literaryhistoryo02crut - Carmel Apologetics

CHAITKIJ VII.
THE BEGINNINGS OF CHURCH HISTORY-HEGESIPPUS
(a.d. 115?- a.d. 185?).
There can be no doubt that a multitude of stories and
legends concerning the great masters of the faith were
circulated at a very early date. In times of spiritual
enthusiasm, when men's minds are
strung high by hope or
suffering, the creative imagination finds abundant scope for
action in the daily record of adventure, peril, conflict, victory,
or death. We can well believe that it was one, and
not the least arduous, of the Apostles' tasks while they lived
to withstand this prevalent tendency. And it is to their
firm and sober guidance under God that we owe the complete
immunity of the New Testament writings from legendary
matter. But this restraint of the pious imagination, always
ditlicult, was not to be expected in the succeeding age. In
we may say so, supernaturalism
Palestine especially, where, if
was the order of the day, a cycle of apocryphal stories soon
clustcrL'd roimd the chief names of the Church, and gave
birth in later times to a regular literature, which lias ]>een
referred to in a former book. But, besides these, a large
number of traditions, more or less authentic, were current
among believers, partly supplementing the inspired narrative
by details on which a natural curiosity sought to be informed,
and partly satisfying tliat craving for the marvellous in
which a half-educated and uncritical society finds so strong
a support to its faith.
By far the greater number of the Church writers whose
names have come down to us were men of Hellenic culture
and authoritiitive position, whose minds moved in a sphere
of doctrinal disputation or ecclesiastical organisation far