This “Christusbild” theory (carried by a few extremists to the point of denying that Apollonius ever existed) has had a great vogue among writers on the subject, especially compilers of encyclopædia articles; it is at any rate a wider issue than the traditional miracle-wrangle, which was again revived in all its ancient narrowness by Newman, who only uses Apollonius as an excuse for a dissertation on orthodox miracles, to which he devotes eighteen pages out of the twenty-five of his treatise. Noack also follows Baur, and to some extent Pettersch, though he takes the subject onto the ground of philosophy; while Mönckeberg, pastor of St. Nicolai in Hamburg, though striving to be fair to Apollonius, ends his chatty dissertation with an outburst of orthodox praises of Jesus, praises which we by no means grudge, but which are entirely out of place in such a subject. The development of the Jesus-Apollonius miracle-controversy into the Jesus-against-Apollonius and even Christ-against-Anti-Christ battle, fought out with relays of lusty champions on the one side against a feeble protest at best on the other, is a painful spectacle to contemplate. How sadly must Jesus and Apollonius have looked upon, and still look upon, this bitter and useless strife over their saintly persons. Why should posterity set their memories one against the other? Did they oppose one another in life? Did even their biographers do so after their deaths? Why then could not the controversy have ceased with Eusebius? For Lactantius frankly admits the point brought forward by Hierocles (to exemplify which Hierocles only referred to Apollonius as one instance out of many)--that “miracles” do not prove divinity. We rest our claims, says Lactantius, _not_ on miracles, but on the fulfilment of prophecy.[51] Had this more sensible position been revived instead of that of Eusebius, the problem of Apollonius would have been considered in its natural historical environment four hundred years ago, and much ink and paper would have been saved.