Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 5 (Hippolytus, Cyprian, Novatian)

2. The same is true of the Nicene constitutions and discipline. The synodical rule, in both faith and discipline, was Τὰ ἀρχαῖα ἔθη κρατείτω original: "Let the ancient customs prevail.": "Let the (ancient) primitive examples prevail." Therefore, observe that what they ruled regarding Rome and other churches was already ancient. The "doubled" 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 settle many groundless assertions of Roman controversialists regarding what these ancient customs were.

Bearing this in mind, let us return to the point with which this Preface started. We are pausing for a moment in North African history to take a contemporary survey of Rome, to mark exactly 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 Johannine Johannine: relating to the traditions or theology associated with the Apostle John. rather than the Petrine Petrine: relating to the traditions or theology associated with the Apostle Peter. 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 a more apostolic authority. He illustrates in his own conduct the maxim of Irenaeus that "the Catholic faith is preserved in Rome by the testimony brought into it by those who visit it from every side"; that is, those who keep the common faith alive there, as witnessed in all the churches of Christendom.

Thus, Hippolytus—who was once "torn to pieces as if 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 or hand in its creation. He appears as a Greek Father in a church that was still a "Greek colony"; and he shows the state of feebleness and humiliation to which the Roman Church had been brought, probably by the neglect of preaching—which is an anomaly in its history—and, just as 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 explanations of the period, therefore, form an excellent introduction to Cyprian and will explain the complete independence from Roman dictation with which he maintained his own opinions against that Church and its bishops.

Lastly, we have Novatian as a sequel to the works of Cyprian; and truly, the light upon his sad history is "doubled" by what Hippolytus shows us of the times and circumstances that 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 brought together in one volume regarding the rise of Latin Christianity, the decline of the Greek period of the Roman See, and the restricted limits of the Roman province, which was not yet elevated to the technical position of a Nicene patriarchate.