Ante-Nicene Fathers - Vol. 5; Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian, Appendix.pdf - Ante-Nicene Fathers - MRBPiotrowski

T HE AGES D IGITAL L IBRARY

COLLECTIONS

T HE A NTE -N ICENE F ATHERS

V OLUME 5

Edited by A. Roberts and J Donaldson

Books For The Ages

AGES Software • Albany, OR USA

THE

ANTE-NICENE FATHERS

The Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325

printed July, 1975

THE REV. ALEXANDER ROBERTS, D.D.,

AND

JAMES DONALDSON, LL.D.,

EDITORS

AMERICAN REPRINT OF THE EDINBURGH EDITION

VOLUME 5

HIPPOLYTUS

CYPRIAN

CAIUS

NOVATIAN

APPENDIX

AGES Software

Albany, Oregon

FATHERS OF

THE THIRD AND FOURTH CENTURIES

HIPPOLYTUS, CYPRIAN, CAIUS,

NOVATIAN, APPENDIX

AMERICAN EDITION

CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED, WITH NOTES, PREFACES,

AND ELUCIDATIONS

A. CLEVELAND COXE, D.D.

Ta< ajrcai~a e]qh kratei>tw

The Nicene Council

PREFACE

T HIS 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 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 endeavored 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: “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 the discipline, was Ta< ajrcai~a e]qh

krate>ito : “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, well be found to settle

many groundless assertions of Roman controvertists as to what these

ajrcai~a e]qh 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 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.

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

Ante-Nicene Fathers - Vol. 5; Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian, Appendix.pdf

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