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Tatian, Hermas, Theophilus, and Tertullian savagely attacked profane poetry, and in defending it Basil, Athenagoras, Clement, and Origen were forced not unwillingly to rely more and more on the traditional moralistic theory of poetry which was so familiar to them. St. Chrysostom records that in the fourth century Homer was still taught as a guide to morals.
Of far more importance than either Justin or Tatian are such writings as remain of the immediate successors of the apostles Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, and Ignatius: it is asserted confidently that in these there are quotations from the Gospels so exact that they cannot be mistaken. We will examine them one by one.
On account of a single individual, Tatian, who had offended that minister, all the provincials were excluded from public offices.
Some time after this Zeno died suddenly, and they took possession of his property as his heirs, producing a will which, it is currently reported, was never made by him. In like manner they made themselves the heirs of Tatian, of Demosthenes, and of Hilara, persons who at that time held the first rank in the Roman Senate.
Noble's Plenary Inspiration. "The idea of a spiritual sense in every part of the Scripture was the generally received doctrine of the Primitive Church believed and taught by Origen, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Jerome, Augustine, Pantaenus, Tatian, Theophilus, Pamphilius, Clement and Cyril of Alexandria, and nearly all the early Christian Fathers.
Tatian, who was the disciple of Justin, in his oration to the Greeks, speaks precisely in the same terms on the same subject. From the different expressions of Clemens of Alexandria, a contemporary of the latter, we collect his opinion to be decisive against the lawfulness of war.
By joining passages and verses and parts of verses taken from the different Gospels, by omitting verbal duplicates, by rearranging in some cases and by occasionally adding a word or phrase to join dissimilar parts, Tatian produced a marvellous mosaic gospel, known as the Diatessaron. All of the Fourth Gospel is thus preserved, and most of the first three.
In his close fusion of three or four parallel narratives the editor's work resembled most closely that of Tatian, who thus combined the four Gospels in his Diatessaron. So far as we are able to observe, the final editor of the Hexateuch preserved, like Tatian, most of the material in his older sources, except where a parallel version verbally duplicated another.
The text was in other places different, so much so that Theodoret accuses Tatian of having mutilated the Gospels; but of this Theodoret had probably no better means of judging than we have. The 'Diatessaron' has been long lost, and the name is the only clue to its composition.
Such were Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Aristides, Hermias, Minucius Felix, Arnobius, and Lactantius. In like manner in this age some of the most prominent defences of the Church are from laymen: as De Maistre, Chateaubriand, Nicolas, Montalembert, and others. If laymen may write, lay students may read; they surely may read what their fathers may have written.
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