Theophilus of Antioch

ON ST. THEOPHILUS OF ANTIOCH, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR, IN SYRIA,

IN THE YEAR 181.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY.

Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, confessor, in Syria. (Saint)

BY J. B.

§ I. The memory of St. Theophilus in the Sacred Calendars of the Westerners; more recent Acts; his distinction from the Theophilus of whom St. Luke speaks; his conversion to the faith of Christ; the time of his episcopate; a passage of Notker emended.

As the wickedness of the demon has always been such St. Theophilus, though he deserved supremely well of the universal Church, that he stirred up and armed now heathens, now heretics for the ruin of the Christian faith even from its very birth, so divine Providence never ceased to take care that the flock redeemed by the blood of Christ should not lack men who would refute the heathens, confute the heretics, and instruct the faithful both by word of mouth and by writings, and encourage them to meet the assaults of the enemy bravely and steadfastly. And that such heretics were not lacking in the second century of the Christian era, but also that they were strenuously fought against, especially by bishops, is attested in book 4 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 24, by Eusebius of Caesarea, a writer of the fourth century and exceedingly learned, as rendered into Latin by Valesius: "Moreover," he says, "since nevertheless at this time also (he is speaking of the things which happened in the reign of Marcus Aurelius) the heretics, like tares, were undermining the pure seed of the Apostolic doctrine, the shepherds of the churches throughout the whole world hastened to drive them off and keep them away from the fold of Christ as wild and savage beasts: partly by exhorting and admonishing the brethren, partly by contending bravely against the heretics themselves: whom they confuted, refuting their opinions either by questions and confutations put to them face to face by the living voice alone, or by books most carefully written." So Eusebius in general terms; but presently he names St. Theophilus specifically among the illustrious defenders of the faith, citing his by no means undistinguished treatise against Marcion.

[2] yet he is inscribed only in the Latin Sacred Calendars, But although, both by the treatise just praised and by other writings of that kind, of which we shall speak below, and also by the holiness of his life, he beyond doubt deserved supremely well of the universal Church of God, yet I nowhere find him honored in the Eastern church with the honor customarily paid to the Saints, nor, which I wonder at, inscribed in the Sacred Calendars of the Greeks. The Latin church was fairer toward St. Theophilus; in its most ancient and most celebrated Martyrologies his name is inscribed, and sometimes not without particular praise. Thus the author of the Little Roman Martyrology, probably drawing from Rufinus, the translator of Eusebius: "At Antioch, of Theophilus the bishop, who was sixth from the Apostles." Ado, archbishop of Vienne: "At Antioch, of blessed Theophilus, who held the pontificate of the church sixth from the Apostles, a most learned man." Usuard: "At Antioch, of St. Theophilus, who held the pontificate of the church sixth from the apostle Peter." The last words, compared with those of Ado, indicate that Ado here lit the way for Usuard: the eulogy "a most learned man," which Usuard saw fit to cut out, could, as what is to be said below will show, rightly and deservedly have been added. Notker Balbulus, a contemporary of Ado: "At Antioch, of Theophilus, who held the pontificate of the church sixth from the Apostles, a most learned man": and this indeed he takes from Ado; but as for what he adds, "he established that a fast should be held three times in the year on the Sabbath day, according to the prophecy of the corn, the wine and the oil," Sollerius on Usuard confesses that he does not know where he drew it from: but on this matter see below, num. 14. The Roman Martyrology for today: "At Antioch, of St. Theophilus the bishop, who held the pontificate of the same church sixth after blessed Peter." "Of the same," says Baronius in the Notes on the Roman Martyrology, "Bede, Usuard, Ado and others"; but as far as Bede is concerned, if you look at the genuine one, there is no mention of Theophilus in him. To these I add the ancient Martyrology of the church of Auxerre, which in Martène, Veterum Scriptorum, tome 6, col. 725, reads thus: "At Antioch, of blessed Theophilus the bishop."

[3] None of the ancients wrote a Life or Acts of St. Theophilus, [nor did any of the ancients write his Acts; in the century just past Halloix collected them, to be published here only in small part.] or at any rate, if any written by the ancients exist or once existed, there is no knowledge of them anywhere. In the century just past Pierre Halloix wrote his Life, chiefly from the writings of Theophilus himself, and then from those things which he had found said of him here and there in various writers and in the Martyrologies; as may be seen in the Work which he entitled On the Lives and Documents of the Illustrious Writers of the Eastern church who flourished in the second century of Christ for holiness and learning alike, printed at Douai in the year 1636, page 735 and following. He divided the Life of St. Theophilus prepared by him into five chapters, in the first three of which he follows the deeds of St. Theophilus; in the fourth he treats of the writings of St. Theophilus praised by Eusebius and Jerome; in the fifth he collects various texts of Theophilus from his Commentaries on the Gospels, which, as he contends, St. Jerome used, now silently, now with the name of Theophilus expressed; to which, finally, he adds some excellent passages of St. Theophilus more worth reading, like little flowers, from his books written to Autolycus. We for our part shall reprint the first three chapters, as a compendium of the Life of St. Theophilus; but not the fourth and fifth chapters: not the fourth, because we shall treat below of his writings praised by Eusebius and St. Jerome, quoting their words, and so it would be useless to repeat them; not the fifth, because we judge the texts from Theophilus's books to Autolycus to be by no means necessary; while as for the rest, which he gathered from Theophilus's Commentaries on the Gospels, we shall show that they have as their author not Theophilus but some anonymous writer, and indeed a Latin one, later than Theophilus. Moreover we shall add Halloix's Notes to our own; but in such a way that the reader can easily distinguish which are his and which are ours.

[4] Halloix, having begun to describe the Life of St. Theophilus chiefly from his books, [the Theophilus treated here is other than the Theophilus of whom St. Luke speaks,] as has been said, first refutes those who hold the Prelate of Antioch to be the same as the Theophilus to whom Luke inscribes the Acts of the Apostles, as to his fellow-countryman: among these is William of Tyre, who, in book 4, chapter 19, describing Antioch of Syria, situated on the river Orontes, where also the Christian name was born, as Luke witnesses in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter XI, ℣. 26, speaks thus of St. Theophilus: "In this city the prince of the Apostles obtained the priestly chair and first exercised the pontifical dignity, the venerable man Theophilus, who was most powerful in the same city, dedicating a basilica in his own house. To him Luke, who drew his origin from the same city, wrote both his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles: and he also succeeded blessed Peter in the same church, seventh in the order of pontiffs." Whatever may be the case concerning the house of Theophilus being changed into a church, Halloix quite rightly judged that it can be concluded from the reckoning of time alone that the one is different from the other, lest Theophilus, who, when St. Luke wrote to him, had very probably already reached manhood, be said to have survived to the times of the emperor Commodus, which it is certain and undoubted from what is to be said below that the bishop of Antioch saw, that is, to the year of Christ 180, and consequently, which is scarcely credible, to have counted more than a hundred and fifty years of life.

[5] at first a heathen, Halloix therefore puts off the birth of St. Theophilus to the beginnings of the second century, when Clement, who suffered martyrdom in the year of Christ 100, was governing as Pope the Roman church, and St. Ignatius the martyr the church of Antioch; which indeed he does not without a certain appearance of truth; but he produces no ancient or certain witness for his statement: thus he fixes the year of St. Theophilus's birth only by conjecture. In the same light is to be held his assertion of his homeland, namely Antioch of Syria, which of old, to distinguish it from other cities of the same name, was called Epidaphnes and sometimes Theopolis. But that he was born of heathen parents I embrace as altogether likely, since toward the end of book 1 to Autolycus he confesses that before he had received the Christian faith and read the books of Sacred Scripture he did not believe in the resurrection of the dead any more than Autolycus, a heathen man of course: Καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼ ἠπίστουν τοῦτο ἔσεσθαι: "for I too did not believe that this would come to pass." But what Halloix adds about his excellent natural disposition of mind, his acuteness of intellect, his study of profane letters and finally his happy progress in them, is abundantly attested even by his books to Autolycus alone, which are extant.

[6] by which steps, as it were, By what incentives he was gradually impelled, so that, casting aside the fables of the heathens which he had imbibed from his earliest years, he passed over to the camp of the Christian faith, he himself explains in summary in book 1 to Autolycus: for they seem to have been none other than those very ones by which Autolycus to his

imitation he strove to entice: for thus he addresses him toward the end of the book cited: "Be not therefore unbelieving, but rather believe; for I too did not believe that this (that the dead would rise again) would come to pass, but now I believe, after I have considered these things" (which he had said so far in that book). But what were those things? Since he sought the truth alone, as he hints toward the beginning of the book cited, whenever anyone wrote or discoursed on anything, he inquired not how ornately but how truly it was done by him. "The lover of truth," he says, "is not led by painted words, but inquires what and of what kind is the deed joined to the word." Not unfittingly, therefore, would you say that the first step, as it were, for him toward acknowledging the truth of the Christian faith was the pursuit of truth. Then he noticed that a multitude of gods was acknowledged and worshipped by the heathens, but by the Christians one God, the Creator of all things; the gods vaunted by the heathens, of stone and of wood (so he speaks in book 1, num. 1), "hammered and cast, carved and painted, which neither see nor hear," in short, which were nothing but images and works of men's hands, he easily despised; above all because he had perceived that the names of the gods are the names of men, as he says in num. 9, of dead men, and indeed of most wicked men, and that animals themselves, basins and unseemly sounds (num. 10) were held in the number of the gods.

[7] And that there is one God, who created and rules all things, to the true salvi he gathered from his works. "For the heaven," he says in num. 4, "is his work, the earth and the sea his workmanship, man his fashioning and image. The sun, the moon and the stars are his elements, made for signs and seasons and days and years, that they may minister and serve men. And God made all things when before they were not, that his Majesty might be known and understood from his works." And as for what Autolycus objected to him: "Show me your God; describe to me the form of God, what it is like": he too had beyond doubt more than once raised this objection to himself; and he answered: "The form of God can neither be spoken nor described, nor seen with bodily eyes," which in num. 5 he illustrates with the following examples: "For as the soul in man is not seen, but, since it escapes human sight, is understood from the motion of the body, so also God cannot be seen by human eyes, but is seen and understood from his providence and works." The other example runs thus: "For just as one who sees a ship at sea, fitted out and running and putting in to shore, will without doubt judge that there is a pilot in it by whom it is steered, so God must be understood to be the Pilot of all things, although he is not seen with the eyes of the flesh, since indeed he cannot be comprehended." I pass over the remaining examples which he brings forward, no less suited to illustrate the matter he treats.

[8] But for our Theophilus, given his acute intellect, knowledge and profession it was not very difficult to establish these things; but by what reasoning did he at last persuade himself of the Resurrection of the dead, which is harder to believe, and which at first he did not believe? First indeed he considered that all things were created by God out of nothing; then he judged it absurd to believe that images made by men can work prodigies, but that God, who founded all things out of nothing, cannot recall a dead man to life: this argument indeed he used in num. 8 against Autolycus, who did not believe in the Resurrection of the dead. Then from the things which are daily before the eyes of all, he reasoned thus. "For observe," he says to Autolycus in num. 13, "if you please, the passing away of the seasons and of days and nights; mark how these too pass away and are born again. What? Is there not a certain resurrection of seeds and fruits, and that for human uses? For a grain of wheat, for example, or of other seeds, when it has been cast into the earth, first perishes and is dissolved, then is raised up and rises into an ear. And does not the nature of trees at fixed times, at the command of God, produce fruits previously hidden and unseen? Nay even sometimes a little sparrow or any other bird, when it has swallowed the seed of an apple or a fig, flies off to a rocky hill or to some tomb, and there empties its belly, and then that seed, putting forth roots, is born a tree, which was once swallowed and had passed through so great a heat. All these things the divine Wisdom works, to demonstrate even from these that God can accomplish the general resurrection of all men. But if you desire to see a more wonderful spectacle for demonstrating the resurrection, not only in earthly things but also in heaven, observe the monthly resurrection of the moon, how it passes away and is born again. Take, moreover, a resurrection brought to effect in yourself, even though you do not know it. For perhaps at some time you fell into sickness, and lost your flesh and your strength and your appearance, but having obtained mercy and healing from God, you recovered your body and your appearance and your strength; and, just as you do not know where your flesh went when it vanished, so neither do you perceive whence it arose and whence it came. You will say, from foods and juices turned into blood. Very well: but this is the work of God so bringing the matter about, not of anyone else."

