov^'n time, or sooner ; but has not made one objection of moment against the Christian religion, as contained in the genuine and authentic books of the New Testament." ' . The other worI\:s against Christianity are far less im- portant. The dialogue Philopatkis, or The Patriot, is ascribed in- deed to the ready scoffer and satirist Lucian (died about 200), and joined to his works; but it is vastly inferior in style and probably belongs to the reign of Julian, or a still later period ; ^ since it combats the church doctrine of the Trinity and of the procession of the Spirit from the Father, though not by argument, but only by ridicule. It is a frivolous derision of the character and doctrines of the Christians in the form of a dialogue between Critias, a professed heathen, and Triephon, an Epicurean, per- sonating a Christian. It represents the Christians as disaffected to the government, dangerous to civil society, and delighting in public calamities. It calls St. Paul a half bald, long-nosed Galilean, who travelled through the air to the third heaven (2 Cor. 12, 1-4). The last renowned representative of Neo-Platonism, Pro- CLus of Athens (died 487), defended the Platonic doctrine of the eternity of the world, and, without mentioning Christianity, contested the biblical doctrine of the creation and the end of the world in eighteen arguments, which the Christian philoso- pher, John Philoponus, refuted in the seventh century. The last heathen historians, Eunapius and Zosn,ius, of the first half of the fifth century, indirectly assailed Christianity by a one-sided representation