Religion'
_apparently_ as adverse to the genuineness of the fragments).
He says: 'There seems to me to be nothing in these extracts to
compel us to deny the authorship of Apollinaris. Nor must we
refuse credit to the author of the Preface [to the Paschal
Chronicle] any more than to other writers of the same times on
whose testimony many books of the ancients have been received,
although not mentioned by Eusebius or any other of his contemporaries;
especially as Eusebius declares below that it was only some select
books that had come to his hands out of many that Apollinaris had
written' [Endnote 247:2]. It is objected (2) that Apollinaris is
not likely to have spoken of a controversy in which the whole Asiatic
Church was engaged as the opinion of a 'few ignorant wranglers' A
fair objection, if he was really speaking of such a controversy.
But the great issue between the Churches of Asia and that of Rome
was whether the Paschal festival should be kept, according to the
Jewish custom, always on the fourteenth day of the month Nisan, or
whether it should be kept on the Friday after the Paschal full moon,
on whatever day of the month it might fall. The fragment appears
rather to allude to some local dispute as to the day on which the
Lord suffered. To go thoroughly into this question would involve
us in all the mazes of the so-called Paschal controversy, and in
the end a precise and certain conclusion would probably be impossible.
So far as I am aware, all the writers who have entered into the
discussion start with assuming the genuineness of the Apollinarian
fragment.

There remains however the fact that it rests only upon the attestation
of a writer of the seventh century, who may possibly be wrong, but,
if so, has been led into his error not wilfully but by accident.
No reason can be alleged for the forging or purposely false ascription
of a fragment like this, and it bears the stamp of good faith in that
it asks indulgence for opponents instead of censure. We may perhaps
safely accept the fragment with some, not large, deduction from its
weight.

3.

An instance of the precariousness of the argument from silence
would be supplied by the writer who comes next under review--
Athenagoras. No mention whatever is made of Athenagoras either by
Eusebius or Jerome, though he appears to have been an author of a
certain importance, two of whose works, an Apology addressed to
Marcus Aurelius and