[9] he was led. And by these reasons indeed he strove gradually to storm the mind of Autolycus and to draw it to believing the more sublime and more hidden mysteries of the Christian faith: by these he convinced himself. There came, finally, a great spur to him from the sacred pages: he searched out their antiquity; he found them perpetually in harmony with themselves: whereas the writings of the heathens were deservedly far inferior to them in antiquity, and teeming with disagreements and lies. Besides, he noticed in the Sacred Scriptures very many prophecies of things to come, part of which he saw fulfilled in his own age, which could have proceeded from no other source than from God. He saw that Moses and the prophets (see book 2 to Autolycus, num. 9) were holy and just men, and on that account judged them worthy of this reward, that they should become instruments of God and receive the wisdom which is from him. That he was led by these things to give his hand to the true faith he himself attests in book 1 to Autolycus, num. 14, in the following words: "Be not unbelieving, but rather believe; for I too did not believe that this would come to pass, but now I believe, after I have considered these things more attentively; and at the same time because I came upon the Sacred Scriptures of the holy Prophets, who through the Holy Spirit foretold both things past in the same manner in which they were done, and things present in the same manner in which they are being done, and things to come in the same order in which they will be accomplished." Having begun from these beginnings, it was not difficult for Theophilus, with divine grace assisting, to bring his intellect captive into the obedience of faith; would that those men followed his example who in this age of ours, priding themselves on the name of philosophers, bend the powers of intellect which they have received from God to subverting the divine oracles, led and blinded not by love of truth but by desire of a freer life!

[10] he began to rule the church of Antioch in the year 168, How great progress in virtue St. Theophilus made after he gave his name to the Christian faith, with what zeal for defending the religion he had embraced and with what desire for instructing Catholics he burned, can be abundantly gathered from those things which Halloix, in his Life to be reprinted below, gathered from his writings from every side, so far as he could. It may now therefore be asked in what year he ascended the episcopal chair of Antioch, for how many years he held it, and when finally he ceased to be among the living. Eusebius of Caesarea, book 4, chapter 24 of the Ecclesiastical History, writes that St. Theophilus fought excellently against the heretics under the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, who succeeded Antoninus Pius, who died in the year 161 in the month of March, of whom Lucius Verus died in the year 169, Marcus Aurelius in the year 180, his son Commodus succeeding Marcus Aurelius. Furthermore the same Eusebius in the Chronicle ties the ordination of St. Theophilus to the eighth year of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, that is, to the year of Christ 168 or the beginning of 169: but since St. Prosper of Aquitaine in his Chronicle, using the very words of Eusebius, adds that the ordination of Theophilus took place when Apronianus and Paulus were consuls, we gladly assent to Bosschius, who in the Treatise on the Patriarchs of Antioch prefixed to tome IV of July ties the ordination of Theophilus to the year 168.

[11] But as regards the second question, namely for how many years he occupied the see of Antioch, he held it for 13 years, there is greater difficulty. Eusebius, in the book and chapter of the Ecclesiastical History cited a little above, writes that Maximinus succeeded Theophilus, but does not there explain in what year this happened; in the Chronicle, however, he says that the ordination of Maximinus took place in the sixteenth year of Marcus Aurelius, that is, in 176 of Christ: if this is to be taken to mean that Maximinus then succeeded Theophilus when he had been taken from among the living, there is no doubt that Eusebius here fell into error; since Theophilus extends the chronology which he wove together in book 3 to Autolycus, from the founding of the world up to his own times, as far as the times of Commodus, who in the year 180 took over the empire from Marcus Aurelius, and (num. 27) refers Autolycus to Chryseros, the freedman of Marcus Aurelius Verus, who described the names and times of the consuls, tribunes and aediles up to the death of his patron, the emperor Verus. But Eusebius in the Chronicle writes indeed that Maximinus was raised to the chair of Antioch in the sixteenth year of Marcus Aurelius (176 of Christ), but does not say that Theophilus died then. What then? Did he bid farewell to the Antiochene mitre before his death? By no means: for it scarcely appears credible that Theophilus wished to desert his flock, or the people of Antioch to have so great a Pastor taken from them while he was still among the living, nor can it be proved by any witness: but it is likely that Maximinus, given to Theophilus as associate and helper, ruled the church of Antioch together with him for the space of some years; as the cited Bosschius judges, by the same stroke both vindicating Eusebius from error and keeping intact the authority of St. Nicephorus and George Syncellus; which, according to his mind, will be achieved in this way: first he solidly proves, where he treats of Serapion, that St. Serapion succeeded Maximinus in the year 189: then, following Eusebius, St. Nicephorus, George Syncellus and the Haarlem Catalogue, he assigns to Maximinus thirteen years of rule in all, and when these are subtracted from 189, the ordination of Maximinus is connected with the year 176, which agrees beautifully with Eusebius. Then, on the authority of Nicephorus and George Syncellus, he assigns the same number of years, that is thirteen, to Theophilus, which, added to the year 168, in which he began to sit, reach to the year 181, in which Commodus, the successor of Marcus Aurelius, was already reigning: from which it follows that for about five years both presided over the church of Antioch at the same time; this perhaps being required both by the size of the church of Antioch and by the old age of Theophilus and his frequent conflicts with the heretics: so Narcissus of Jerusalem had Alexander as colleague under Caracalla, and so Theotecnus, bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, had Anatolius, as Eusebius witnesses, Ecclesiastical History in Valesius, book 6, chapter XI; likewise book 7, chapter 32. Finally Eutychius

who ascribes 21 years of episcopate to Theophilus and 9 to Maximinus, Bosschius rejects in both cases, certainly more consistently than Tillemont, who in tome 3 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, page 53, where he treats of Theophilus, adheres to Nicephorus, who assigns 13 years to Theophilus, rejecting the 21 years asserted by Eutychius; but at page 168, where he treats of St. Serapion, he thought he should follow Eutychius, who assigns only 9 years to Maximinus, rejecting Nicephorus, in order to defend the error of Eusebius asserted by himself; although in the former place he had pronounced Nicephorus superior to Eutychius both in antiquity and in authority, and that deservedly. However the matter may stand, it follows from what has been said that it is not certain that Eusebius slipped in the Chronicle when he assigned the beginning of the episcopate of Maximinus to the sixteenth year of Marcus Aurelius, which Tillemont holds as undoubted.

[12] and he died in the year 181. Finally, from what has been said, it can be gathered what must be answered to the third question, namely in what year he died: for since he began to preside over the Antiochenes in the year 168, as has been said; since after the death of Marcus Aurelius, which occurred in the year 180, he wrote at least the last book to Autolycus; since finally, according to Nicephorus and George Syncellus, he ruled the church of Antioch for 13 years; and since he does not seem to have given it up while he survived in this life, nor do those 13 years run beyond the year 181, it was most probably in this same year that he ceased to act as bishop, and to write, and to live. But someone perhaps will say that from Theophilus himself it seems possible to gather that at least the third book to Autolycus was written about ten years later, since in that book, collecting the Emperors from Julius Caesar up to the death of Marcus Aurelius Verus, he counts a sum of 237 years: let us suppose then, with Labbe, that the first year of the common Christian era fell in the forty-fourth year of Augustus from the beginning of his reign: then let three be added to these 44 (for according to Theophilus Julius reigned that many before Augustus); they will make 47 years: and when these are subtracted from 237 years, there remain about 190 years of the common era. These things would indeed be rightly said if it were established that the text of Theophilus is sound: but I contend that Theophilus wrote neither τκς᾽, that is, 326, as Dom Maran notes the royal codex has, nor σλζ᾽, that is, 237, but σκζ᾽, that is, 227, not because the sum of years there expressed does not comprise 237 years, but because about 10 years were wrongly added to the reign of Claudius, which, since the copyist had not noticed it, he changed 227 years into 237; whereas he ought rather to have corrected the years of Claudius and substituted for κγ᾽, that is, 23 years, ιγ᾽, that is, 13 years; for writers everywhere assign to Claudius that many years and some months; but not one of the ancients said that he reigned 23 years: whence it is not likely either that Theophilus fell into this error.

[13] [Of the prelates of Antioch, counting St. Peter among them, he was seventh in order.] The first to rule the church of Antioch was St. Peter the Apostle, whom St. Euodius, St. Ignatius surnamed Theophorus, St. Hero, Cornelius and Eros succeeded in order: St. Theophilus was therefore the seventh. But behold, when I name St. Theophilus the seventh bishop of the Antiochenes, I incur, together with St. Jerome, the strokes of Dupin's rod, Dupin in his Ecclesiastical Library, second edition, tome 1, page 67, in the Notes, letter b, pronouncing thus in French words, which I have rendered into Latin: "There is a place where St. Jerome says that (Theophilus) was the seventh (namely bishop of Antioch), but he is mistaken." So he, and nothing more. Why does he say: "There is a place where Jerome says," etc.? Because, of course, he was not unaware that St. Jerome, who had called Theophilus seventh after Peter in the Epistle to Algasia, elsewhere, namely in the Chronicle and in the book On Ecclesiastical Writers, had called him sixth: why then does he accuse St. Jerome of error? How much fairer it would have been for him to say first, with Bosschius and Halloix: "That Eusebius calls him sixth" (imagine Eusebius exchanged for Jerome) "… he observes in this the custom usual with the principal Writers of Ecclesiastical History, since they do not reckon St. Peter, as ἔξοχον ἄλλων, in the common order with the rest; not as though he had no share in it, as Halloix observes in the Life of St. Theophilus, chapter 3, but because he was preeminent and held wider dominion." And then he would have further added: "but that in the Epistle to Algasia he calls him seventh, he does so because, besides Euodius, Ignatius, Hero, Cornelius, Eros and Theophilus, Peter, and indeed first, ruled the church of Antioch." But Dupin preferred to impute an error to St. Jerome, although he deserved nothing of the kind, rather than to acknowledge this preeminence in the prince of the Apostles and head of the Church. In the same manner in which he spoke here of St. Theophilus, St. Jerome also spoke of St. Clement in the Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, writing thus: "Clement, … fourth bishop of Rome after Peter. For the second was Linus; the third Anacletus."

