Preface.
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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.
2. A like
statement is true of the Nicene constitutions and discipline. The
synodical rule, alike in faith and discipline, was Τὰ ἄρχαῖα
ἔθη
κρατέιτο: “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 ἄρχαῖα ἔθη were.