When our Lord and His Apostles declare themselves to be sent from God, this claim to a divine mission illustrates and gives dignity to their profession of extraordinary power; whereas the divinity,[347] no less than the gift of miracles to which Apollonius laid claim, must be understood in its Pythagorean sense, as referring not to any intimate connection with a Supreme Agent, but to his partaking, through his theurgic skill, more largely than others in the perfections of the animating principle of nature.

6.

4. Yet, whatever is understood by his miraculous gift and his divine nature, certainly his works were not adduced as vouchers for his divinity, nor were they, in fact, the principal cause of his reputation.

What we desiderate is a contemporary appeal to them, on the part of himself or his friends; as St. Paul speaks of his miracles to the Romans and Corinthians, even calling them in one place "the signs of an Apostle;" or as St. Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, details the miracles of both St. Peter and St. Paul.[348] Far different is it with Apollonius: we meet with no claim to extraordinary power in his Letters; nor when returning thanks to a city for public honours bestowed on him, nor when complaining to his brother of the neglect of his townsmen, nor when writing to his opponent Euphrates.[349] To the Milesians, indeed, he speaks of earthquakes which he had predicted; but without appealing to the prediction in proof of his authority.[350] Since, then, he is so far from insisting on his pretended extraordinary powers, and himself connects the acquisition of them with his Eastern expedition,[351] we may conclude that credit for possessing magical secrets was a _part_ of the reputation which that expedition conferred. A foreign appearance, singularity of manners, a life of travel, and pretences to superior knowledge, excite the imagination of beholders;[352] and, as in the case of a wandering people among ourselves, appear to invite the persons who are thus distinguished, to fraudulent practices. Apollonius is represented as making converts as soon as seen.[353] It was not, then his display of marvels, but his Pythagorean dress and mysterious deportment, which arrested attention, and made him thought superior to other men, because he was different from them. Like Lucian's Alexander[354] (who was all but his disciple), he was skilled in medicine, professed to be favoured by aesculapius, pretended to foreknowledge, was in collusion with the heathen priests, and was supported by the Oracles; and being more strict in conduct than the Paphlagonian,[355] he established a more lasting celebrity. His usefulness to political aspirants contributed to his success; perhaps also the real and contemporary miracles of the Christian teachers would dispose many minds easily to acquiesce in any claims of a similar character.

7.

5. In the foregoing remarks we have admitted, the general fidelity of the history, because ancient authors allow it, and there was no necessity to dispute it. Tried however on his own merits, it is quite unworthy of serious attention. Not only in the miraculous accounts (as we have already seen), but in the relation of a multitude of ordinary facts, an effort to rival our Saviour's history is distinctly visible.

The favour in which Apollonius from a child was held by gods and men; his conversations when a youth in the Temple of aesculapius; his determination in spite of danger to go up to Rome;[356] the cowardice of his disciples in deserting him; the charge brought against him of disaffection to Caesar; the Minister's acknowledging, on his private examination, that he was more than man; the ignominious treatment of him by Domitian on his second appearance at Rome; his imprisonment with criminals; his vanishing from Court and sudden reappearance to his mourning disciples at Puteoli;[357]--these, with other particulars of a similar cast, evidence a history modelled after the narrative of the Evangelists. Expressions, moreover, and descriptions occur, clearly imitated from the sacred volume. To this we must add[358] the rhetorical colouring of the whole composition, so contrary to the sobriety of truth;[359] the fabulous accounts of things and places interspersed through the history;[360] lastly, we must bear in mind the principle, recognised by the Pythagorean and Eclectic schools, of permitting exaggeration and deceit in the cause of philosophy.[361]

After all, it must be remembered, that were the pretended miracles as unexceptionable as we have shown them to be absurd and useless--were they plain interruptions of established laws--were they grave and dignified in their nature, and important in their object, and were there nothing to excite suspicion in the design, manner, or character of the narrator--still the testimony on which they rest is the bare word of an author writing one hundred years after the death of the person panegyrized, and far distant from the places in which most of the miracles were wrought, and who can give no better account of his information than that he gained it from an unpublished work,[362]

professedly indeed composed by a witness of the extraordinary transactions, but passing into his hands through two intermediate possessors. These are circumstances which almost, without positive objections, are sufficient by their own negative force to justify a summary rejection of the whole account. Unless, indeed, the history had been perverted to a mischievous purpose, we should esteem it impertinent to direct argument against a mere romance, and to subject a work of imagination to a grave discussion.