[14] For the rest, concerning the things done by Theophilus in his episcopate, Notker's announcement of St. Theophilus is emended. apart from what is gathered from his writings which the envy of time has spared, nothing whatever is known: but as for what Notker, praised at num. 1, says, that he established that a fast should be celebrated three times yearly on the Sabbath day according to the prophecy of the corn and the oil, it is no more known to me than to Sollerius whence Notker drew it: nay rather I judge that to investigate it further would be nothing else than to waste oil and labor, since Notker wrote nothing of the kind about Theophilus; but it came about, as appears, by the error of copyists, that what Notker had written about this fast in the entry of the day immediately following, that is, the day before the Ides of October, concerning St. Callistus, Pope, first of this name, and martyr, was transferred to today's entry, that is, to the third day before the Ides of October. For no mention is found anywhere, as I have said, of a fast instituted by Theophilus: on the other hand, concerning Callistus, in the Vatican Martyrology printed by Domenico Giorgi at the end of the Roman Martyrology, at the 14th day of October, I read the following: "He instituted that the fast of the three seasons of corn, wine and oil should be held in the year according to the prophecy," namely of Zechariah, chapter 8, ℣ 19: "The fast of the fourth, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness, and great solemnities." Likewise these words in Anastasius the Librarian, printed at Rome in the year 1718: "He (Callistus) established that a fast should be held on the Sabbath day three times in the year, of corn, wine and oil, according to the prophecy, of the fourth, seventh and tenth," namely month; which are almost the very words of Notker. Finally there is extant an Epistle of Callistus himself to Benedict, dated in the year 222, in Labbe, tome 1 of the Councils, in which, at column 609, the Pontiff speaks in this manner: "The fast which you learned to celebrate three times in the year among us, we now decree to be held more fittingly through the four seasons, so that, as the year revolves through four seasons, so we too may keep a fourfold solemn fast through the four seasons of the year. And, as we are filled with corn, wine and oil for nourishing our bodies, so may we be filled with fasting for nourishing our souls, according to the voice of the prophet Zechariah." Of these things more in Labbe, in the Notes of Binius: for me it is enough to have touched on these, to show to whom Notker was looking when he made mention of this fast, namely to Callistus, not to Theophilus. Since therefore nothing is at our disposal to add concerning the things done by him, it remains for us now to discourse on his writings.

§ II. The writings of St. Theophilus, partly extant, partly lost or hidden, partly spurious or uncertain.

The lucubrations of St. Theophilus, from Eusebius, Eusebius, book 4 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 24, enumerates the Works of St. Theophilus still extant in his memory in this manner (Valesius translating): "Of Theophilus, whom we have related (chapter 20) to have been bishop of the church of Antioch, there remain three books to Autolycus, containing an instruction in the faith. There is extant also another book, which he entitled against the heresy of Hermogenes, in which he uses testimonies taken from the Revelation of John," which he adds because it was once doubted in the church whether the Apocalypse should be referred to the number of the divine books or not; then he proceeds thus: "There are extant also other books of the same, in which the elements of our faith are delivered." And again, after a few words interposed: "Theophilus therefore, together with the rest, fought against those heretics, as is clear from a certain by no means contemptible book of his, which he composed against Marcion: which book, together with the others which I have mentioned, is still extant."

[16] from St. Jerome, Let us now hear St. Jerome in the Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers: "Theophilus, sixth bishop of the church of Antioch, under the emperor Marcus Antoninus Verus composed a book against Marcion, which is extant to this day. There are also current three volumes of his to Autolycus; and one book against the heresy of Hermogenes; and other short and elegant treatises pertaining to the edification of the Church. I have read under his name Commentaries on the Gospel and on the Proverbs of Solomon, which do not seem to me to agree with the elegance and phrasing of the preceding volumes." The same in the Epistle to Algasia (see tome 4 of his Works, col. 197): "Theophilus, seventh bishop of the church of Antioch after Peter the Apostle, who, fitting together the sayings of the four Evangelists into one work, left monuments of his genius," etc.; and finally in the Prologue to his Commentaries on Matthew (in the tome just cited, page 3): "I confess that many years ago I read on Matthew the twenty-five volumes of Origen on Matthew, and as many Homilies, and his commatic kind of interpretation, and the Commentaries of Theophilus, bishop of the city of Antioch," to which he adds, from the Greeks, Hippolytus the martyr, Theodore of Heraclea, Apollinaris of Laodicea, Didymus of Alexandria; from the Latins, Hilary, Victorinus, Fortunatianus; "from whom," he says, "even if I took but little, something worthy of memory might be written."

[17] To Eusebius and Jerome must be added Theophilus himself, and from the very writings of Theophilus; who in book 2 to Autolycus first writes thus of himself, at num. 28: "And concerning him (the demon) the discourse is long: wherefore for the present let us dismiss the explanation of that matter. For elsewhere we have discussed him." Then in the same book, num. 29: "And the things which concern them (Abel and Cain) have very much history, nay an ordered arrangement of narrative: wherefore the book itself which is entitled 'The Genesis of the World' can teach those desirous of learning more accurately about this history"; thirdly, at num. 30: "But if those who are desirous of learning wish to know all the generations thoroughly, it is easy to demonstrate them from the Holy Scriptures. For this discussion has already in some part been set forth by us, as we said above," namely the Series of the Genealogy, in the first book of Histories

book. And a little below in the same place: "But a discussion of the affairs of Noah, who is called Deucalion by some, has been set forth by us in the book which we mentioned, which you too may inspect if you wish." Fourthly, in book 3, num. 19, where he treats of the Flood and of Noah, who had built the ark: "As we have demonstrated in another book." Lastly, Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, may also have written on the Song of Songs, if it is really his, the Fragment which Johann Ernst Grabe in the Spicilegium of the Holy Fathers, second century, tome 1, page 224, and after him Dom Maran, page 601, exhibited as cited under the name of Theophilus by Eusebius in his Commentaries on the Song of Songs, edited by Meursius. You have, then, the Works which are attributed to St. Theophilus: but rightly?

[18] To Theophilus indeed the three books to Autolycus, of which there are extant, as well as the books written against the heretics Marcion and Hermogenes, are more than sufficiently vindicated by the concordant authority both of Eusebius and of Jerome; to whom, as far as the first three are concerned, Lactantius is added, in book 1 of the Divine Institutes, chapter 23, where he brings forward the following from Theophilus: "Theophilus, in the book On Times written to Autolycus" (he means the third book to Autolycus, in which what follows is to be read at num. 29, and he carries the chronology from Adam down to the times of Commodus), "says that Thallus says in his History that Belus, whom the Babylonians and Assyrians worship, is found to have been older than the Trojan war by three hundred and twenty-two years." Lactantius indeed does not call Theophilus a bishop; but since he treats of the same Theophilus as Eusebius and Jerome, of whom are we to think the discourse is here, if not of Theophilus, bishop of Antioch? But Eusebius, as Dodwell says in the Additions to Pearson's posthumous Work On the Series and Succession of the First Pontiffs of Rome, page 12, is mistaken, and confounds a certain Theophilus, younger in age, an Antiochene indeed, but not a bishop, with the elder Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, and led the way into error for most others of more recent date (and perhaps even for St. Jerome). Is it really so? I should like, then, to hear why Dodwell gave credit to Eusebius and Jerome, who had both seen and handled the books of Theophilus to Autolycus, when they assert that this Theophilus was an Antiochene, but, when they call him a bishop, namely of Antioch, says at once that they fell into error? What reason is there why he should believe them in asserting the one, but not likewise the other? Certainly in those writings of Theophilus which survive nothing occurs from which you could extract that he was an Antiochene by birth or by residence rather than by his dignity as bishop.

[19] whatever Dodwell But, says Dodwell, "the time of that Writing to Autolycus is, unless I am mistaken, indicated by these words: 'Moreover they have hitherto persecuted those (the Christians) who worship the true God, and even today do not cease to persecute them,' καθ᾽ ἡμέραν διώκουσιν. And after a few words interposed: Τοὺς δὲ σπεύδοντας πρὸς ἀρετην, καὶ ἀσκοῦντας βίον ὅσιον, οὓς μὲν ἐλιθοβόλησαν, οὓς δὲ ἐθανάθωσαν, καὶ ἕως τοῦ δεῦρο ὠμοῖς αἰκισμοῖς περιβάλλουσι. From those words καθ᾽ ἡμέραν and ἕως τοῦ δεῦρο we easily gather that our Theophilus wrote these things while the persecution was still in force. And that it was no other than the persecution of Severus is proved by the fact that the σπεύδοντες πρὸς ἀρετην chiefly bore its violence, namely the 'Proselytes'; for we have proved elsewhere that that persecution of Severus was against them and not against others. Nor do we read of any older persecution which raged chiefly against them. And indeed it is manifest that that persecution of Severus began at Antioch, so that Theophilus, though not himself a bishop, yet an Antiochene, could aptly have had it in view. The words ἀσκοῦντας βίον ὄσιον seem to indicate the same. It denotes, namely, that philosophic ἄσκησις, by which name Origen and his disciples, the philosopher martyrs, were celebrated in that very persecution, whom accordingly Theophilus would have had before his eyes. For that same persecution attacked these very men above others. Thus Theophilus would have written after the year CCIII of the common era."

[20] may object. So it is; Theophilus wrote while the persecution against the Christians had not yet ceased, and he mentions it at the end of book 3: but it is false that the persecution there treated is the one which arose under Severus, who began to reign in the year 193; for just as in the place just cited he said that the persecution of the Christians had lasted ἕως τοῦ δεῦρο, "up to now," so, employing the same words, he said in num. 17 that the series of years from the founding of the world "up to now" had been explored: and how far that "up to now" extends he then shows: for, taking his beginning from Adam at number 24, and finally at num. 27 collecting the years from Cyrus up to the time when he was writing, he says: "From the reign of Cyrus to the death of the emperor Aurelius Verus, 744 years," which he repeats in the following number; and collecting the years of the emperors he says: "The time of the caesars, then, up to the death of the emperor Verus, is 237 years and 5 days." From which it follows that Theophilus's "up to now" is terminated by the death of Marcus Aurelius, not of Commodus, of whom, though he was alive when he was writing, he makes not even a word of mention; and consequently that by those words is indicated not the persecution of Severus but that of Marcus Aurelius Verus, probably not quelled everywhere on earth, although Eusebius writes in book 5 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 21, that under Commodus peace was given to the churches throughout the whole world: for in that very place he writes that under the same Commodus the martyr Apollonius was condemned to death at Rome by the senate: "For by an old law among them," Eusebius adds, "it had been ordained that Christians who had once been called to court should by no means be released unless they departed from their purpose." Why might not elsewhere too the governors of provinces and cities, whether led by their own hatred against them or yielding to popular instigation, have been able, even in the reign of Commodus, to abuse this or a similar pretext for persecuting the Christians?

[21] Since therefore we have Theophilus as his own interpreter, his three books to Autolycus Dodwell strives in vain to twist his words to the persecution of Severus: in vain also he says that by the words excerpted from Theophilus are indicated the disciples of Origen, upon whom the Severian persecution chiefly fell: for even if it were granted that the decree of Severus was chiefly aimed at them, by what authority, by what weight of reasons will Dodwell establish that Theophilus, when he says in general that the worshippers of the incorruptible and only God had hitherto been exposed to the persecution of the gentiles, had chiefly in view the proselytes or disciples of Origen? Is it because he says that those Christians of whom he treats hastened to virtue and practised a holy life? As though this were so proper to the disciples of Origen that he could not attribute that praise to the disciples of Christ in general, whom Theophilus himself both defends against the crimes laid to their charge and, not to seek elsewhere encomia of the Christians who lived in the second century, praises thus in the same book 3, num. 15: "But far be it from Christians that it should come into their mind to do anything of this kind; among whom temperance is present, continence is practised, a single marriage is kept, chastity is guarded, injustice is exterminated, sin is torn out by the roots, justice is exercised, the law is observed, the worship of God is performed, God is celebrated by confession, truth rules, grace guards, peace protects, the holy word leads by the hand, wisdom teaches, life directs, God reigns." More things by which Dodwell may be refuted will be supplied by Ruinart in the Preface to the Genuine Acts of the Holy Martyrs, and by Tillemont both where he treats of Theophilus and where he treats of the persecutions of the emperors Marcus Aurelius Verus and Commodus.

