revised and chronologically arranged, with brief prefaces and occasional notes
by
A. Cleveland Coxe, D.D.
T&T CLARK
Edinburgh
Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing company
Grand Rapids, Michigan
VOLUME V
VOLUME V
FATHERS OF THE THIRD CENTURY:
HIPPOLYTUS, CYPRIAN, CAIUS, NOVATIAN, APPENDIX.
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AMERICAN EDITION
Ta\ a0rxai=a e!qh kratei/tw.
The Nicene Council
Volume V
Preface
Introductory Notice to Hippolytus
The Refutation of All Heresies
Book I
Book IV
Note
Book V
Book VI
Book VII
Book VIII
Book IX
Book X
Elucidations
The Extant Works and Fragments of Hippolytus
Part I.-Exegetical. Fragments from Commentaries on Various Books of Scripture
Part II.-Dogmatical and Historical
Elucidation
Appendix to the Works of Hippolytus
Elucidations
Cyprian
Introductory Notice to Cyprian
The Life and Passion of Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr
The Epistles of Cyprian
Epistle I
Epistle II
Epistle III
Epistle IV
Epistle V
Epistle VI
Epistle VII
Epistle VIII
Epistle IX
Epistle X
Epistle XI
Epistle XII
Epistle XIII
Epistle XIV
Epistle XV
Epistle XVI
Epistle XVII
Epistle XVIII
Epistle XIX
Epistle XX
Epistle XXI
Epistle XXII
Epistle XXIII
Epistle XXIV
Epistle XXV
Epistle XXVI
Epistle XXVII
Epistle XXVIII
Epistle XXIX
Epistle XXX
Epistle XXXI
Epistle XXXII
Epistle XXXIII
Epistle XXXIV
Epistle XXXV
Epistle XXXVI
Epistle XXXVII
Epistle XXXVIII
Epistle XXXIX
Epistle XL
Epistle XLI
Epistle XLII
Epistle XLIII
Epistle XLIV
Epistle XLV
Epistle XLVI
Epistle XLVII
Epistle XLVIII
Epistle XLIX
Epistle L
Epistle LI
Epistle LII
Epistle LIII
Epistle LIV
Epistle LV
Epistle LVI
Epistle LVII
Epistle LVIII
Epistle LIX
Epistle LX
Epistle LXI
Epistle LXII
Epistle LXIII
Epistle LXIV
Epistle LXV
Epistle LXVI
Epistle LXVII
Epistle LXVIII
Epistle LXIX
Epistle LXX
Epistle LXXI
Epistle LXXII
Epistle LXXIII
Epistle LXXIV
Epistle LXXV
Epistle LXXVI
Epistle LXXVII
Epistle LXXVIII
Epistle LXXIX
Epistle LXXX
Epistle LXXXI
Epistle LXXXII
Elucidations
The Treatises of Cyprian
Treatise I. On the Unity of the Church
Treatise II. On the Dress of Virgins
Treatise III. On the Lapsed
Treatise IV. On the Lord's Prayer
Treatise V. An Address to Demetrianus
Treatise VI. On the Vanity of Idols
Treatise VII. On the Mortality
Treatise VIII. On Works and Alms
Treatise IX. On the Advantage of Patience
Treatise X. On Jealousy and Envy
Treatise XI. Exhortation to Martyrdom, Addressed to Fortunatus
Treatise XII. Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews
Elucidations
The Seventh Council of Carthage Under Cyprian
Elucidation
Treatises Attributed to Cyprian on Questionable Authority
On the Public Shows
On the Glory of Martyrdom
Of the Discipline and Advantage of Chastity
Exhortation to Repentance
Elucidations
Caius
Introductory Notice to Caius, Presbyter of Rome
Fragments of Caius
Elucidations
Novatian
Introductory Notice to Novatian, a Roman Presbyter
A Treatise of Novatian Concerning the Trinity
Two Notes by the American Editor
On the Jewish Meats
Appendix
Acts and Records of the Famous Controversy About the Baptism of Heretics
A Roman Council Celebrated Under Stephen
Carthaginian Councils
Introductory Notice To an Anonymous Treatise Against the Heretic Novatian
A Treatise Against the Heretic Novatian by an Anonymous Bishop
Introductory Notice Anonymous Treatise on Re-Baptism
A Treatise on Re-Baptism by an Anonymous Writer
Note by the Edinburgh Translator
Preface
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This fifth volume will be found a work complete in itself, simplex et unum. At first, indeed, it might look otherwise. The formation of Latin Christianity in the school of North Africa seems interrupted by the interpolation, between Tertullian and his great pupil Cyprian, of a Western bishop and doctor, who writes in Greek. A little reflection, however, will suggest to the thoughtful student, that, even if our chronological plan admitted of it, we should divest the works of Cyprian of a very great advantage should we deprive them of the new and all-important light shed upon Cyprian and his convicts with Stephen by the discovery of the Philosophumena of Hippolytus. That discovery, as Dr. Bunsen reminds us, more than once, has duplicated our information concerning the Western Church of the ante-Nicene period. It gives us overwhelming evidence on many points heretofore imperfectly understood, and confirms the surmises of the learned and candid authors who have endeavoured to disentangle certain complications of history. It meets some questions of our own day with most conclusive testimony, and probably had not a little to do with the ultimate conclusions of Dollinger, and the rise of the Old Catholic school, among the Latins. We cannot fail to observe in all this the hand of a wise and paternal Providence, which is never wanting to the faithful in the day of trial. "I believe, with Niebuhr," says Dr. Bunsen, "that Providence always furnishes every generation with the necessary means of arriving at the truth and at the solution of its doubts." This consideration has inspired me with great hopes from the publication of this series in America, where the aggressions of an alien element are forcing us to renewed study of that virgin antiquity which is so fatal to its pretensions. I can adopt with a grateful heart the language of Bunsen, when he adds:hyperlink "I cannot help thinking it of importance that we have just now so unexpectedly got our knowledge of facts respecting early Christianity doubled."
