and that—­

    “The most ancient Word is the image of God” (p. 274);

and that

    “The Word is the image of God by which the whole world was created”
    (p. 275);

surely, I say, he would have used the name of one who had been in his day such a champion of the Jewish people, and had suffered such insults from Caligula on their account. [100:1]

Nothing seems more appropriate for the conversion of Trypho than many of the extracts from Philo given by the author of “Supernatural Religion.”  Herein, too, in this matter of Philo and Justin, the author of “Supernatural Religion” betrays his surprising inconsistency and refutes himself.  He desires it to be inferred that Justin need not have seen—­probably had not seen, even one of our present Gospels, because he does not name the authors, though there is abundant reason why the names of four authors of the Memoirs should not be paraded before unbelievers as suggesting differences in the testimony; whereas it would have been the greatest assistance to him in his argument with Trypho to have named Philo; and he does not.  We would not infer from this, as the author of “Supernatural Religion” does most absurdly in parallel cases, that Justin “knew nothing” of Philo; had not even seen his books, and need not have heard of him; but we must gather from it that Justin did not associate the name of Philo with the Logos doctrine in its most advanced stage of development.  Many other facts tend to show that Justin made little or no use of Philo.  In the extracts given by the author of “Supernatural Religion” from Philo, all culled out to serve his purpose, the reader will notice many words and phrases “foreign” to Justin; for instance, [Greek:  deuteros Theos, organon de Logon Theou, di’ hou sympas ho kosmos edemiourgeito].  More particularly the reader will notice that such adjectives as [Greek:  orthos, hieros (hierotatos)] and [Greek:  presbys (presbytatos)] are applied to the Word in the short extracts from Philo given by the author of “Supernatural Religion,” which are never applied to the Second Person of the Trinity in Justin.  In fact, though there are some slight resemblances, the terminology of Philo is, to use the words of “Supernatural Religion,” “totally different from” and “opposed to” that of Justin, and the more closely it is examined, the more clearly it will be seen that Justin cannot have derived his Logos doctrine from Philo.

The other question is, “from whom did Justin derive his identification of the Logos with Jesus?”

Not from Philo, certainly.  We have shown above how St. John lays down with authority the identity of the Logos with the pre-existent Divine Nature of Jesus, not in long, elaborate, carefully reasoned philosophical dissertation, but in four short, clear, decisive enunciations.  “In the beginning was the Word”—­“The Word was with God”—­“The Word was God”—­“The Word was made flesh.”