[22] Let the three books to Autolycus therefore remain asserted to St. Theophilus, sixth or seventh bishop of the Antiochenes, written to a heathen and learned man, but with uncertain fruit, Autolycus was a stranger to the Christian faith, as one who even reproached Theophilus with the very name of Christian, in which, however, the latter professed that he gloried; for the rest he was an eloquent man, learned, desirous of learning, devoted to profane writings, tenacious of his own judgment, prudent, but nevertheless too credulous toward the calumniators of the Christians, diligent, an explorer of all things, accustomed to spend even nights in libraries. So Theophilus describes him, partly at the beginning of book 1, partly toward the end of 2, partly toward the beginning of III. He dealt with Theophilus not in writing, as Tillemont thought, tome 3 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, page 51, but in familiar conversation, as Theophilus sufficiently indicates at the beginning of book 2 in these words: "When some days ago we held a conversation between us, most excellent Autolycus, and you asked me who my God was, and for some while lent your ears to my discourse" (which, held orally with Autolycus, he afterwards committed to writing), "I set forth my religion." But what fruit did Theophilus bring back, whether from his conversations with Autolycus or from his lucubrations committed to writing? At first indeed he dealt rather harshly with Theophilus; but, having heard him, he departed milder; which Theophilus himself attests, immediately subjoining to the words just cited: "So we then parted, so as to return home the best of friends, although at first you had dealt somewhat harshly with me." Theophilus indeed left nothing undone to win Autolycus for Christ; whether he attained the goal at which he aimed I would not dare to assert. In book 3 indeed, num. 1, Theophilus says of Autolycus: "After the discourses held with me you still regard the doctrine of truth as madness"; and he puts an end to the same book, the last to Autolycus, thus: "If you will, then, unroll these things diligently, that you may have a token and pledge of the truth"; which by no means savor of a man who had already surrendered to the truth.

[23] and published by various presses. Moreover, to one who unrolls this work of Theophilus to Autolycus, and even from the texts sometimes transcribed from it above, it will become manifest that he was not undeservedly called a most learned man by Ado, and that the praises which Eusebius and Jerome attributed to him are not empty. Baronius, in the Notes on the Roman Martyrology, calls his lucubrations divine: Natalis Alexander calls them a storehouse of profane and sacred learning, in the Second Century of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 3, article 5, num. 1. The same likewise asserts that his reasons are forceful and his style especially clear. To Dupin those books are full of moral teachings and allegories, elegant and polished in style, so that it would be wrong to doubt his eloquence: if you seek an analysis of them, go to Tillemont, Ecclesiastical History, tome 3, page 51 and following; Dupin, in the Library of Ecclesiastical Writers, tome 1, page 66; Ceillier, tome 2 of the Sacred and Ecclesiastical Writers, page 104 and the four following; Nourry, in the Apparatus to the Great Library of the Ancient Fathers, published at Paris in the year 1703, col. 497 and the four following; finally Dom Maran, a member of the Congregation of St. Maur, who prefixed its own analysis to each of the books of Theophilus to Autolycus, and in part 1 of the Preface, chapter 3, enumerates the editions of Theophilus thus: "We have already said that St. Theophilus first appeared in Greek, together with Tatian, at Zurich, in folio, in the year 1546, through the labor of Johannes Frisius. In the same city and the same year he appeared in Latin from the translation of Conrad Clauser, which translation indeed is found in the Libraries of the Fathers, Paris 1575, 1589, 1609, 1644; Cologne

1618; Lyon 1677. In Greek and Latin, moreover, this work is extant among the Orthodoxographa, Basel 1555, folio; in the Auctarium of the Library of the Fathers, Paris 1624, with the Notes of Fronton du Duc; after the Works of St. Justin, 1615, 1636, and Cologne, or rather Wittenberg, 1686. In the year 1684 there appeared at Oxford a new edition of the books to Autolycus, through the labor of John Fell, bishop of Oxford, who had a manuscript codex from the Bodleian Library, and emended the translation of Clauser in some places, and added brief Notes. All these editions yield to the Hamburg one, which appeared in the year 1724 in 88 through the labor of Johann Christoph Wolf, Pastor at St. Catherine's in Hamburg and Scholarch. He collated the text with the Bodleian codex and the royal Paris one, illustrated it with his own and others' Notes, and emended the translation in many places." To these add the edition and translation of this author himself, which appeared at Paris in the year 1742.

[24] But the books of Theophilus against Marcion and Hermogenes which Eusebius and Jerome But his books against Marcion and Hermogenes have perished or lie hidden, were able to see, these either are not extant or lie hidden somewhere in darkness: of Marcion, about the year 150, St. Justin Martyr spoke thus in Apology 1, num. 26, from the version of Dom Maran, already often praised: "Also a certain Marcion of Pontus (the demons sent forth), who is still alive and teaches disciples to acknowledge some other God greater than the Maker of the world. He, with the help of the demons, has brought it about among every race of men that many have broken out into blasphemies, and have denied that God the Creator of the universe is the Father of Christ, and have professed that some other, as being greater, has accomplished greater things than he." Hermogenes, against whom Theophilus drew his pen, seems to be the same as that Hermogenes whom Tertullian, when he wrote the book On Prescriptions (toward the beginning of the third century), mentions as one still living, thus, in chapter 30: "But Nigidius, whoever he is, and Hermogenes, and many others still walk about perverting the ways of God." He taught that nothing was created out of nothing, but that things were produced from matter, which he said had coexisted with God from eternity: whence Tertullian in the same book, chapter 33, explodes him and his principal error thus: "The same Apostle (Paul), when he reproves those who serve the elements (Gal. 4), points to some Hermogenes, who, introducing unborn matter, compares it with the unborn God, and thus, making the mother of the elements a goddess, is able to serve her whom he compares with God."

[25] This error Theophilus also, in book 2 to Autolycus, num. 4, whose error he refutes also in book 1 to Autolycus, not differing much from the reasoning of Tertullian, confuted thus: "But Plato and those who follow him confess indeed that God is unbegotten; but then they lay down that there are two unbegotten things, God and matter, and they say that this is coeval with God. But if God is unbegotten, and matter is unbegotten, then God is no longer the Creator of all things according to the Platonists, nor, as far as in them lies, will the monarchy of God stand. Then, just as God, inasmuch as he is unbegotten, is also unchangeable, so also matter, if it were unbegotten, would also be unchangeable and equal to God: for what is begotten can be turned and changed, but what is unbegotten can neither be turned nor changed. And what great thing would it be if God made the world from underlying matter? For a craftsman among us, when he has received matter from someone, fashions out of it whatever he pleases. But the power of God is seen in this, that he makes out of nothing whatever he wills: just as to give soul and motion belongs to no other than to God. For man fashions an image, but he cannot give reason, breath or sense to his work; but God has this further, that he makes a work endowed with reason and breath and sense. As therefore in all these things God is more powerful than man, so also in this, that he produces and has produced out of nothing whatever he willed, and in what manner he willed." Finally, that this error, with Hermogenes as its author, did not emerge only toward the sixtieth year of the third century, as Prateolus would have it, but had already been born from the second century onward, the things said about Tertullian and about the death of Theophilus sufficiently show. Let this much be said so far about the books of Theophilus expressly named by Eusebius: whether in his books to Autolycus he held anything foreign to the Christian faith will be examined only when we have treated of the other Works ascribed to him.

[26] [as also certain other writings of his: whether he wrote Commentaries on the Gospels, Jerome is doubtful;] Eusebius, after he has expressly named the books of Theophilus to Autolycus and against Marcion and Hermogenes, adds Καὶ ἕτερα δὲ τινα κατηχητικὰ ἀυτοῦ βιβλία, "There are extant also other books of the same, in which the elements of our faith are delivered," as Valesius renders, or "and other short and elegant Treatises (of his are current) pertaining to the edification of the Church," as Jerome translates. Up to that point, then, Jerome mentioned the same books of Theophilus as Eusebius: but when he next speaks of his lucubrations on the four Gospels and the Proverbs of Solomon, he no longer calls them those catechetical or short Treatises pertaining to the edification of the Church, but Commentaries: by which he seems to hint at two things; first, that those Commentaries are different from the other books of Theophilus which he had already mentioned before from Eusebius; and second, that Theophilus not only fitted together the sayings of the four Evangelists into one work, as he says in the Epistle to Algasia, but also interpreted them, thus fitted together, by commenting on them besides. Furthermore he doubted whether these Commentaries were really Theophilus's: for in the first place he saw that these Commentaries were not listed by Eusebius even tacitly; which seems to have been his first reason for doubting: the second was that he perceived that these Commentaries agreed little with his other works in elegance, nay even in phrasing. I confess indeed that Jerome, when he wrote to Algasia, betrayed his doubt by no indication whatever; but since there he cites Theophilus only in passing, whereas in the Ecclesiastical Writers he treats of his writings expressly, he must be thought to speak there with the many and less accurately, but here, with the critical art as guide, more accurately. This one thing therefore follows from Jerome, that in his age Commentaries of this kind were seen, marked indeed with the name of Theophilus, but perhaps a fictitious one. But in what language were they written? Since St. Jerome said that these Commentaries were surpassed in elegance by the other works of Theophilus and differed in phrasing, he beyond doubt compared Greek with Greek: for he would have ridiculously compared a Latin version of the Commentaries, of which Jerome says nothing, with the other works of Theophilus, written beyond doubt in Greek, as regards elegance, and doubted whether these Commentaries were genuine offspring of Theophilus on account of the lesser elegance of the Latin text; which, on account of what is about to be said, it may help to have observed here in passing.

[27] [But the Latin Commentaries which are extant under the name of Theophilus in the Lyon Library of the Fathers seem not to have been known even to Jerome,] There are extant in tome 2, part 2, page 166 and following, of the Lyon Library of the Ancient Fathers, four books of Commentaries or allegories on the four holy Gospels of our holy Father Theophilus, patriarch of Antioch, which they would have to be rendered into Latin from the Greek source of Theophilus: so judge Bellarmine, Labbe On Ecclesiastical Writers, and Halloix in the Life of St. Theophilus, relying on the testimony and authority of St. Jerome; but how he must be thought to speak, if ever he cites by name Theophilus's Commentaries on the Gospels, we have already said in the preceding number. Further, Halloix, in the Life of St. Theophilus, chapter 5, gathers various texts of Jerome, couched in the same or nearly the same words as are read in the said Latin version of the Commentaries, which Jerome, as he contends, used, with the name of Theophilus left silent or expressed: but in the first place, that Latin version, as was observed a little before, seems to have been unknown to Jerome, who certainly makes not even a word of mention of it: but if neither Jerome saw the Latin version, nor the author of the version saw him, how did it come about that, when they interpret so many texts of Theophilus from the Greek source into Latin, both use the same or almost the same words? Moreover, in St. Cyprian's Epistle to Magnus on the Eucharistic Sacrament there is this notable passage: "For when the Lord calls his Body Bread, gathered together from the union of a multitude of grains, he indicates our people, whom he bore, united; and when he calls his Blood Wine, pressed out of very many clusters and grapes and gathered into one, he likewise signifies our flock, joined by the mingling of a multitude united." Almost the same has the Latin translator of Theophilus, as they would have it, in tome 2 of the Lyon Library of the Ancient Fathers, part 2, page 171, col. 1, interpreting these words of Matthew chapter 26: "This is my Body, this is the Cup of the blood": "Calling his Body Bread," he says, "gathered from the union of many, he indicates this people, which he assumed, united. Calling his Blood Wine, pressed out of many clusters and grapes and gathered into one, he likewise signifies our congregation, joined by the mingling of a multitude united." Will Cyprian too be said to have borrowed these things from the Greek writings of Theophilus himself, or from his Latin translator? If you assert the first, the same question returns, how it came about that St. Cyprian used almost the same words as the Latin translator of St. Theophilus: if the second, how will it be proved that the Latin translator of Theophilus was known to St. Cyprian? For to say that SS. Jerome and Cyprian drew their words either from the Greek writings of St. Theophilus or from his Latin translator is to assume what is in question.