To show some tokens of this new light on old difficulties, I shall be obliged to throw one or two of my Elucidations almost into the form of dissertations. It will appear, as we proceed that we have reached a most critical point in the ante-Nicene history, and one on which that period itself depends for its complete exposition. Let me adduce conclusive evidence of this by reference to two fundamental facts, which need only to be mentioned to be admitted:-
1. The Council of Nice did not pretend to be setting forth a new creed, or making anything doctrine which was not doctrine before. Hence the period we are now studying is to be interpreted by the testimony of the Nicene Fathers, who were able to state historically, and with great felicity, in idioms gradually framed by the Alexandrian theologians, the precise intent and purport of their teaching. The learned Bull has demonstrated this; demolishing alike the sophistry of Petavius the Jesuit, and the efforts of latitudinarians to make capital out of some of those obiter dicta of orthodox Fathers, which, like certain passages of Holy Scripture itself, may be wrested into contradictory and self-stultifying declarations. Note, therefore, that the Nicene Creed must be studied not so much in the controvertists of the fourth century as in the doctors of preceding ages, whom we are reviewing in these pages.
2. A like statement is true of the Nicene constitutions and discipline. The synodical rule, alike in faith and discipline, was Ta arxaia eqh krateito; "Let the (ancient) primitive examples prevail." Observe, therefore, what they ruled as to Rome and other churches was already ancient. Now, the "duplicated" light thrown upon the position of the North-African churches, and others in the West, at this period, by the discovery of long-lost portions of Hippolytus, will be found to settle many groundless assertions of Roman controvertists as to what these arxaia eqh were.
Bearing this in mind, let us return to the point with which this Preface starts. We are pausing for a moment, in the North-African history, to take a contemporary survey of Rome, and to mark just where it stands, and what it is, at this moment. The earliest of the great Roman Fathers now comes forward, but not as a Latin Father. He writes in Greek; he continues the Greek line of thought brought into the West by Irenaeus; he maintains the Johannean rather than the Petrine traditions and idioms, which are distinct but not clashing; he stands only in the third generation from St. John himself, through Polycarp, and his master Irenaeus; and, like his master, he confronts the Roman bishops of his time with a superior orthodoxy and with an authority more apostolic.hyperlink He illustrates in his own conduct the maxim of Irenaeus, that "the Catholic faith is preserved in Rome by the testimony imported into it by those who visit it from every side; "that is, who thus keep alive in it the common faith, as witnessed in all the churches of Christendom.
Thus, Hippolytus, once "torn to pieces as by horses," in his works, if not in his person, comes to life again in our times, to shed new light upon the history of Latin Christianity, and to show that Rome had no place nor hand in its creation. He appears as a Greek Father in a church which was yet a "Greek colony; "hyperlink and he shows to what an estate of feebleness and humiliation the Roman Church had been brought, probably by the neglect of preaching, which is an anomaly in its history, and hardly less probably by its adherence to a Greek liturgy long after the Christians of Rome had ceased to understand Greek familiarly. At such a moment Hippolytus proves himself a reformer. His historical elucidations of the period, therefore, form an admirable introduction to Cyprian, and will explain the entire independence of Roman dictation, with which he maintained his own opinions against that Church and its bishops.
And lastly we have Novatian as a sequel to the works of Cyprian; and truly, the light upon his sad history is "duplicated" by what Hippolytus shows us of the times and circumstances which made his schism possible, and which somewhat relieve his character from its darker shades.
Such, then, is the volume now given to the reader,-Hippolytus, Cyprian, Novatian,-affording the fullest information ever yet brought together in one volume, upon the rise of Latin Christianity, the decline of the Greek period of the Roman See, and the restricted limits of the Roman province not yet elevated to the technical position of a Nicene patriarchate.
Footnotes
1 Hippol., vol. i. p. 7. Ed. London, 1851.
2 See this series, vol. iii. Elucid. II. p. 630.
3 See this series, vol. i. pp. 309, 360; also vol. ii. p. 166, and Milman (vol. i. pp. 28, 29), Latin Christianity.
