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

from apostolic communion. Hippolytus lived at a critical moment, when this awful admonition seemed about to be realized.

4. Now, then, from Portus and from Lyons, Hippolytus brought into Rome the Catholic doctrine and convicted two of its bishops of pernicious heresies and evil living. And thus, as Irenæus teaches, the faith was preserved in Rome by the testimony of those resorting thither from every side, not by any prerogative of the See itself. All this will appear clearly enough as the student proceeds in the examination of this volume.

But it is now time to avail ourselves of the information given us by the translator in his INTRODUCTORY NOTICE, as follows: —

THE entire Refutation of all Heresies, with the exception of Book I, was found in a manuscript brought from a convent on Mount Athos as recently as the year 1842. The discoverer of this treasure—for treasure it certainly is—was Minöides Mynas, an erudite Greek who had visited his native country in search of ancient manuscripts by direction of M. Abel Villemain, Minister of Public Instruction under Louis Philippe. The French Government thus has the credit of being instrumental in bringing to light this valuable work, while the University of Oxford shares the distinction by being its earliest publishers. The Refutation was printed at the Clarendon Press in 1851, under the editorship of M. Emmanuel Miller, whose labors have proved serviceable to all subsequent commentators. One generally acknowledged mistake was committed by Miller in ascribing the work to Origen. He was right in affirming that the discovered manuscript was the continuation of the fragment The Philosophumena, inserted in the Benedictine copy of Origen’s works. In the volume, however, containing the Philosophumena, we have dissertations by Huet, in which he questions Origen’s authorship in favor of Epiphanius. Heuman attributed the Philosophumena to Didymus of Alexandria, Gale to Aetius; and it, with the rest of The Refutation, Fessler and Baur ascribed to Caius, but the Abbé Jellabert to Tertullian. The last hypothesis is untenable, if for no other reason, because the work is in Greek. In many respects, Caius, who was a presbyter of Rome in the time of Victor and Zephyrinus, would seem the probable author; but a fatal argument—one applicable to those named above, except Epiphanius—against Caius is his not being, as the author of The Refutation in the Proœmium Proœmium: an introductory section or preface. declares himself to be, a bishop. Epiphanius no doubt filled the episcopal office; but when we have a large work of his on the heresies, with a summary, it would seem scarcely probable that he composed likewise, on the same topic, an extended treatise like the present, with two abridgments. Whatever diversity of opinion, however, existed as to these claimants, most critics, though not all, now agree in denying the authorship of Origen. Neither the style nor tone of The Refutation is Origenian. Its compilation process is foreign to Origen’s plan of composition; while the subject-matter itself, for many reasons, would not be likely to have occupied the pen of the Alexandrine Father. It is almost impossible that Origen would have made some allusions in The Refutation to his other writings, or in them to it. Not only, however, is there no such allusion, but the derivation of the word “Ebionites” Ebionites: an early Jewish-Christian sect regarded as heretical by the mainstream church. in The Refutation, and an expressed belief in the (orthodox) doctrine of eternal punishment, are at variance with Origen’s authorship. Again, no work answering the description is awarded to Origen in catalogues of his extant or lost writings. These arguments are strengthened by the facts that Origen was never a bishop and that he did not reside for any length of time at Rome. He once paid a hurried visit to the capital of the West, whereas the author of The Refutation asserts his presence at Rome during the occurrence of events which occupied a period of some twenty years. And not only was he a spectator, but he took part in these transactions in such an official and authoritative manner as Origen could never have assumed, either at Rome or elsewhere.