[28] And indeed other arguments are not lacking by which it is shown that not Jerome and Cyprian (and St. Ambrose could be added) drew from those Latin Commentaries on the 4 Gospels, nor translated from the Greek source of Theophilus, but in Latin but rather that their author stitched together his Commentaries from the writings of Jerome, Cyprian and others. For in the first place those Commentaries not only cannot be compared with the elegance of Theophilus, but they even constitute a plainly undigested work, and one which could seem unworthy of so great a Man. What of the fact that their author says things which could by no means have proceeded from a Greek man? In book 1, page 167, col. 1, he says: "Civitas city is so called from cives citizens": but for the Greeks the root is πόλις, city; and the derivative πολίτης, citizen; and a little after, on that saying of Matthew chapter 5, "One jot or one tittle apex shall not pass from the law till all these things be done," he writes thus: "By the Jot he signifies the Old Testament, in which the decalogue is contained: for Jota stands for ten among the Greeks; but the apex, having four letters, indicates through the fourfold Gospel the New Testament." What Greek could ever have spoken thus? For in Greek the Latin word apex is expressed in Matthew by the word κεραία, which consists of 6 letters. To these certain other things,

by which they would deny those Commentaries to Theophilus, some Critics add, but they seem to me less effective: they ask why Jerome, expounding on chapter 3 of Matthew the reasons why Jesus Christ was conceived of the Virgin Mary when betrothed, after bringing forward three and citing no author, presently cites Ignatius in these words: "The martyr Ignatius also added a fourth" (or rather hinted at it tacitly in the Epistle to the Ephesians) "reason why he was conceived of one betrothed, namely, he says, that the birth might be hidden from the devil, while he thinks him begotten not of a Virgin but of a wife"; and not Theophilus, in whom, as it pleases them to imagine for the moment, that fourth reason is read expressed in almost the same words that Jerome used? But it could be answered that Jerome did this because Ignatius had first put forward the fourth reason, and Theophilus had learned it from his predecessor.

[29] first composed Moreover, they say, Victor, presbyter of Antioch (see tome 4 of the Lyon Library of the Ancient Fathers, page 370, col. 2), denies that he found anyone who had discoursed on the Gospel of Mark, although he had studiously unrolled the catalogues of ancient monuments; but perhaps Victor only wished to indicate that no one had been found by him who had explained the Gospel of Mark alone in a separate volume, which he himself was undertaking to accomplish, and therefore he says that he will use those things which the doctors of the Church had annotated on Mark here and there and in parts, and will reduce them into one body. It is certain, moreover, that Jerome saw Commentaries on the Gospels which at least bore the name of Theophilus. They object also that in that Latin Commentary mention is made of monks: it reads thus: "To be in bed," says its author or translator, page 170, col. 1, "signifies the monks, who love quiet, strangers to the tumult of the human race, and serving the Lord." What if by monks he understood men who, bound by no vows, enrolled in no religious community under one superior, led a life removed indeed from the company of men, but yet under their own control, and served the Lord? Did such men not exist in the second century?

[30] after the times of St. Jerome: But since, from what has been said, that Latin commentator is later not only than Theophilus but also than Jerome and Ambrose, in what age did he live? I have found nothing in him, indeed, from which I could define his age accurately: yet he may seem, as Ceillier observes, to have written after Eutyches; Eutyches, condemned in the year 451 by the council of Chalcedon, had maintained, on account of the one person in Christ, one nature also. See now how clearly he contradicts Eutyches: "It must be known," he says, page 175, col. 1, "that Christ our Lord is thus true Man and true God: of God the Father" (supply) "God; of a human mother Man." No less clearly does he contradict Nestorius, who asserted, on account of the two natures in Christ, two persons also, writing thus on page 174, col. 1: "The same therefore is Man and God, that is, Christ is one Person." There is added the title of the Work prefixed to book 1, unless it was added by another hand, in which he is called Patriarch of Antioch; but that title, in the sense in which it is used here, was first attributed to Pope Leo in the Acts of the council of Chalcedon. See Thomassin, On Ecclesiastical Discipline, book 1, chapter 3, num. 13. Nor would you perhaps find the prelates of Antioch called patriarchs earlier than in the Lives of SS. Euthymius, Sabas and Theodosius, written in the sixth century.

[31] Nor does what Ceillier says seem true, that Jerome in the Epistle to Algasia indicated some written Work of Theophilus [who, both in the Ecclesiastical Writers and in the Epistle to Algasia, speaks of one and the same work of Theophilus, though doubtful; nor does he attribute to Theophilus what was Tatian's.] different from those Commentaries on the Gospel which in the book On Ecclesiastical Writers he said he had read under his name. The words of Jerome entire, in the Epistle just cited, run thus: "Theophilus, seventh bishop of the church of Antioch after Peter the Apostle, who, fitting together the sayings of the four Evangelists into one work, left us monuments of his genius, spoke as follows on this parable in his Commentaries": and then he expounds at great length the parable of the rich man and the unjust steward, from Theophilus, whether genuine or impersonated: whence Theophilus seems not only to have fitted together the sayings of the Evangelists into one work, but by the same labor also to have illustrated them with his own comments, as I was saying at num. 26. Valesius, in the Annotations on chapter 29 of book 4 of Eusebius, suspected that Jerome, when he said that Theophilus of Antioch fitted together the sayings of the four Evangelists into one work, through a slip of memory attributed to him what was Tatian's: but that suspicion does not please me either: for, to grant Valesius freely that Jerome, when he wrote these things about Theophilus to Algasia, erred in the name of the writer, he certainly remembered well of what kind the work itself was; for what use, then, would he have made mention to Algasia of a fraudulent work, proceeding from a man infected with heresy?

[32] So far concerning the lucubrations of St. Theophilus from Eusebius and Jerome; [Another work of his likewise has perished, which he mentions in book 3 to Autolycus: whether he commented on the Song of Songs is uncertain.] but he seems also to have elaborated others, which they either did not see or did not list by name, but which he himself mentions in his books to Autolycus; the first place occurs in book 2, num. 28: "And concerning him (the demon) the discourse is long: wherefore for the present let us dismiss the explanation of that matter; for elsewhere we have discussed him." The second place is in the same book, num. 30: "For this discussion has already in some part been set forth elsewhere by us, as we said above," namely the series of the genealogy, "in the first book of Histories." And a little below: "But a discussion of the affairs of Noah, who is called Deucalion by some, has been set forth in the book which we mentioned, which you too may inspect if you wish." Since in this num. 30 he refers Autolycus to some book previously cited by himself, and nowhere else than in num. 28 does he mention a Work made by himself, he seems to have designated the same Work in both places; certainly, since in that Work he explained the genealogy of the first men, it could easily have happened that he there discoursed at length about the demon on the occasion of Eve, deceived by the demon under the form of a serpent. He seems likewise to make mention of the same Work when in book 3, num. 19, he says that he has demonstrated in another book that men were called to repentance through Noah. Again, in num. 3 of the same book, treating of the crimes of the gods, he says that he has discussed them more accurately in another book, which book indeed Nourry holds to be different from the other books of Theophilus hitherto mentioned; but to me Theophilus seems in this place to have indicated book 1 to Autolycus, in which at num. 9 he touches on the infamies of the gods. What of the fact that he also wrote on the Song of Songs? For Grabe, in the Spicilegium of the Holy Fathers of the I, II and III century, tome 2, page 224, brings forward a Fragment of a Commentary of Theophilus used by Eusebius in the Exposition of the Canticle edited by Meursius. But if Eusebius used this Commentary of St. Theophilus, how did it come about that he mentioned his Commentaries on the Proverbs of Solomon, but made no mention of his Commentaries on the Song of Songs either in the Chronicle or in the Ecclesiastical History? Nay, Ceillier, tome 4, page 354 and following, shows that it is not even sufficiently certain that Eusebius used that Fragment.

§ III. Whether he held anything less correctly concerning the Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity.

St. Theophilus seemed indeed to some Although Theophilus was very strong in eloquence, yet when he speaks of the Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity he sometimes uses words not altogether clear, as one writing in the second century and before the council of Nicaea; whence it came about that he seemed to Petavius and others to have confused the Spirit with the Word, to have acknowledged only one Person in the Trinity, or an inequality of Persons in it. "For among the Christian doctors," says Huet, bishop of Avranches, Origeniana book 2, num. 10, "who flourished before the synod of Nicaea, many spoke too incautiously of the Mystery of the Trinity. Certainly the doctrine of Tatian on the Trinity was unsound, and that of Justin, older than Tatian. Into the same charge comes Pseudo-Clement, and comes also Theophilus of Antioch." And num. 25: "Justin, Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch, Tertullian himself and Lactantius said that God, when he was contemplating the creation of the world, put forth his Word, to use as his minister in the fashioning of things." How the writers cited by Huet can be explained was set forth by Dom Prudent Maran in book 4 On the Divinity of Christ, as I read in the Notes of Dom Charles and Charles Vincent de la Rue, monks of the Congregation of St. Maur and editors of the Works of Origen, on the words of Huet just cited; which Work indeed we lack: but his mind, so far as it pertains to St. Theophilus, we have, I think, sufficiently ascertained from the Notes which he subjoined to the books to Autolycus. Our sole purpose here is to vindicate Theophilus from error, and first we shall exhibit to the reader the passages of Theophilus from which these charges were born, and shall then bring to them what remedy we can.

[34] concerning the Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity The first passage presents itself in book 2 to Autolycus, num. 10, and reads thus, Maran translating: "And first indeed they (the Prophets) taught with the greatest agreement that God created all things out of nothing. For nothing is coeval with God, but since he is his own place, and needs nothing, and is older than the ages, he willed to make man, to whom he might become known; for this man he prepared the world. For he who is created needs many things, but the uncreated needs nothing at all. God, therefore, having his own Word implanted (ἐνδιάθετον) in his own bowels, begot it together with his wisdom, putting it forth before all things. This Word he used as the minister of his works, and through it he founded all things. It (this Word) is called the beginning (of created things), because it has the principality and dominion of all the things which were created through it. He (read 'this,' namely the Word), since he is the Spirit of God and the beginning, and the wisdom and power of the Most High, descended upon the Prophets, and through them spoke of the creation of the world and of the other things; for there were not yet prophets when the world was being created, but only the Wisdom of God, which is in him, and his holy Word, which is always present with him." And in this place indeed, when he says: "It (namely the Word), since it is the Spirit of God," he may seem to confuse the Holy Spirit with the Word or Son; but when he names the Word the minister (ὑπούργον) of God or the Father, to make the Son less than the Father, which is Arian.

