south, crying, "Spirits, maternal and paternal, receive me"; sprang into the fire, and was seen no more. Lucian adds that, on his way home, he met some persons, who questioned him, and that for their benefit he added some touches to the story—how the earth shook, and how a vulture was seen soaring from the pyre. We remember the Christian legend that a dove flew upward from the funeral-pile of Poly carp, whose martyrdom occurred probably a few years before the death of Peregrinus. Was Lucian glancing at that legend? Possibly; but there is no other trait in his narrative which warrants the notion that it was meant as a travesty of Christian martyrdoms—an hypothesis in which Bishop Pearson has had some followers. There is no doubt that Peregrinus, alias Proteus, is an historical character: Aulus Gellius speaks of him from personal knowledge, and the fact that he burned himself at Olympia does not rest on the statement of Lucian only; it is recorded also by Tatian, by Tertullian, and by Eusebius.
But let us now briefly consider what Lucian says in this piece concerning the tenets of the Christians:—
"They still reverence," he says, "that great one (τὸν μέγαν...ἐκεῖνον), the man who was crucified in Palestine, because he brought this new mystery (τελετὴν) into the world....The poor creatures have persuaded themselves that they will be altogether immortal, and live for ever; wherefore they despise death, and in many cases give themselves to it voluntarily. Then their first Lawgiver [i.e., Christ] persuaded them that they were all brethren, when they should once have taken the step of renouncing the
