FATHERS OF THE THIRD CENTURY: HIPPOLYTUS, CYPRIAN, CAIUS, NOVATIAN, APPENDIX. AMERICAN EDITION. CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED, WITH BRIEF NOTES AND PREFACES, BY A. CLEVELAND COXE, D.D. Τὰ ἀρχαῖα ἔθη κρατείτω. THE NICENE COUNCIL. 82917 PREFACE. 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 conflicts 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 Döllinger, 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: "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. 1 Hippol., vol. i. p. 7. Ed. London, 1851. |