[35] The other passage, in the same book, num. 22,

reads thus: to have spoken less correctly in the passages "You will say to me, then" (he addresses Autolycus): "'You said that God ought not to be contained in a place; how do you now say that he walks in paradise?' Hear what I answer: God, the Father of all things, cannot indeed be contained, nor is he found in a place, for there is no place of his rest. But his Word, through whom he made all things, since he is his power and wisdom, assuming the person of the Father and Lord of all things, came into paradise in the person of God, and conversed with Adam. For the divine Scripture itself teaches us that Adam said that a voice was heard by him. But what else can that voice be than the Word of God, who is also his Son; not as the poets and writers of fables feign sons of the gods begotten from intercourse; but, as the truth narrates, the Word always existing and implanted in the heart of God. Τὸν ὄντα διαπαντὸς ἐνδιάθετον. For before anything came to be, he used him as counsellor; since he is his mind and prudence. But when God willed to make those things which he had determined, he begot this Word, uttered (προφορικὸν), the firstborn of every creature; not however in such a way that he became empty of the Word, but that he begot the Word and was always conversing with his Word. These things the Holy Scriptures teach us, and all those who were inspired by the Holy Spirit, among them John, saying thus: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.' By which words he shows that in the beginning God alone was, and the Word in him. Then he adds: 'And the Word was God; all things were made through him, and without him was made nothing.' Since therefore the Word is God and begotten of God, the Father of all things, when it so seems good to him, sends him into some place, where, when he has come, he is heard and seen, sent by him, and is found in a place."

[36] These words of Theophilus having been weighed, someone may ask 10, cited here; since he names the Word the power, wisdom, mind and prudence of the Father, does he seem to distinguish the Father sufficiently from the Son? Then, saying that the person of the Father was assumed by the Word, does he acknowledge the Word as a person numerically distinct from the Father? Lastly, when he says, "He begot this Word when God willed to make those things which he had determined," does he not declare clearly enough that the Word or Son was begotten by God the Father only when he was contemplating the creation of the world, so as to use him as minister in the creation of things? To these things I first answer in general that it was not Theophilus's purpose to expound more minutely each and every thing pertaining to the Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, but that he bent his strength only to this, to bring Autolycus to the knowledge of the one true God, to faith in the resurrection, and finally to the reading of the Scriptures, and, having laid these as foundations, to dispose him to believe the other mysteries of the Christian faith: but Autolycus had not yet allowed himself to be brought so far. But if here and there he brought forward something about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, I say that he did so in such a way that he did not omit to insert abundantly into his words things from which it sufficiently appears that he was a stranger to the errors objected against him.

[37] but neither did he confuse the Word For what was objected above from num. 10 of book 2 to Autolycus, that he confused the Word with the Holy Spirit, has no force; there indeed he names the Word the Spirit of God; but not so as to confuse the Person of the Spirit with the Word; rather he calls the Word the Spirit of God because, just as all things were created through the Word, so through it also they are given life and preserved. This interpretation is drawn from Theophilus himself; for he said in book 1, num. 3: "If I say Spirit (of God), I speak of his own" (or, as Dom Maran interprets, "my own") "breath": and again at num. 7: "This my God is the Lord of all things, … who founded the earth upon the waters, and bestows the Spirit that nourishes it; whose Spirit gives life to all things, and if he should keep it back with himself, this universe will fail. By his Spirit, O man, you speak, his Spirit you draw in, and him you do not know." Nay indeed, a little after he distinguishes the Word from the Holy Spirit, proceeding thus: "But if you will, you can be healed: give yourself to the physician, and he will prick the eyes of your mind and heart. Who is this Physician? God, who through the Word and Wisdom" (by which last name he understands the Holy Spirit, which he has in common with St. Irenaeus) "heals and gives life. God through the Word and Wisdom founded all things: for 'by his Word the heavens were established, and all their power by his Spirit.'" He likewise distinguished them in these words, related above at num. 34: "But only the Wisdom of God, which is in him, and his holy Word, which is always present with him." To be in God and to be present to God come to the same thing; unless he had distinguished Wisdom or the Holy Spirit from the Word, one or the other of these two would have been plainly superfluous; and since this is less credible, he seems to have indicated that the Holy Spirit, no less than the Word, was always present to the Father.

[38] with the Holy Spirit, He distinguished them in book 2, num. 15, saying: "Those three days which were before the luminaries are an image of the Trinity" (τῆς Τριάδος, a name which he is believed to have been the first to use) "of God, his Word, and his Wisdom." If Theophilus here indicated only one or two divine Persons, what image, I ask, of the Trinity did he put forward? He distinguished them in the same book, num. 18, in these words: "But to no one does he (God) say, 'Let us make man to our image and likeness,' except to his Word and his Wisdom." And when he calls the Holy Spirit Wisdom, a name which is usually attributed specifically to the Son, he does nothing foreign to his age: for St. Irenaeus too speaks thus in book 4 against heresies, chapter 7: "For there ministers to him" (by an unspeakable ministry, as he says beforehand) "in all things his offspring and his figuration, that is, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Word and Wisdom, whom all the angels serve and are subject to." And why could they not in a sound sense call the Holy Spirit Wisdom, who had read in Ephesians chapter 1: "That God, the Father of glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him"? On which matter St. Athanasius also writes thus in Epistle 1 to Serapion: "As the Father, as Paul teaches, alone is wise, so his Son is wisdom. For 'Christ is the power and wisdom of God.' As likewise the Son is Wisdom, so we, having received the Spirit of wisdom, have the Son and in him are made wise." Certainly, as the Son received wisdom from the Father as from a fountain, so also did the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, proceeding from both.

[39] Grant that, you will say; but he would at least have called the Word by a worthier name than that of minister, nor did he take anything unless he had thought the Word unequal to the Father. We have already seen from Irenaeus, just cited, that a twofold ministry was acknowledged by the fathers in the second century, one of subjection, by which the angels minister to the Word and Wisdom; the other, by which the Word ministers to the Father, and that, as Irenaeus says, unspeakable: and why unspeakable? Except because it differs immensely from the ministry of subjection, and takes nothing away from the divinity of the Word, by which it is equal to the Father? And whence will the accusers of Theophilus extract that Irenaeus held one thing in this matter and Theophilus another? Moreover, as Dom Maran rightly observes, the ministry which the Word rendered to the Father in the creation of the world was a voluntary execution of the paternal will, which brings no detriment whatever to the Divinity of the Word: for indeed nothing was taken from it when the Word, executing the will of the Father, assumed human flesh; why should anything have been taken from it when, creating and administering the world, it executed its own will as well as the Father's? That the Divinity of the Word was asserted by Theophilus, and that he was far removed from the errors of the Arians, I show thus.

[40] What displeased Arius in the Catholic dogma of the Word Arius himself explains in his Epistle to Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia (see tome 1 of the Works of St. Epiphanius, edited by Petavius at Paris in the year 1622, page 731), in these words: "Always God, always Son: at once Father, at once Son: the Son exists perpetually with the unbegotten God: always begotten, begotten of the unbegotten; neither in thought nor in any moment does God precede the Son. Always God, always Son, the Son from God himself." These things were grievous to the man: to these he refused to assent: "We on the contrary," he says, "what then do we say, think, have taught and teach? Namely, that the Son is neither unbegotten, nor in any way a part of the unbegotten; nor yet made from any underlying matter: but that by the will and counsel of God" (by a gratuitous gift of God) "he subsisted before times and ages" (yet not always and from eternity): "fully God, only-begotten, unchangeable, who, before he was begotten, or created, or decreed, or founded, was not. For he was not unmade." According to Arius therefore the Son was not God, or, if he was, he was not always, nor did he exist from eternity, except in so far as the Father decreed from eternity that he should at some time exist; and though he calls him fully God, yet a little after he says he was made; and thus he makes the Son God in name, but denies it in fact. Let us see now whether Theophilus stood with the Catholics or with Arius.

[41] In book 2 to Autolycus, num. 22, he says: "Since therefore the Word is God and begotten of God": from the divinity he therefore called the Son God, and begotten of God: neither of these pleased Arius. But when begotten? From eternity; for Theophilus says in the same place that he always existed implanted in the heart of the Father; and in num. 10, always present to the Father. Behold that "always" hateful to Arius. Moreover, from what does he conclude, in the words just cited, that the Word is God, and God begotten of God? From these words of John 1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; all things were made through him, and without him was made nothing"; a passage which, as Dom Maran again rightly observes, Arius could not use to establish his depraved dogmas; but on the contrary the orthodox happily used it to establish the divinity of the Son and to overthrow the impiety of Arius. Nor did Theophilus assert the divinity of the Son only, but also that of the Holy Spirit, which the Arians likewise denied; for he asserted that Wisdom, by which name he understands the Holy Spirit, coexisted with the Father from eternity, as was said at num. 37: for Theophilus, cited at num. 34, admits nothing (created) coeval with God.

[42] of the Word. But someone will now ask, if these things are so, why does Theophilus say above at num. 35: "But when God willed to make those things which he had determined, he begot this Word, uttered, the firstborn

of every creature"? Does he not here say that the Word was begotten in time, or at least not from eternity? By no means; he only means that the Word, which had been with the Father from eternity, came forth at the appointed time for the creation of the world and the production of created things, "not however in such a way that he became empty of the Word, but that he begot the Word and was always conversing with his Word"; that is, without any change either of himself or of the Word. And although he uses here the word "begot," ἐγέννησε, he signifies not so much generation properly so called as mission; since a little after he adds: "Him the Father of all things, when it so seems good to him, sends into some place, where, when he has come" (having assumed some extraneous form accommodated to the senses), "he is heard and seen, sent by him, and is found in a place." Of which mission Augustine speaks thus in book 3 against Maximinus: "For it was fitting that not the begetter should be sent by him whom he begot, but the begotten by the begetter: but this is not an inequality of substance, but an order of nature: not that one was prior to the other, but that one was from the other." Nor indeed did the fathers of the second century always use the words "to beget" or "to be born" in their proper signification; thus St. Justin Martyr, in the Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, in Dom Maran, num. 88, applying that verse of Psalm 2, ℣. 7: "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee," to Christ baptized in the Jordan, says that he was then at last born (not to the Father, but) to men, and arose, when he became known to them. Why could not Theophilus, by some similar reasoning, say that the Word was then at last born (not to the Father, to whom he says it was always present) but to men; when he began to found the world prepared by God for man, to converse with Adam, as he thought, to deal with the Patriarchs, and thus to become known to men?

[43] [and this he said in a properly Catholic sense, calling him now implanted, now uttered,] Nothing therefore has hitherto been brought forward from Theophilus which is adverse to the Christian faith; if he named the Word now implanted in the heart of the Father, ἐνδιάθετον, now uttered, προφορικὸν, he judged that he could do this not only in a Catholic way but even on the authority of John, whom he cites. For since he read that the Word was in the beginning, or from eternity, with God, he thought that it could thus far be called ἐνδιάθετον; and since all things were created through this very same Word, that it could be called προφορικὸν as sent to create things and as having gone forth to external works; especially since he was writing at a time when the Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity had not yet been explained as clearly as it was afterwards; and was writing besides to a gentile man, by no means accustomed to the more sublime formulas of Christian Theology. Not so did the Arians use those words, who did indeed admit some Word ἐνδιάθετον in God, but not subsisting of itself, and likewise a Word ἐκφόρικον, but different from that former Word and created, which was deservedly rejected by St. Athanasius in the Exposition of the faith. I confess, however, that the words employed by Theophilus are not altogether suited to explaining the generation of the Word; for the internal word (ἐνδιάθετος) is a motion of the mind which is effected in the reasoning part without utterance. But the uttered word shows its force in the voice and in modes of speaking; that, I say, which is uttered by the help of the tongue and the mouth: whence it is called uttered, and is the messenger of the mind's thought, as St. John Damascene teaches in book 2 On the Orthodox Faith, chapter 21. Neither of these subsists of itself. Wherefore he adds to these a third, writing thus in book 1, chapter 13: "The Word is that which is always substantially with the Father." This same Word he calls subsisting of itself in the same book 1, chapter 8.

