society or happiness of the just. Instead of that they should be removed into a sort of elysium, to the enjoyment of a different kind of life, and a different kind of happiness by themselves. Origen on the contrary, was of opinion, that when the punishment of the reprobate had been fully undergone, and had come to an end in the due course of time, there would no longer be any difference between one class of the subjects of immortal happiness and another; but that good angels and bad angels, good men and bad men, would all be taken into favour with God alike, and all admitted into heaven alike ". If the two points, for which we have contended, first, that the extant Sibylline Oracles were the composition of a Christian of some description or other; secondly, that the author of them, whosoever he was, did not live, or did not write, later than the reign of Hadrian, be admitted; then, for the sake of the argument, deducible from their testimony, in favour of the antiquity of the millenary doctrines, and their general reception in the primitive Christian church, it makes no difference whether they are considered the work of one person, or of more, provided they are still the composition of a Christian; whether they r Not to insist again on the argument that the writings of a Sibyll, later than the time of Origen, could not have been known to Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Theophilus, &c.-it would be a great objection to the supposition that these Oracles were not older than his time, that lib. v. 628. 9. they speak of no kingdom, as yet in being, in Upper Asia, but the Parthian. In Origen's time, the second Persian kingdom had already overturned the Parthian. were published at once, or at different times, provided they are to be comprehended between such and such a period in the first century, and the end of the reign of Hadrian. On the contrary, it would add, in my opinion, to the value of their testimony, and to the strength of the argument deducible from it, could it be proved that they were the work of different Christians, writing independently of each other; and that they were all published, though at different times, between the end of the first century, and the expiration of the reign of Hadrian. The first of these positions, I consider to be incontrovertibly true; and the second, upon grounds of internal probability, to be in the highest degree credible. Under these circumstances, I shall not think of adding to the length of this dissertation, by entering minutely upon the question of the authenticity of the present collection; or how far it is, or is not, to be considered the same with that which was known to the Fathers, under the title of the Sibylline Oracles, and which is repeatedly quoted by them. Were there no proof that the present collection was known even by name to the Fathers, much less recognised and quoted by them; still if its own internal evidence shewed it to be the work of a Christian, and of a Christian of very high antiquity, a contemporary of Hadrian, or of earlier Roman emperors, its authority, as calculated to throw light upon doctrines and expectations at that time current among Christians, would not be diminished and impaired, by the absence of external evidence to the fact of its own existence at or about the period to which it belonged. That a collection of Oracles, indeed, which passed by the name of the Sibylline, was known to the Fathers, and is often quoted by them, as a production containing a variety of testimonies to the facts or doctrines of Christianity; it is impossible to deny. It is on every account more reasonable to suppose, that the collection thus referred to was some one and the same in each instance, than that it was something different for it is never spoken of, or referred to, or quoted by the Fathers in question, except as the Sibylline Oracles, άπλ☎‹. The άpy of this collection, as such, or a part of it, is quoted at considerable length, by Theophilus, Ad Autolycum; and Theophilus' own age was the middle of the second century. There is a still earlier reference to such a collection, in Justin Martyr's Cohortatio ad Græcost the author of which this father supposed to be the Cumæan Sibyll, or the Sibyll who settled at Cuma in Italy, though originally of Chaldæa, and as he thought, the daughter of Berosus; and from which he quotes one line, to the following effect": * (ὂν πρῶτον πλάσας μερόπων,) "Αδαμ δὲ καλέσσας. And though this line may not be found in the extant Oracles, yet when we consider the mutilated r Lib. ii. " Cap. xli. 750. 1. 317. 9. 52. cap. page 234-252. t Cap. xxxix-xlii. * Perhaps τὸν πρῶτον μερόπων ὁ πλασας. Cf. viii. y Something like it certainly occurs, lib. ii. αὐτὸς δὴ θεός ἐσθ' ὁ πλάσας τετραγράμματον 'Αδάμ, Cf. the note supra, 221. state in which they have come down to us, such an omission will excite no surprise. In other respects, Justin's description of the Oracles known to himself, general as it is, would suit the character and constitution of those which are now extant: and if these, or any part of them, were actually in being, under their present name, before the end of the reign of Hadrian, they might be known to Justin; whose extant works do not appear to have been written before the reign of Antoninus Pius, if not of Marcus Aurelius ". There would be little difficulty, however, to shew that the Sibylline Oracles, extant in the time of Lactantius, and known to him, must on every account be supposed the same in general as those which were known to earlier Christian writers; and with this admission, it becomes a strong presumptive argument that the collection known to any of the Fathers of the first three centuries, was the same in the main with that which exists at present, that only one of the books of the collection, extant in the time of Lactantius, was actually referred to one of the Sibylls of antiquity by name-the rest though supposed to be the work of some Sibyll, as much as that, were anonymous". This circumstance is a characteristic of the collection which exists at present. The third book alone is ascribed by name to one of the Sibylls, as a known historical person of antiquity; viz. the Erythræan-and in that passage, referred to at the outset of this discussion, where the Pseudo-Sibyll, while declaring herself to z Vide my Supp. Diss. vi. 53-63. a Divin. Institt. i. cap. vi. pag. 27. Cf. lib. iv. 15. 359. be really an Assyrian, yet predicts that she should pass among men in the course of time, for a native of Erythra b. To the authenticity indeed, and to the assumed antiquity of this third book in particular, (which contains as clear a testimony to the millenary doctrines as any,) a degree of confirmation is given, above the rest, not only by the many quotations from it, occurring in Lactantius, and agreeing upon the whole with what is still to be found in it, but by the testimony of Athenagoras, and of Theophilus, bishop of Antioch; the former of whom, in his Legatio pro Christianis, written before the death of Lucius Verus, that is, before A. D. 169. quotes six lines from it, which are still to be met with in it; the latter, in his work Ad Autolycum, (brought down to the end of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, A. D. 180,) quotes ten lines from it, which, with some va b Lib. iii. page 482. 9-483. 8. No Christian writer, of equal antiquity, refers to the Sibylline Oracles so repeatedly as Lactantius: so much so, that to produce all the instances of these references which occur in his Institutiones or other extant works, and to compare them with the Oracles, as at present in existence, would be almost an endless task. I shall be satisfied to point out to the reader, the places where these quotations are to be found in Lactantius; the passages themselves he may afterwards compare, if he pleases, with the Oracles, inter legendum. They are, I believe, the following: Divin. Institt. liber i. cap. 6, 7, 8; 11. p. 51; 15. p. 67: lib. ii. cap. 10, 11; 12. p. 187; 16: lib. iv. cap. 6; 15. 356–359: 16, 17; 18. p. 370, 371; 19. 20: lib. vii. 16; 18, 19, 20; 23, 24: De Ira Dei, capp. 22, 23. Legatio, page 138. 141. Cf. Sibyllina Orac. lib. iii. 343. 3-345. 1. |