Note 18 — Lecture II. The Literary Opposition of Heathens Against Christianity in the Early Ages.

This dialogue was held to be genuine by Fabricius; but Gesner disproved it, De Philopatride Lucianeo Dialogo Dissertatio, 1730. See also Neander's Church History, E. T. (Bohn) iii. 127, note.

The work hardly merits an analysis. Critias, looking ill, is met by Triepho. After a little banter, in which Triepho makes fun of the gods by whom Critias swears, and of their history (§ 2-18), Critias confesses that the cause that has made him pale is the hearing bad news at an assembly of Christians. Having first heard two Christian sermons, the one by a coughing preacher, who was proclaiming release from debt, the other by a threadbare mountaineer preaching a golden age, he had afterwards been persuaded to go to a private Christian meeting; and it was the prediction which he there heard of woes to the state which had so much frightened him, § 20-27. Triepho has not patience to hear him narrate the particulars. Another person enters, and the curtain falls.

The theology of the dialogue is, if viewed on its negative side, the ridicule of heathen mythology and of Christian doctrines and habits; and on its positive, the proclamation of one God as the object of worship. The work exhibits internal evidence of a knowledge of Christian practices, § 20, &c., and Christian doctrines, such as the Trinity, § 12; uses Christian phraseology, § 18; and calls Christians by the name given by Julian, Galilæan, § 12.