[44] St. Theophilus, indeed, did not in express words call the Word or Son of God self-subsisting or substantially present to the Father, and also from the Father, as Damascene does, or, what follows from that, a person numerically distinct from the Father, but he sufficiently accomplished this in substance. For what is that λόγος ἐνυπόστατος or οὐσιώδης of Damascene? ὁ τῷ Πατρί ἀεὶ συμπαρὼν, he who was always together with the Father. Does not Theophilus deliver this very thing in as many words? Does he not (consult his words transcribed at num. 34 and following) studiously inculcate it again and again? Did he not say that he was the counsellor of the Father before anything came to be? Did he not call those three days which preceded the luminaries an image of the Trinity, of God, his Word, and his Wisdom or Holy Spirit? Does he not also, writing of the creation of man, in Dom Maran, book 2, num. 18, say: "Nay even, as if God (the Father) needed help, he is found saying: 'Let us make man to our image and likeness.' But to no one does he say 'Let us make,' except to his Word and his Wisdom," or Holy Spirit? Or do all these things perhaps not hint that the Son is numerically distinct from the Father, and that the Person of the Father is one and that of the Word or Son another? They hint it, you will say, but when the world had already been created. In vain, for he also called the Word God begotten of God. And when he said this, he called the Word God from eternity; he called him begotten from eternity. The first, because he admits nothing created coeval with God; the second follows from the first. For who is this begotten God, God indeed from eternity, but not begotten from eternity? He said finally that the Father was distinct from the Son from eternity in number, and consequently in Person. "You understand, hearers," says St. Justin Martyr, a contemporary of Theophilus, in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, in Dom Maran, num. 129, "if indeed you apply your mind, that the Scripture declares that the Offspring was begotten of the Father before absolutely all created things. Moreover, that the begotten is numerically other, ἀριθμῷ ἕτερόν, than the begetter, anyone will confess." Did Theophilus deny what, by Justin's judgment, was acknowledged among all?

[45] But Theophilus, when he called the Word the counsellor of the Father, he acknowledged that he was always distinct in person. added the reason for the saying, "since he is his mind and prudence": but the mind and prudence of the Father is distinguished from the Father neither in number nor in person. So it is; but there Theophilus gives the reason, not why the Word coexisted with the Father from eternity, but why he was called the counsellor of the Father, and he establishes two things, namely the numerical distinction between the Father and the Son; and then the unity of nature. The first, when he called the Word the counsellor of the Father; the second, when he added that the mind of both the Father and the Son is numerically the same. Nor does it stand against what has been said that he says that the Word, when he came into paradise to converse with Adam, assumed the person of the Father: for this was not said by him in the sense that the Word is the same person as the Father, but because he judged that the Word appeared to Adam in the name, stead and authority of the Father (in which there is nothing adverse to the dogmas of faith), as Nourry, praised more than once above, observes from Petavius. If therefore any fault was committed anywhere by Theophilus, it was not that of a mind deflecting from the truth of the faith, much less of one pertinaciously adhering to its error; but of mouth and pen laboring under a lack of suitable words in matters which surpass as far as possible the measure of human intellect.

LIFE OF ST. THEOPHILUS, BISHOP OF ANTIOCH,

By Pierre Halloix.

Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, confessor, in Syria. (Saint)

BY PIERRE HALLOIX.

PREFACE.

[Of the few Fathers of the 2nd century whose complete Works we have, St. Theophilus is one.] Although the second century from the birth of Christ produced in the East a great many sacred writers, renowned no less for learning than for virtue, I find that only three of them all had the good fortune that some of their writings have endured entire to this age of ours. Of these, after those two most well known to the whole world, Justin the Philosopher ^a and Irenaeus, prelate of Lyon ^b, the third is this our Theophilus, bishop of great Antioch, a man truly, according to the meaning of his name, loving God and lovable to God. For of him, just as of the other two, we have certain complete Works; but of the other writers of the same age we have been able to collect only a few small fragments in comparison with those which have perished. From those Works of most blessed Theophilus ^c, therefore, it has been my endeavor to select certain principal points of his deeds and virtues, and, joining to them the brief records which sacred history has supplied, to shape them into a kind of body, as it were, for describing his Life (which otherwise exists nowhere hitherto). And this is the very thing which now, relying on divine grace, I forthwith undertake.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER I.

The age, family, upbringing and studies of Theophilus; his exploration of Christian doctrine.

Born toward the end of the 1st century There are those who refer the age of St. Theophilus to the first century of the Lord Saviour; nor are there lacking those who make him a contemporary of St. Luke, the disciple and companion of Paul: thinking, namely, that he is the very man for whom that divine writer wrote both his Acts of the Apostles and the most holy Work of the Gospel, as for his fellow-countryman and fellow-citizen, a rich and religious man, who made his house, which he had at Antioch, into a house and temple of Christ by dedication. For the Antiochenes themselves are believed to have transmitted this to posterity as handed down to them from their ancestors: but, as I indeed think, with that affection with which every nation is eager that the first origins of its affairs should be held as ancient as possible. For to one reckoning the computations of the times more attentively, that opinion will be judged far to prevail which fetches the birth of Theophilus no higher than from the beginnings of the second century ^a, and believes him born at the beginning of the reign of Trajan, or about the hundredth year of Christ, when blessed Clement was governing the Roman Church, and St. Ignatius the Martyr the church of Antioch (from which Theophilus is believed to have sprung) ^b. For those who have persuaded themselves that the Theophilus whom blessed Luke addressed in the sacred books and the one whom we know to have survived at the decline of the second century are one and the same must by the same token confess that this same Theophilus spent a hundred and fifty years and more of this life ^c. But if this were so, which writers, pray, would have passed over in silence an age so unusual and extraordinary in those times?

[2] Wherefore he was born at the time which I have said, and of parents honorable indeed in fortune (as may be gathered) ^d, of heathen parents, but still involved in the error of gentile superstitions. And there shone forth in the Child an excellent disposition of mind, which with the years

growing, and showing a talent ever more suited to letters and the better arts, stirred the care of his parents to the anxious education of their son. So, handed over to masters, he applied himself seriously to every discipline of profane learning: and accordingly made outstanding progress, neither less than nor unequal to his talent ^e. But, as in blind paganism and from masters ignorant of the faith, nay even wholly (with the impulse of the senses sweeping them along) flowing down into earthly things, it is not easy to say whether he imbibed as much good learning as sweet poison. For toiling at the arts of poetry and rhetoric, while there, at a slippery age, he read through the genealogies of the gods, their loves, rivalries and other such things, and here incautiously listened to the deceitful arts and biting abuse of orators, or rather of pettifoggers, setting their sails more to their own advantage than to the equity of the law, he imbibed scarcely anything else in either place than sweet poisons there and bitter cups here. Finally, by the philosophers, vanishing in the loftiness of their own thoughts and fighting one another over first principles without that first and supreme principle (which alone is necessary), he was not so much led into the way of the truth he desired as seduced into the devious windings and labyrinths of various errors.

[3] while he is wholly in profane studies, he readily acknowledges one God, Theophilus therefore was wholly in these vain studies and was going astray, and, following the crowd that drew him along in the course of superstition, venerating many gods, he knew and worshipped no God. But after it seemed good to that supreme and only Deity to "call" this wretched Wanderer "out of darkness" (as St. Peter speaks) "into his marvellous light," then he himself began gradually to open his eyes, and little by little to learn from pious and religious men (upon whom, while he was hunting for learned men, he sometimes chanced by the disposition of divine Providence) in how great a darkness of errors he was living. And since two tasks of no small labor lay upon him, one in storming the opinions about the worship of the gods inherited from his forefathers and, as it were, drawn in and sucked with his milk; the other in implanting the new religion of one God, wholly at variance with these; this latter had far more sweat and difficulty than the other. For the emptiness of the gods was not so very difficult to show to a man of keen discernment and firm judgment. Since indeed those very men who introduced the crowd of gods by no means kept silent about the grave contentions and tumults that arose among them. But if sins and crimes, from which even men shrink, by no means befit divinity, what kind of gods must they be whose impure loves and adulteries, and other acts more unworthy of relating, are acknowledged among all? Therefore a philosopher, and one to whom all these things were thoroughly known, without reluctance gave his hand to our people when they asserted one God, free from all vice and passion.

[4] made man, But not so when it came to the particular mysteries of our faith. For as regards the one God, there had been both certain poets and some philosophers who of old not obscurely both held and taught the same as our people; but as regards Christ, a Man driven to the cross by his own people, and his doctrine, plainly unheard of and unknown in all previous ages, that he himself is God, and that all things uttered by him are so many divine oracles; to believe this indeed, this was the work, this the labor. Against this part, accordingly, as the harder, all the engines were turned: and the whole force of reasons bore upon this, that the easiest possible way might be opened to faith in these things. And some entry indeed was made, as usual, through the sibyls (for the gentiles attribute not a little authority to their prophecies), yet not so great but that the ascent into the citadel of faith was still difficult; but the wedge of the prophets, arriving opportunely, widened the way, which was otherwise narrow enough, and was the principal cause of the whole victory. For the things concerning Christ as God which were held most difficult to believe, they openly showed to have been divinely indicated to them many ages before, and most certainly foretold by them and committed to writing, and with a truth consistent in all things, although received at different times, and they so fixed them in the eyes of Theophilus himself that they left no subterfuge to unbelief. For he saw that all the things which had been accomplished at Jerusalem in the person of Christ scarcely two centuries before, and about which there could be no doubt, were contained, foretold, in the most ancient books of the Jews in their native language, that is Hebrew, and likewise, in the Greek tongue, in the most ancient Library of King Ptolemy. Nor could he doubt that those books had been written very many ages before the Gospel and the nativity of Christ, partly by Moses, prophet and lawgiver, partly by David and Solomon, kings most well known to the whole world, partly by other most illustrious prophets.

[5] Incited therefore by the Spirit of God moving him within to read these through and to search out above all the oracles of the prophets concerning Christ, and from the Sacred Scriptures that there will one day be a resurrection, he spent much time there and much labor, nor did he desist until all the darkness had flowed away from the eyes of his mind. And since two things above all in the Christian religion (as happens to almost all heathens) seemed to him exceedingly difficult to believe, namely that general resurrection of bodies and, after the resurrection, the eternity of punishments or rewards; these too, both by long reading of the divine Scriptures and also by reasons drawn from philosophy and likewise by some experience taken from natural things in likeness of the resurrection, he brought to seem probable to himself; until at last, God, Best and Greatest, breathing in the light of truth from heaven, he assented wholly to the holy doctrine of Christ and to the undefiled faith. For as regards the Mystery of the resurrection, how he advanced to faith in it, and what causes for believing he hammered out by meditation from the very bowels of nature, he himself declared in a certain disputation to Autolycus, a gentile man and an adversary on account of the faith ^f.

[6] Namely, that he had taken counsel with himself, and had earnestly considered in his mind the various changes of years and seasons, this too, even by the risings and settings of days and nights, the manifold life and death of seeds and fruits, the greenness now and now the bareness of trees and shrubs at fixed times, and finally the barrenness now, now the fertility of fields: moreover, that he had bent the edge of his mind on this, how sometimes a single little sparrow, or other small bird, having devoured a certain seed of a fig, or an apple, or of any other tree, carried by flight to some high and precipitous place, would void that very seed, digested and changed in its stomach by its natural heat, and, once voided, give a beginning to a tree to be born again even among rocks and crags. Nay, and he also turned this over with himself, how the very flesh of the human body, whether exhausted by diseases or lost by some other force, and together with it almost all strength and form wretchedly destroyed, would be restored again to its former health and state by the kindness of the immortal God. By all of which, as by so many steps, he professed that he had advanced to readiness of belief, and at last, on the approach of the prophets, had applied full faith, thus.

