History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity. A. D. 100-325

p. 543

Index of Names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

p. 548

Greek Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

p. 576

Hebrew Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

p. 577

Latin Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

p. 578

German Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

p. 596

French Words and Phrases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ix

Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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x

Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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HISTORY

of the

CHRISTIAN CHURCH

1

by

PHILIP SCHAFF

Christianus sum.                   Christiani nihil a me alienum puto

VOLUME II

ANTE-NICENE CHRISTIAINITY

a.d. 100–325.

1

Schaff, Philip, History of the Christian Church, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997. This material has been

carefully compared, corrected, and emended (according to the 1910 edition of Charles Scribner's Sons) by The Electronic Bible Society,

Dallas, TX, 1998.

Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

---

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION REVISED

A few months after the appearance of the revised edition of this volume, Dr. Bryennios, the

learned Metropolitan of Nicomedia, surprised the world by the publication of the now famous

Didache, which he had discovered in the Jerusalem Monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre at

Constantinople. This led me, in justice to myself and to my readers, to write an independent

supplement under the title: The Oldest Church Manual, called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,

etc., which is now passing through the press.

At the same time I have taken advantage of a new issue of this History, without increasing

the size and the price, to make in the plates all the necessary references to the Didache where it

sheds new light on the post-apostolic age (especially on pages 140, 184, 185, 202, 226, 236, 239,

241, 247, 249, 379, 640).

I have also brought the literature up to date, and corrected a few printing errors, so that this

issue may be called a revised edition. A learned and fastidious German critic and professional

church historian has pronounced this work to be far in advance of any German work in the fullness

of its digest of the discoveries and researches of the last thirty years. ("Theolog. Literatur-Zeitung,"

for March 22, 1884.) But the Bryennios discovery, and the extensive literature which it has called

forth, remind me of the imperfect character of historical books in an age of such rapid progress as

ours.

The Author.

New York, April 22, 1885.

2

Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

---

FIFTH EDITION

The fourth edition (1886) was a reprint of the third, with a few slight improvements. In this

fifth edition I have made numerous additions to the literature, and adapted the text throughout to

the present stage of research, which continues to be very active and fruitful in the Ante-Nicene

period.

Several topics connected with the catechetical instruction, organization, and ritual (baptism

and eucharist) of the early Church are more fully treated in my supplementary monograph, The

Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, or The Oldest Church Manual, which first appeared in June, 1885,

and in a third edition, revised and enlarged, January, 1889, (325 pages).

P. S.

New York, July, 1889.

3

Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

---

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

This second volume contains the history of Christianity from the end of the Apostolic age to

the beginning of the Nicene.

The first edict of Toleration, A. D. 311, made an end of persecution; the second Edict of

Toleration, 311 (there is no third), prepared the way for legal recognition and protection; the Nicene

Council, 325, marks the solemn inauguration of the imperial state-church. Constantine, like Eusebius,

the theologian, and Hosius, the statesman, of his reign, belongs to both periods and must be

considered in both, though more fully in the next.

We live in an age of discovery and research, similar to that which preceded the Reformation.

The beginnings of Christianity are now absorbing the attention of scholars.

During the present generation early church history has been vastly enriched by new sources

of information, and almost revolutionized by independent criticism. Among the recent literary

discoveries and publications the following deserve special mention:

The Syriac Ignatius (by Cureton 1845 and 1849), which opened a new chapter in the Ignatian

controversy so closely connected with the rise of Episcopacy and Catholicism; the Philosophumena

of Hippolytus (by Miller 1851, and by Duncker and Schneidewin, 1859), which have shed a flood

of light on the ancient heresies and systems of thought, as well as on the doctrinal and disciplinary

commotions in the Roman church in the early part of third century; the Tenth Book of The

Pseudo-Clementine Homilies (by Dressel, 1853), which supplements our knowledge of a curious

type of distorted Christianity in the post-apostolic age, and furnishes, by an undoubted quotation,

a valuable contribution to the solution of the Johannean problem; the Greek Hermas from Mt. Athos

(the Codex Lipsiensis, published by Anger and Tischendorf, 1856); a new and complete Greek

MS. of the First Epistle of the Roman Clement with several important new chapters and the

oldestwritten Christian prayer (about one tenth of the whole), found in a Convent Library at

Constantinople (by Bryennios, 1875); and in the same Codex the Second (so called) Epistle of

Clement, or post-Clementine Homily rather, in its complete form (20 chs. instead of 12), giving us

the first post-apostolic sermon, besides a new Greek text of the Epistle of Barnabus; a Syriac Version

of Clement in the library of Jules Mohl, now at Cambridge (1876); fragments of Tatian’s Diatessaron

with Ephraem’s Commentary on it, in an Armenian version (Latin by Mösinger 1878); fragments

of the apologies of Melito (1858), and Aristides (1878); the complete Greek text of the Acts of

Thomas (by Max Bonnet, 1883); and the crowning discovery of all, the Codex Sinaiticus, the only

complete uncial MS. of the Greek Testament, together with the Greek Barnabus and the Greek

Hermas (by Tischendorf, 1862), which, with the facsimile edition of the Vatican Codex (1868–1881,

6 vols.), marks an epoch in the science of textual criticism of the Greek Testament and of those

two Apostolic Fathers, and establishes the fact of the ecclesiastical use of all our canonical books

in the age of Eusebius.

In view of these discoveries we would not be surprised if the Exposition of the Lord’s

Oracles by Papias, which was still in existence at Nismes in 1215, the Memorials of Hegesippus,

and the whole Greek original of Irenaeus, which were recorded by a librarian as extant in the

sixteenth century, should turn up in some old convent.

In connection with these fresh sources there has been a corresponding activity on the part

of scholars. The Germans have done and are doing an astonishing amount of 

Quellenforschung

 and

Quellenkritik

 in numerous monographs and periodicals, and have given us the newest and best critical

editions of the Apostolic Fathers and Apologists. The English with their strong common sense,

4

Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

---