Church Fathers: Ante-Nicene Fathers Volume 2: 2.00.02 Vol. 2 - Publisher's Advertisement

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Church Fathers: Ante-Nicene Fathers Volume 2: 2.00.02 Vol. 2 - Publisher's Advertisement



TOPIC: Ante-Nicene Fathers Volume 2 (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 2.00.02 Vol. 2 - Publisher's Advertisement

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Publishers’ Advertisement

The kind reader has here another library in itself; including Hermas, restored to his historic place, and other Fathers of the second century, with the works complete of the great founder of the Alexandrian school, the learned and versatile St. Clement. We now touch the period of Tertullian, who comes next into view, with the first elements of what is known as Latin Christianity. The vast importance of studying patristic literature, with historic progress from epoch to epoch, must be evident to all thinkers.

The “Christian Literature Publishing Company” has from the first designed to carry on its work with the Post-Nicene Fathers, edited on a similar plan, and with like chronological arrangement. The Oxford translations, in part, will furnish the base; but, as these are a mass of confused material of very unequal merit (some of the translations having been made by young men, who, though fine classical scholars, were little versed in patristic studies), they have felt, that, far more than the Ante-Nicene Series, these would demand the most patient editing. The publishers are now engaged in securing the editorial corps necessary to any wise or creditable issue of a series so voluminous, and deserving such careful annotation. It should be observed, that the original Oxford series mixes up the earlier and later Fathers, and robs the student of the advantages of progressive comparison, and historical transition from epoch to epoch. Works of great authors are published piecemeal, apart from their place and sequence; and younger students are deprived of that lucid order, in the study of antiquity, on which so much depends. It may be justly said, that a student never recovers from the confusing effects of reading the Christian Fathers without system, and out of time and place. A library of the Fathers is useful, in a great degree, in proportion as it stands on the reader’s shelves, volume after volume, with consecutive and scientific arrangement.

The following statement is added by our editor-in-chief: —



The task of correcting the Edinburgh typography has not been mechanically performed, has been executed with care and critical skill by the Rev. J. A. Spencer, D.D., of New York. Especial pains have been taken with the marginal references to Scripture, which seem to have been transferred from the Migne Edition, with no attempt to verify them. They have been patiently corrected for this edition. Where Dr. Spencer has kindly added original references, often valuable, I have insisted upon designating them by the letter “S.”