PREFACE.

In preparing this volume, the editor has aimed at providing the English reader with the most complete apparatus for the study of Athanasius, his life, and his theological influence that could fit within the scope of a single volume of the "Nicene and Post-Nicene Library." The volume contains all the most important treatises of Athanasius (in as nearly as possible their exact chronological order), with the exception of the ad Serapionem Letters to Serapion, the contra Apollinarium Against Apollinarius, the ad Marcellinum Letter to Marcellinus, and the exegetical remains. For information on these and other treatises omitted from this collection, the reader is referred to the Prolegomena introductory remarks or essays, Chapter III.

A great part of this volume, including the bulk of the historical and anti-Arian works, as well as the Festal Letters, consists of a revision of translations and notes previously included in the Oxford Library of the Fathers. The notes to all these works, and the translations of most of them (excepting the Festal Letters), were prepared for that series by Mr. (later Cardinal) Newman. It was initially intended to include his work without any changes, but as the volume took shape, this intention was inevitably modified. Furthermore, space limitations required the sacrifice of some less important material. The principles upon which these necessary changes were made are stated on pages 304, 305, and 450. What is said there also applies to the de Decretis On the Decrees of the Council of Nicaea and the Letter of Eusebius, as well as to the notes on the historical pieces. It may be added that the translation of the "Fourth Discourse" has been very carefully revised to ensure the utmost closeness to the somewhat difficult original. In all the new translations, as well as in the revision of earlier work, the aim has been to secure the strictest fidelity compatible with clarity. The easy assumption that distinctions of tenses, sentence structures, and the like count for little or nothing in patristic Greek has been consistently resisted. There are, no doubt, passages where the distinction between, for example, the aorist and the perfect past-tense verb aspects seems to fade, but generally speaking, Athanasius is fully sensitive to these and other points of grammar.

Incorporating so much of Cardinal Newman’s extensive patristic learning has inevitably involved some sacrifice of uniformity. To provide new material with illustrative notes on the same scale—even had it been within the current editor’s power—would have crowded out many works that the reader will certainly prefer to have available. Again, Cardinal Newman expresses many opinions that the current editor is unable to accept. It is not intended to be offensive to specify as an example the many cases where the notes enforce views of Church authority (especially papal authority) or the justification of religious persecution, which appear to be foreign to the mind of Athanasius. Another example is the tacit assumption that men of the fourth century can be divided by a sharp line into "orthodox" and "heretical," and that while everything may be believed to the discredit of the latter, the former were consistently uniform in their convictions and always right in practice. Such an assumption operates with special injustice against men like Eusebius, whose position does not fit such a summary classification. However, it has been decided that it is better to leave the notes in almost all such cases as they stand, only very rarely inserting a reference or observation to call attention to another aspect of the case. In no instance has the editor forgotten the respect due to the theological learning, personal greatness, and peculiar eminence of Cardinal Newman as a religious thinker.

But this has made it inevitable that many matters are regarded in one way in Newman’s notes and in quite another where the current editor speaks for himself. What the great Cardinal says of his Historical Sketches (Preface to vol. ii) holds true to a large extent of his expositions of Athanasius:

"Though mainly historical, they are in their form and character polemical, as being directed against certain Protestant ideas and opinions."

The aim of the...