So far for Justin Martyr.

We will now turn to references in three or four other writers.

In the Epistle of Vienne and Lyons we find the following:—­

    “And thus was fulfilled the saying of our Lord:  ’The time shall come
    in which every one that killeth you shall think that he offereth a
    service to God.’”

This seems like a reference to John xvi. 2.  The words, with some very slight variation, are to be found there and not to be found elsewhere.  The letter of the Churches was written about A.D. 178 “at the earliest,” we are told by the author of “Supernatural Religion.”  Well, we will make him a present of a few years, and suppose that it was written ten or twelve years later, i.e. about A.D. 190.  Now we find that Irenaeus had written his great work, “Against Heresies,” before this date.  Surely, then, the notion of the writer of “Supernatural Religion,” that we are to suppose that this was taken from some lost Apocryphal Gospel when Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, had actually used a written Gospel which contains it, refutes itself.

We turn to Athenagoras.

We find in his work, “Plea (or Embassy) for the Christians” (ch. x.), the following:—­

“But the Son of God is the Logos of the Father in idea and in operation, for after the pattern of Him and by Him were all things made, the Father and the Son being one [I and My Father are one], and the Son being in the Father, and the Father in the Son, in oneness and power of spirit,” &c. (John xiv. 10.)

Again (ch. xii.):—­

“Men who reckon the present life of very small worth indeed, and who are conducted to the future life by this one thing alone, that they know God and His Logos.” [This is life eternal, that they may know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.]

Can the writer of “Supernatural Religion” be serious when he writes, “He nowhere identifies the Logos with Jesus?” Does the writer of “Supernatural Religion” seriously think that a Christian writer, living in 177, and presenting to the emperor a plea for Christians, would have any difficulty about identifying Jesus with that Son of God Whom he expressly states to be the Logos of God?

The following also are seeming quotations from the Synoptics in Athenagoras.

“What, then, are those precepts in which we are instructed?  ’I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse, pray for them that persecute you, that ye may be sons of your Father which is in the heavens, who maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.’

    “’For if ye love them which love you, and lend to them which lend to
    you, what reward shall ye have?’

    “’For whosoever, He says, looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath
    committed adultery already in his heart.’