The Christian contemporaries of Irenæus, Tertullian, and Epiphanius were uncritical in that they did not doubt that the foundations of their faith were sure. The gospel which had been preached to them, which had changed the whole course of their lives, corresponded in its main features with the four books which were held in estimation by the Church at that time above all other writings; and they would not be likely to wrangle about the title instead of cultivating the faith they possessed. They could not, perhaps, prove by the rules of logic that "God is, and is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him;" that Christ is the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his Person; but they knew that He had said,--"Ye believe in God believe also in me;" "In my Father's house are many mansions;" and, "I go to prepare a place for you." "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." They lived in the consciousness of these truths, and died (Bishop Pothinus, for instance) a martyr's death rather than deny them. There is this remark to be made in reference to the alleged uncritical age of the Fathers. How is it that Marcion is seen to be so critical? He is surely after the modern model. He who wrote the "Antithesis," and, as our author says, anticipated in some of his opinions those held by many in our own time; he who wrote,--"If the God of the Old Testament be good, prescient of the future, and able to avert evil, why did he allow man, made in his own image, to be deceived by the devil, and to fall from obedience of the law into sin and death?[42] How came the devil, the origin of lying and deceit, to be made at all?"[43] surely he is an instance of a man in that age possessing the critical faculty. He has the boldness to question, and say,--"Yea, hath God said?" "Anticipating the results of modern criticism," says our author, "Marcion denies the applicability to Jesus of the so-called Messianic prophecies" (p. 106). [42] Tertullian, "Adv. Marc." xi. 5, cf. 9. [43] Ibid. xi. 10.