scurrilous name more, which it is not very easy to guess the meaning of. He calls them _Plautinians_*,--_homines Plautinae prosapiae_. Rigaltius** takes it for a ridicule upon the poverty and simplicity of the Christians, whom the heathens commonly represented as a company of poor ignorant mechanics, bakers, tailors, and the like; men of the same quality with Plautus, who, as St. Jerome*** observes, was so poor, that at a time of famine he was forced to hire out himself to a baker to grind at his mill, during which time he wrote three of his Plays in the intervals of his labour. Such sort of men Coecilius says the Christians were; and therefore he styles Octavius in the dialogue, _homo Plautinae prosapiae et pistorum praecipuus_, 'a Plautinian, a chief man among the illiterate bakers,' but no philosopher. The same reflection is often made by Celsus. "You shall see," says he****, "weavers, tailors,fullers, and the most illiterate and rustic fellows, who dare not speak a word before wise men, when they can get a company of children and silly women together, set up to teach strange paradoxes amongst * Minuc. p. 37. Quid ad haec audet Octavius homo Plautinae Prosapiae, ut Pistorum praecipuus ita postremus Philosophorum? ** Rigalt. in loc. *** Hieron. Chronic, an. 1. Olymp. 145. **** Origen. c Cels. lib. 3. p. 144. {110} them." "This is one of their rules," says he again*,--"Let no man that is learned, wise, or prudent come among us; but if any be unlearned, or a child, or an ideot, let him freely come. So they openly declare, that none but fools and sots, and such as want sense, slaves, women, and children, are fit disciples for the God they worship***." Nor was it only the heathens that thus reviled them, but commonly every perverse sect among the Christians had some reproachful name to cast upon them. The Novatian party called them _Cornelieans_*** because they communicated with Cornelius bishop of Rome, rather than with Novatianus his antagonist. They also termed them _Apostates, Capitolins, Synedrians_, because**** they charitably decreed in their synods to receive apostates, and such as went to the Capitol to sacrifice, into their communion again upon their sincere repentance. The Nestorians(v) termed the orthodox _Cyrillians_; and the Arians(vi) called them _Eustathians_ and * Origen. c. Cels. lib. 3. p. 137. f See the preceding translation of Celsus, p. 19. f Eulog. ap. Phot. Cod. 280. Sec. Facian. Ep. 2. ad Sympronian. || Ep. Legat. Schismat ad suos in Epheso in Act. Con. Ephes. Con. t S. p. 746. f Sozora, lib, 6. c. 21. {111}