the words of the Apostle Paul, who says: Take also the Greek books, consider the Sibyl, how she declares the One God and the future. Take Hystaspes and read him, and you will find the Son of God written of far more distinctly and clearly, and how that many Kings will array themselves against the Christ, hating him and those who bear his name, and his faithful ones, and his patience, and his appearing,"
I agree with others who see in this a probable quotation from the ancient Acts of Paul. If it represents Hystaspes at all faithfully, we have no choice but to set down the book as Christian.
Justin Martyr, Apology, i. 20: "And the Sibyl too, and Hystaspes, said that there should be a dissolution of corruptible things by means of fire."
Id. 44: "(By the evil one's contrivance) death was decreed against those who read the books of Hystaspes or the Sibyl or the Prophets." The reason for this decree will appear from the next passage.
Lactantius, Divine Institutes, vii. 19. 19: "Hystaspes also, who was a most ancient king of the Medes, from whom the river took its name which is now called the Hydaspes, left on record for posterity a wonderful dream interpreted by a prophesying boy (sub interpretatione uaticinantis pueri). He foretold that the empire and name of Rome should be taken away out of the world, and that, long before that race of Trojan descent began to be."
This tells us something of the form of the book. The king, I conjecture, had a symbolic vision, and a marvellous child interpreted it to him, in the manner of Daniel. Is it a faint late echo of this that we find in mediæval times in the following story? Each of the Three Kings had a sign in his house before the birth of Christ. In one case an ostrich laid two eggs, out of which were hatched a lion and a lamb; in the second, a balsam plant in the garden produced a flower, out of which came a dove, and it announced that God, the Maker of heaven, earth, and sea, the Saviour of all, was born of a virgin; to the third King it befell that
