The most ancient apologist of whose works we have the smallest knowledge is Quadratus.  Quadratus lived about seventy years after the ascension, and presented his apology to the Emperor Adrian.  From a passage of this work, preserved in Eusebius, it appears that the author did directly and formally appeal to the miracles of Christ, and in terms as express and confident as we could desire.  The passage (which has been once already stated) is as follows:  “The works of our Saviour were always conspicuous, for they were real:  both they that were healed, and they that were raised from the dead, were seen, not only when they were healed or raised, but for a long time afterwards; not only whilst he dwelled on this earth, but also after his departure, and for a good while after it; insomuch as that some of them have reached to our times,” (Euseb.  Hist.  I. iv. c. 3.) Nothing can be more rational or satisfactory than this.

Justin Martyr, the next of the Christian apologists, whose work is not lost, and who followed Quadratus at the distance of about thirty years, has touched upon passages of Christ’s history in so many places, that a tolerably complete account of Christ’s life might be collected out of his works.  In the following quotation he asserts the performance of miracles by Christ, in words as strong and positive as the language possesses:  “Christ healed those who from their birth were blind, and deaf, and lame; causing, by his word, one to leap, another to hear, and a third to see; and having raised the dead, and caused them to live, he, by his works, excited attention, and induced the men of that age to know him:  who, however, seeing these things done, said that it was a magical appearance, and dared to call him a magician, and a deceiver of the people.” (Just.  Dial. p. 258, ed.  Thirlby.)

In his first apology, (Apolog. prim. p. 48, ib.) Justin expressly assigns the reason for his having recourse to the argument from prophecy, rather than alleging the miracles of the Christian history; which reason was, that the persons with whom he contended would ascribe these miracles to magic; “lest any of our opponents should say, What hinders, but that he who is called Christ by us, being a man sprung from men, performed the miracles which we attribute to him by magical art?” The suggestion of this reason meets, as I apprehend, the very point of the present objection; more especially when we find Justin followed in it by other writers of that age.  Irenaeus, who came about forty years after him, notices the same evasion in the adversaries of Christianity, and replies to it by the same argument:  “But if they shall say, that the Lord performed these things by an illusory appearance (phantasiodos), leading these objectors to the prophecies, we will show from them, that all things were thus predicted concerning him, and Strictly came to pass.” (Iren.  I. ii. c. 57.) Lactantius, who lived a century lower, delivers the same sentiment upon the same occasion:  “He performed miracles;—­we might have supposed him to have been a magician, as ye say, and as the Jews then supposed, if all the prophets had not with one spirit foretold that Christ should perform these very things.” (Lactant. v. 3.)