FOOTNOTES:

[274] Olear. ad Philostr. i. 12.

[275] By Lord Herbert and Mr. Blount.

[276] Philostr. i. 3.

[277] Philostr. i. 2, 3.

[278] His work was called [Greek: Logoi Philaletheis pros Christianous]'

on this subject see Mosheim, _Dissertat. de turbata per recentiores Platonicos Ecclesia_, Sec. 25.

[279] Philostr i. 17, vi. 11.

[280] Philostr. i. 7.

[281] Ibid. i. 8.

[282] Ibid. i. 13.

[283] Ibid. i. 14, 15.

[284] Brucker, vol. ii. p. 104.

[285] Philostr. i. 16.

[286] See Olear. _praefat. ad vitam._ As he died, U.C. 849, he is usually considered to have lived to a hundred. Since, however, here is an interval of almost twenty years in which nothing important happens, in a part also of his life unconnected with any public events to fix its chronology, it is highly probable that the date of his birth is put too early. Philostratus says that accounts varied, making him live eighty, ninety, or one hundred years; see viii. 29. See also ii. 12, where, by some inaccuracy, he makes him to have been in India twenty years _before_ he was at Babylon.--Olear. _ad locum et praefat. ad vit._ The common date of his birth is fixed by his biographer's merely accidental mention of the revolt of Archelaus against the Romans, as taking place before Apollonius was twenty years old; see i. 12.

[287] Philostr. i. 19.

[288] Philostr. i. 27-41.

[289] Ibid. ii. 1-40. Brucker, vol. ii. p. 110.

[290] Ibid. iii. 51.

[291] Ibid. iv. 1. Acts xiii. 8; see also Acts viii. 9-11, and xix.

13-16.

[292] Ibid. iv. 11, _et seq._

[293] When denied at the latter place he forced his way in.--Philostr.

viii. 19.

[294] Ibid. iv. 35. Brucker (vol. ii. p. 118) with reason thinks this prohibition extended only to the profession of magic.

[295] Ibid. iv. 40, etc.

[296] Brucker, vol. ii. p. 120.

[297] Philostr. v. 10.

[298] Astrologers were concerned in Libo's conspiracy against Tiberius, and punished. Vespasian, as we shall have occasion to notice presently, made use of them in furthering his political plans.--Tacit. Hist. ii.

78. We read of their predicting Nero's accession, the deaths of Vitellius and Domitian, etc. They were sent into banishment by Tiberius, Claudius, Vitellius, and Domitian. Philostratus describes Nero as issuing his edict _on leaving the Capital_ for Greece, iv. 47. These circumstances seem to imply that astrology, magic, etc, were at that time of considerable service in political intrigues.

[299] Philostr. v. ii, etc.

[300] Ibid. v. 20, etc.

[301] Philostr. v. 27.

[302] Tacitus relates, that when Vespasian was going to the _Serapeum, ut super rebus imperii consuleret_, Basilides, an Egyptian, who was at the time eighty miles distant, suddenly appeared to him; from his name the emperor drew an omen that the god sanctioned his assumption of the Imperial power.--Hist. iv. 82. This sufficiently agrees in substance with the narrative of Philostratus to give the latter some probability.

It was on this occasion that the famous cures are said to have been wrought.

[303] As Egypt supplied Rome with corn, Vespasian by taking possession of that country almost secured to himself the Empire.--Tacit. Hist. ii.

82, iii. 8. Philostratus insinuates that he was already in possession of supreme power, and came to Egypt for the sanction of Apollonius. [Greek: Ten men archen kektemeuos, dialexomeuos de tps audri]. v. 27.

[304] Philostr. v. 31.

[305] Brucker, vol. ii. p. 566, etc.

[306] Philostr. v. 37, he makes Euphrates say to Vespasian, [Greek: Philosophian, o basileu, ten men kata physin echainei kai aspazou ten de theoklutein phaskousan paraitou katapseudomenoi gar tou theiou polla kai anoeta, emas epairousi.] See Brucker; and Apollon. Epist. 8.

[307] Ibid. vi. 1, etc.

[308] Philostr. vi. 29, etc.

[309] Ibid. vii. 1, etc., see Brucker, vol. ii. p. 128.

[310] Ibid. viii. 5, 6, etc. On account of his foretelling the pestilence he was honoured as a god by the Ephesians, vii. 21. Hence this prediction appeared in the indictment.