The Apology of Quadratus.

        The early Christians were indeed in a most difficult position. Under Roman administration religions had to be recognized — “licensed” — by the state before they could be lawfully practiced. But Christians practiced an unlicensed religion; in fact, Christianity did not obtain the necessary state recognition until early in the fourth century. Christian meetings had sometimes to be covertly, almost secretly, held, and this occasioned suspicion and criticism. Christian ways of describing their proceedings-eating Christ's flesh and drinking his blood-led the uninitiated to think some cannibalistic rites were observed by them. It was easy to think of them as haters of the human race, as Tacitus put it (Annals xv. 44), and to charge them with the burning of Rome. So to the official hostility of the government were added the suspicion and detestation of the public.

        It was natural that intelligent Christians should undertake to repel these attacks and defend themselves against the hostility of the empire. A beginning in this direction was made in Egypt, very early in the second century, in the Preaching of Peter. But a more formal appeal to the emperor himself was soon after written by a Greek named Quadratus and presented to the emperor Hadrian, perhaps at Athens when Hadrian visited that city in A.D. 125 or later in 129. Eusebius, who gives us all the information we possess about Quadratus (for Jerome seems to have simply repeated what he had read in Eusebius about him), connects the presentation of the apology to the emperor with the year 125. He quotes a sentence from the little book, which is all that has been preserved of it:

But the works of our Savior were always present, for they were genuine; those who had been cured, those who had risen from the dead, who were seen not only when they were cured and raised, but on all occasions when they were present; and not only while the Savior was on earth, but also after his departure, they were alive for some time, so that some of them lived even to our day (Church History iv. 3. 2).

This little fragment comes from the oldest Christian apologetic we possess, apart from the sermon in Acts 17 and-perhaps-bits of the Preaching of Peter. It seems to contrast the works of “our Savior” with the works of someone else, possibly someone else's Savior. Our Savior's works were lasting because they were real; presumably, therefore, someone else's works were not lasting because they were not real. It would appear that Quadratus is making a statement about the history of religions. He may well imply that pagan gods are deified dead men. When their unreal cures and raisings have been unmasked because they do not last, the gods are recognized as merely human in origin. Jesus, on the other hand, is rightly recognized as Savior because of the permanence of his works. At any rate, similar lines of argument occur among the philosophical theologians of Quadratus' day.

        Eusebius says that when he wrote, this book of Quadratus' was still in the hands of a great many of the brethren; but no copy of it is now known to exist. Dom Andriessen has propounded the ingenious theory that Eusebius' fragment is just what is now missing from the Epistle to Diognetus (7:6),[35] but it is extremely improbable (though not impossible) that Eusebius omitted what the copyist of the letter preserved and the copyist omitted exactly what Eusebius preserved. Moreover, if the fragment means what we have suggested it does, it does not fit the gap in Diognetus.