its letter to the Western Bishops speaks of him as "the most reverend and religious Cyril, long since canonically appointed by the Bishops of the province, and in many ways and places a withstander of the Arians." He died about the year 386. Except one or two short compositions and fragments, nothing remains of his writings but his Catechetical Lectures.

No ecclesiastical writer could be selected more suitable to illustrate the main principle on which the present "Library of the Fathers" has been undertaken, than S. Cyril of Jerusalem. His Catechetical Lectures were delivered, as we have seen, when he was a young man; and he belonged, till many years after their delivery, to a party or school of theology, distinct, to say the least, from that to which the most illustrious divines of his day belonged; a school, never dominant in the Church, and expiring with his age. It is not then on the score of especial personal authority that his Lectures are now presented to the English reader; and if the simple object of this Publication were to introduce the latter to the wise and good of former times, S. Cyril would have no claims to a place in it beyond many who have lived since.

In saying this, it is far indeed from being asserted, that the personal claims of the Fathers of the Church on our deference are inconsiderable; for it happens, not unnaturally, that the works which have been preserved, were worth preserving, or rather that their writers would have been extraordinary men in any age, and speak with the weight of great experience, ability, and sanctity. To those who believe that moral truth is not gained by the mere exercise of the intellect, but is granted to moral attainments, and that God speaks to inquirers after truth by the mouth of those who possess these, the writings of S. Basil or S. Augustine must always have an authority independent of their date or their agreement; nor is it possible for serious persons to read them, without feeling the authority which they possess as individuals. This, how

s Theod. Hist. v. 9.

ever, whatever it be, is not the main subject to which the present Translations propose to direct attention. The works to be translated have been viewed simply and plainly in the light of witnesses to an historical fact, viz. the religion which the Apostles transmitted to the early Churches, a fact to be ascertained as other past facts, by testimony, requiring the same kind of evidence, moral not demonstrative, open to the same difficulties of proof, and to be determined by the same practical judgment. It seems hardly conceivable that a fact so public and so great as the religion of the first Christians, should be incapable of ascertainment, at least in its outlines, that it should have so passed away like a dream, that the most opposite opinions may at this day be maintained about it without possibility of contradiction. If it was soon corrupted or extinguished, then it is obvious to inquire after the history of such corruption or extinction; such a revolution every where, without historical record, being as unaccountable as the disappearance of the original religion for which it is brought to account. At first sight there is, to say the least, a considerable antecedent improbability in the notion, that, whereas we know the tenets and the history of the Stoic or the Academic philosophy, yet we do not know the main tenets, nor yet the fundamental principles, nor even the spirit and temper of Apostolic Christianity.

Under a sense of this improbability, in other words with an expectation that historical research would supply what they sought, our Divines at and since the Reformation have betaken themselves to the extant documents of the early Church, in order to determine thereby what the system of Primitive Christianity was; and so to elicit from Scripture more completely and accurately that revealed truth, which, though revealed there, is not on its surface, but needs to be deduced and developed from it. They went to the Fathers for information concerning matters, on which the Fathers at first sight certainly do promise to give information, just as inquirers into any other branch of knowledge might study

those authors who have treated of it; and, whether or not they found what they sought, it surely was reasonable so to seek it, and cannot be condemned except by the event,-that is, by shewing that their expectation, however reasonable antecedently, is mistaken in fact, that after the search into history, no evidence is forthcoming concerning the tenets, nor yet the principles, nor even the temper which the Apostles inculcated.

A like expectation has actuated the present Publication; it has been conceived probable, to say the least, that the study of the writings of the Fathers will enable us to determine morally, to make up our minds for practical purposes, what the doctrines of the Apostles were, for instance whether or not they believed in our Lord's Divinity, or the general necessity of Baptism for salvation; or if not the doctrines, still what were their principles, as whether or not or how far they allowed of using secular means for advancing Christian truth, or whether or not they sanctioned the monarchical principle, or again the centralizing principle, or again the principle of perpetuity, in Church matters, or whether they considered that Scripture should be interpreted in the mere letter, or what is called spiritually;-or at least what was their temper, for instance, whether or not it was what is now called in reproach superstitious, or whether or not exclusive, or whether or not opposed to display and excitement. On some or other of these points there are surely grounds for expecting information from the Fathers, sufficient for our practice, and therefore having claims upon it.

