Ante-Nicene Fathers Volume 5: Hippolytus, Cyprian, Caius, Novatian, Appendix

This fifth volume will be found a work complete in itself. 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.