INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I.

...but apparently of readings that were read in public worship. A few pages at the beginning and end are unfortunately lost, but they could not have contained anything of such importance as to alter the impression we form of the book. In diction and grammar, it is exactly similar to Hilary’s later writings; the fact that it is perhaps somewhat stiffer in style may be due to the self-consciousness of a writer venturing for the first time upon such an important subject. The exegesis is often the same as that of Origen, but a comparison of the various passages in which Jerome 8 mentions this commentary makes it certain that it is not dependent upon him in the same way as are the Homilies on the Psalms and Hilary’s lost work on Job. Yet, if he is not in this work the translator or editor of Origen, he is manifestly his disciple. We cannot account for the resemblance otherwise. Hilary is independently working out Origen’s thoughts along Origen’s lines. Origen is not named, nor is any other author, except that he excuses himself from expounding the Lord’s Prayer on the ground that Tertullian and Cyprian had written excellent treatises upon it Comm. in Matt. v. 1. It may be mentioned that the chapters of the Commentary do not coincide with those of the Gospel.. This is a rare exception to his habit of not naming other writers.

But whoever the writers were from whom Hilary drew his exegesis, his theology is his own. There is no immaturity in the thought; every one of his characteristic ideas, as will be seen in the next chapter, is already found here. But there is one interesting landmark in the growth of the Latin theological vocabulary—very archaic in itself—which proves that Hilary had not yet decided upon the terms he would use. He twice Comm. in Matt. xvi. 4, "the theotes which we call deitas"; xxvi. 5, "the theotes which we call deitas." The strange accusative "theotetam" makes it more probable that we have here a specimen of the primitive Greek vocabulary of Latin Christendom, of which few examples, e.g., "Baptism" and "Eucharist," have survived. Cyprian had probably the chief share in destroying it, but the subject has never been examined as it deserves. speaks of Christ’s Divinity as "the theotes the essential divinity which we call deitas." In his later writings, he consistently uses divinitas, except in the few instances where he is almost forced, to avoid intolerable monotony, to vary it with deitas; and in this commentary, he would not have used either of these words—still less would he have used both—unless he were feeling his way toward a fixed technical term.

Another witness to the early date of the work is the absence of any clear sign that Hilary knew of the existence of Arianism. He knows, indeed, that there are heresies which impugn the Godhead of Christ So especially xii. 18. There is similarly a possible allusion to the teaching of Marcellus in xi. 9, which, however, may equally well be a memory of some related earlier heresy., and in consequence states that doctrine with great precision, and frequently as well as forcibly. But it has been pointed out Maffei's Introduction, § 15. that he discusses many texts which served, in the Arian strife, for attack or defense, without alluding to that burning question; this would have been impossible, and indeed a dereliction of duty, in Hilary’s later life. There is one passage xxxi. 3, "He with (or 'in') Whom the Word was before He was born." in which he speaks of God the Father as "He with whom the Word was before He was born." The Incarnation is spoken of in words that would usually denote the eternal Generation; and if a candid reader could not be misled, yet an opportunity is given to the malevolent which Hilary, or indeed any careful writer engaged in the Arian controversy, would have avoided.

The Commentary, then, is an early work, yet in no respect unworthy of its author. Though he had developed his characteristic thoughts before he began to write it, they are certainly less prominent here than in the treatises that followed. It is chiefly remarkable for its display of allegorical ingenuity. Its pages are full of fantastic interpretations of the kind that he had a great share in introducing into Western Europe See Ebert, Litteratur des Mittelalters, i. 139.. He started a movement by this that he would have been powerless to stop; that he was not altogether satisfied with the principle of allegory is shown by the more modest use he made of it when he composed, with fuller experience, the Homilies on the Psalms. It is perhaps only natural that there is little allegorism in the De Trinitate. Such a hothouse growth could not thrive in the keen air of controversy.