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[Footnote *: The emperors Hadrian, Antoninus &c., read with
astonishment the apologies of Justin Martyr, of Aristides, of
Melito, &c. (See St. Hieron. ad mag. orat. Orosius, lviii. c.
13.) Eusebius says expressly, that the cause of Christianity was
defended before the senate, in a very elegant discourse, by
Apollonius the Martyr. - G.

Gibbon, in his severer spirit of criticism, may have
questioned the authority of Jerome and Eusebius. There are some
difficulties about Apollonius, which Heinichen (note in loc.
Eusebii) would solve, by suppose lag him to have been, as Jerome
states, a senator. - M.]
[Footnote 192: If the famous prophecy of the Seventy Weeks had
been alleged to a Roman philosopher, would he not have replied in
the words of Cicero, "Quae tandem ista auguratio est, annorum
potius quam aut raensium aut dierum?" De Divinatione, ii. 30.
Observe with what irreverence Lucian, (in Alexandro, c. 13.) and
his friend Celsus ap. Origen, (l. vii. p. 327,) express
themselves concerning the Hebrew prophets.]

[Footnote 193: The philosophers who derided the more ancient
predictions of the Sibyls, would easily have detected the Jewish
and Christian forgeries, which have been so triumphantly quoted
by the fathers, from Justin Martyr to Lactantius. When the
Sibylline verses had performed their appointed task, they, like
the system of the millennium, were quietly laid aside. The
Christian Sybil had unluckily fixed the ruin of Rome for the year
195, A. U. C. 948.]

But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan
and philosophic world, to those evidences which were represented
by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their
senses? During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and of their
first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed
by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the
sick were healed, the dead were raised, daemons were expelled,
and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit
of the church. But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside
from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations
of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the
moral or physical government of the world. Under the reign of
Tiberius, the whole earth, ^194 or at least a celebrated province
of the Roman empire, ^195 was involved in a preternatural
darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous event, which ought
to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of
mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history.
^196 It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder
Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or
received the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy. Each of these
philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great
phenomena of Nature, earthquakes, meteors comets, and eclipses,
which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. ^197 Both the
one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon
to which the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of
the globe. A distinct chapter of Pliny ^198 is designed for
eclipses of an extraordinary nature and unusual duration; but he
contents himself with describing the singular defect of light
which followed the murder of Caesar, when, during the greatest
part of a year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and without
splendor. The season of obscurity, which cannot surely be
compared with the preternatural darkness of the Passion, had been
already celebrated by most of the poets ^199 and historians of
that memorable age. ^200

[Footnote 194: The fathers, as they are drawn out in battle array
by Dom Calmet, (Dissertations sur la Bible, tom. iii. p. 295 -
308,) seem to cover the whole earth with darkness, in which they
are followed by most of the moderns.]

[Footnote 195: Origen ad Matth. c. 27, and a few modern critics,
Beza, Le Clerc, Lardner, &c., are desirous of confining it to the
land of Judea.]
[Footnote 196: The celebrated passage of Phlegon is now wisely
abandoned. When Tertullian assures the Pagans that the mention of
the prodigy is found in Arcanis (not Archivis) vestris, (see his
Apology, c. 21,) he probably appeals to the Sibylline verses,
which relate it exactly in the words of the Gospel.

Note: According to some learned theologians a
misunderstanding of the text in the Gospel has given rise to this
mistake, which has employed and wearied so many laborious
commentators, though Origen had already taken the pains to
preinform them. The expression does not mean, they assert, an
eclipse, but any kind of obscurity occasioned in the atmosphere,
whether by clouds or any other cause. As this obscuration of the
sun rarely took place in Palestine, where in the middle of April
the sky was usually clear, it assumed, in the eyes of the Jews
and Christians, an importance conformable to the received notion,
that the sun concealed at midday was a sinister presage. See Amos
viii. 9, 10. The word is often taken in this sense by
contemporary writers; the Apocalypse says the sun was concealed,
when speaking of an obscuration caused by smoke and dust.
(Revel. ix. 2.) Moreover, the Hebrew word ophal, which in the
LXX. answers to the Greek, signifies any darkness; and the
Evangelists, who have modelled the sense of their expressions by
those of the LXX., must have taken it in the same latitude. This
darkening of the sky usually precedes earthquakes. (Matt. xxvii.
51.) The Heathen authors furnish us a number of examples, of
which a miraculous explanation was given at the time. See Ovid.
ii. v. 33, l. xv. v. 785. Pliny, Hist. Nat. l. ii. c 30.
Wetstein has collected all these examples in his edition of the
New Testament.

We need not, then, be astonished at the silence of the Pagan
authors concerning a phenomenon which did not extend beyond
Jerusalem, and which might have nothing contrary to the laws of
nature; although the Christians and the Jews may have regarded it
as a sinister presage. See Michaelia Notes on New Testament, v.
i. p. 290. Paulus, Commentary on New Testament, iii. p. 760. -
G.]

[Footnote 197: Seneca, Quaest. Natur. l. i. 15, vi. l. vii. 17.
Plin. Hist. Natur. l. ii.]

[Footnote 198: Plin. Hist. Natur. ii. 30.]

[Footnote 199: Virgil. Georgic. i. 466. Tibullus, l. i. Eleg. v.
ver. 75. Ovid Metamorph. xv. 782. Lucan. Pharsal. i. 540. The
last of these poets places this prodigy before the civil war.]

[Footnote 200: See a public epistle of M. Antony in Joseph.
Antiquit. xiv. 12. Plutarch in Caesar. p. 471. Appian. Bell.
Civil. l. iv. Dion Cassius, l. xlv. p. 431. Julius Obsequens,
c. 128. His little treatise is an abstract of Livy's prodigies.]





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