Recourse then being had to the writings of the Fathers, in order to obtain information as to this historical fact, viz. the doctrines, the principles, and the religious temper of Apostolical Christianity, so far we have little to do with the personal endowments of the Fathers, except as these bear on the question of their fidelity. Their being men of strictest lives and most surpassing holiness, would not prove that they knew what it was the Apostles taught; and, were they but

ordinary men, this need not incapacitate them from being faithful witnesses and serviceable informants, if they were in a position to be such. We should have only to take into account, and weigh against each other, their qualifications and disqualifications, for being evidence to a fact; we should have to balance honesty against prejudice, education against party influence, early attachments against reason, and so on. Thus we should treat them, taken one by one; but even this sort of personal scrutiny will be practically superseded, when we consult them, not separately, but as our Reformed Church ever has done, together; and demand their unanimous testimony to any point of doctrine or discipline, before we make any serious use of them; for, it stands to reason that, where they agree, the peculiarities of their respective nations, edu cation, history, and period, instead of suggesting an indefinite suspicion against the subject-matter of their testimony, does but increase the evidence of its truth. Their testimony becomes the concurrence of many independent witnesses in behalf of the same facts; and, if it is to be slighted or disparaged, one does not see what knowledge of the past remains to us, or what matter for the historian. Viewing S. Cyril, for instance, as one of a body who bears a concordant evidence to the historical fact, that the Apostles taught that Christ is God', or that Baptism is the remedy of original sin", or that celibacy is not imperative on the clergy', whether he was Asiatic or African, of the Roman or the Oriental party, as little matters, as when we consider him as one of a company bearing witness to the historical fact, that the Apostles and their associates wrote the New Testament. Indeed, as the matter stands, there is something very remarkable and even startling to the reader of S. Cyril, to find in a divine of his school such a perfect agreement, for instance as regards the doctrine of the Trinity, with those Fathers who in his age were more famous as champions of it. Here is a writer, separated by

whatever cause from what, speaking historically, may be called the Athanasian School, suspicious of its adherents, and suspected by them; yet he, when he comes to explain himself', expresses precisely the same doctrine as that of Athanasius or Gregory, while he merely abstains from the particular theological term in which the latter Fathers agreeably to the Nicene Council conveyed it. Can we have a clearer proof that the difference of opinion between them was not one of ecclesiastical and traditionary doctrine, but of practical judgment? that the Fathers at Nicæa wisely considered that, under the circumstances, the word in question was the only symbol which would secure the Church against the insidious heresy which was assailing it, while S. Cyril', with Eusebius of Cæsarea, Meletius, and others, shrunk from it, at least for a while, as if an addition to the Creed, or a word already taken into the service of an opposite heresy, and likely to introduce into the Church heretical notions? Their judgment, which was erroneous, was their own; their faith was not theirs only, but shared with them by the whole Christian world.

At the same time it must be granted, that this view of the Fathers as witnesses to Apostolic truth not individually but collectively, clear and unanswerable as it is, considered as a view, is open to some great practical inconveniences, when acted on in such an undertaking as that in which the present Editors are engaged. For since, by the supposition, no one of the Fathers is necessarily right in all his doctrine, taken by himself, but may be erroneous in secondary points, each taken by himself is in danger, by his own peculiarities, on the one hand of throwing discredit on all together, on the other of perplexing those who by means of the Fathers are inquiring after Catholic truth. And whereas in any publication of this nature, they cannot appear all at once, but first one and then

y iv. 7. vi. 1. x. and xi. xii. 1.

2 v. Hilar. Contr. Const.3.12. Athan.

de Synod. 12. (ed. Bened. Cyr. lii. B.) a vid. Bull. Defens. F. N. ii. 1.