[7] by reason he learns. "Nor did I," he says, "believe in the future resurrection; but having weighed in my mind these things which I have now said, and having at the same time read through the books of the holy prophets, who, inspired by the Spirit of God, foretold both things past, in what manner they were done, and things present, in what way they are done, and things to come, in what order they will be, I could not but give faith. Having therefore received the demonstration both of the things which are done and of those which were foresignified, I do not persist in unbelief, but obeying God I believe; and if you too, submitting yourself, believe him, truly you will consult your interests best: since otherwise it will come about that, if you do not now believe, you will be compelled afterwards, but to your great misfortune, to believe these things in eternal punishments. Of which punishments, foretold by the prophets, the poets and philosophers, who were later than they, filched some part from the sacred books to establish their own dogmas. Yet this very thing, that they prophesied about the punishments to come upon the impious and unbelieving, was not done for nothing, since these testimonies will avail for this, that no one may henceforth be able to say: We did not hear, We did not know. Wherefore do you yourself, if you please, read through those writings of the prophets most diligently; for they will lead you as it were by the hand both to avoiding eternal punishments and to obtaining the immortal good things of God." These things Theophilus said wisely and kindly, in passing, for the sake of Autolycus, concerning the origin of his conversion to the faith; let us now come to his very embrace of the faith and his progress in it, and to his profane arts turned to the protection of the Church.

ANNOTATIONS.

afterwards committed to writing; but Autolycus, contrary to Tillemont, tome 3 of the Ecclesiastical Monuments, page 51, dealt with Theophilus not in writing but only by word of mouth; for so the latter says in book 1, num. 1: "Since then, my friend, you have deafened me with empty words"; and again in book 2, chapter 1: "When some days ago we held a conversation between us, most excellent Autolycus, and you asked me who my God was, and for some while lent your ears to my discourse, I set forth my religion. So we then parted, so as to return home the best of friends, although at first you had dealt somewhat harshly with me." Moreover, you will understand in passing from these words how mild and gentle a mind Theophilus had toward his adversary.

CHAPTER II.

The coming of Theophilus to the Church; the increase of his virtues; the turning of his profane studies to the protection of the faith.

Having embraced the Christian faith, After Theophilus, through various surges and tossings of mind, had long and much contended with error and unbelief, as if with himself, in an intestine war; at last, the truth of the faith conquering (by which it would have been most shameful not to be conquered), and the darkness of ignorance which had clouded his mind being dispersed, he came to the camp of Christ, to the incredible joy of the whole Church. For so well known was the Man's talent, so proven his learning, and so clearly perceived his industry, that already then they foresaw in their minds how great a bulwark of the faith he would one day be, and how strong and unconquerable a rampart of religion against all its enemies. He himself, thoroughly weary of his former life and eager to put on the new, when, duly washed in the longed-for and sought-for laver of eternal salvation, he had put off the old man, now wholly clothed with Jesus Christ, began to despise all earthly things, to aspire to the divine and heavenly, to esteem the ignominy of the cross more than all the praises and honors and glories of the world; finally, to hold the name of Christian in greater value than the title of philosopher (although the latter was commonly admired and the former despised by the world), and to glory in it as in a most honorable thing. Then, therefore, the opposing party armed itself against him, as a recruit of a new warfare; then those who before were friends took up voluntary enmities and hated him the more bitterly; then they called him a deserter of philosophy and again and again, as by a contemptible and shameful name, a Christian.

[9] despising the reproaches of the heathens, Among these revilers, chief and standard-bearer, stood out that Autolycus (of whom mention has been made before), a man (that he may not be cheated of his praise; for the good gifts of men are God's) so learned that he was versed in almost all histories, new as well as old; so diligent and assiduous that he sometimes spent whole nights in libraries ^a. He therefore, exceedingly indignant at Theophilus's defection from his sect of the gods, which was displeasing to him, did not cease to provoke him of his own accord with insults and curses, partly by extolling his own gods, partly by disparaging Christ crucified. Yet these very things our God-lover ^b, as a true disciple of Christ, not only admitted, not as insults but as praises, but willingly and eagerly seized upon. Hence, when he had once spoken vainly and all too rashly of his gods, with contempt of the true God, Theophilus addressed him thus: "You, my friend," he says, "have all but overwhelmed me with your vain talk: when you boasted beyond measure of your gods, of stone and of wood, cast and carved and painted, which neither see nor hear. For they are images and works of men's hands ^c. But as for your calling me again and again a Christian, and charging me as though I bore a depraved name; I indeed both confess that I am a Christian, and gladly bear this name beloved of God, hoping to be a useful servant to him. For this name of God is not, as you think, odious; but you, since you are useless to God, think thus about God."

[10] [he glories in the Christian name: he teaches Autolycus that God is seen not with the eyes of the body,] Thus he, alluding by a play on two names differing in only a single letter, not only professes that he follows Christ, but also that by following him he hopes to be χρηστὸν, chrestus, that is, a good and useful servant to God; but that Autolycus himself, because he is ἄχρηστος, that is, useless to God, thinks ill of Christ as well. And when the same Autolycus demanded of him that he should show him his God, he in turn asked of him that he should show him his man, or the principal part of man, namely the soul; then he too would show him God; for neither can be seen with bodily eyes; but if he wished to behold God with the edge of the mind, it must be clean and pure. "Come," he said, "furnish the eyes of your soul fit for beholding, and the ears of your heart fit for hearing, and the matter will be easy for us. For just as those who are strong in bodily eyes discern bodily and earthly things with them in such a way as at the same time to distinguish also the things which differ among themselves, such as light and darkness, white and black, beautiful and ugly, harmonious and inharmonious, measured and unmeasured; and as the ears perceive sounds in such a way as at once to distinguish whether they are high or low, harsh or sweet; exactly so it is with the things which pertain to the ears of the heart or the eyes of the soul, as regards the hearing or beholding of God. For he is discerned only by those who have the faculty of discerning and the eyes of the soul open. For all have eyes indeed, but in some they are suffused and unequal to bearing the light of the sun. Nor indeed, because the blind do not see it, is it on that account to be accused as though it were of itself invisible; but rather let the blind deservedly accuse themselves and their eyes. So therefore you too, good sir, have the eyes of your soul suffused by your sins and evil deeds. Yet a man ought to bear a pure soul, like a shining mirror. For what rust is in a mirror, that is sin in a man; nor will he who is defiled by it ever be able to discern God."

[11] These things and more like them Theophilus said to Autolycus, but by the eyes of a pure mind, which ought to profit not him only but us as well, and all who seek God. For from them we can evidently recognize not only what hinders the heathens from drinking in the light of truth, but also what keeps very many Christians from a clearer view and understanding of God, Best and Greatest, and of his divine perfections. For to so great a good the one obstacle is certainly sin: which indeed, like a very dense cloud coming between that bright sun and our dull eyes, shuts off the sight of the divine brightness. For whoever otherwise shall have perfectly excluded the contagion of sin from his soul, he indeed, like a most shining mirror, exceedingly capable of the heavenly rays, will draw into himself, if it is lawful to say so, the whole of God, and will conceive all the fires of divine love in the marrow of his open breast, and, having conceived them, will put them forth outwardly, and will scatter them upon very many, losing nothing himself. For if the true cause be asked why so few spiritual men and true contemplators of heavenly things are found among Christians today, behold the fault, behold the cause; namely, too great familiarity with sins, even though light ones; and likewise too great love and admiration of the empty rubbish of the earth, which it would befit us to value least of all. For if anyone, raised up by divine help, has both escaped the former and despised the latter; truly he, having passed as it were through dense clouds or thick darkness by the agility and subtlety of his mind, will enjoy a pure and clear sky, and will attain God and divine things with the sincere and unclouded understanding of the mind.

[12] But, to return to the disputation begun, and strives to convert him to the true faith that Autolycus of whom we spoke above, just as for faith in and worship of one God he had demanded that God be shown to him, so for persuasion of the resurrection he demanded that someone be shown to him who had risen from the dead. For he said: "Show me at least a single one recalled to life, that, beholding him, I may believe you." But Theophilus, in order to entangle the man in his own snares and to lead him from the vain opinion of the resurrection of the gods to true faith in the certain and attested resurrection of the dead, said: "What great or memorable thing would you do if you believed only what you see? And indeed, since you believe that Hercules, who consumed himself in flames, and Aesculapius, whom a thunderbolt sent from heaven burned up, are alive again and surviving, what madness is this, to be unwilling to believe the things which are put forth by God? Nay, even if I should exhibit to you face to face someone raised from the dead and living, whether you would even then believe, I do not know. But we have many indications from God, in the very natures of things, of the future resurrection." He then pursues these very indications at greater length; and they are the very ones which Theophilus, laboring once under the same unbelief, had summoned to himself in aid of faith, and which we touched on above. Furthermore the labor of that disputation was not altogether vain. For Autolycus, who at the beginning had come into the conversation rather harsh and bitter, and had held the sayings of Theophilus for foolish talk, at last, when he had lent his ears more patiently to him discoursing about God and piety and religion, was so bent to mildness and goodwill that he both of his own accord earnestly demanded a fuller treatment of the same things, and on bidding farewell showed the greatest signs of friendship. So both went away to their homes, glad of the present fruit and cheerful in the expectation of what was to come.

[13] he zealously strives But a far greater joy assailed the mind of Theophilus (as one who weighed the greatness of the matter even in the gain of a single soul). Hence he at once began to turn over with himself by what way he might penetrate more deeply into his friend's mind, or by what engines and arts he might at last win him over; he resolved finally to write a careful Work, in which he might both fix as it were before his eyes the generations and fables of the gods, from those very histories which Autolycus was then reading, with all their vanity, and declare the foundations of the whole Christian doctrine from the very beginnings of the created world, bringing forward the unconquerable authority of Moses and the other prophets. This then he accomplished in that book which he inscribed and offered as the second to the same Autolycus. And the doctrine of Theophilus was very good seed and sown by the best hand; the soil of Autolycus was very stony and overgrown with thorns and briars, so that the seed neither drank in sufficient moisture nor put forth a firm root. For although, having heard and read through Theophilus's disputations, he was somewhat struck; yet from the company of others and from anxious cares of domestic affairs he easily rolled back into his errors. But Theophilus did not lose heart even so, but, as he was patient and long-suffering in such matters, he hoped that he would not waste his labor if he pressed on with the Work begun for the glory of God. Since therefore that man lightly cavilled at the sacred writers praised by him, and rejected them as recent and new, our God-lover, exceedingly desirous of saving even one soul, attacking him with a third labor, a new

little Work he sent him, in which he compared our writers of the sacred Letters with the most ancient of the gentiles, and set forth in the clearest light by how great an interval the former surpassed the latter. Whether, however, he won him over to give his hand and submit his neck to the sweet yoke and light burden of Christ, although one may hope well, yet it has not been ascertained; let us pass on to things ascertained.

ANNOTATIONS.

c. Psalm 113, ℣. 4.

CHAPTER III.

The episcopate of Theophilus, his sacred labors in it, his defense of Catholic doctrine against heresies.

Made bishop, with no less care Theophilus, now advanced in age ^a and a man of learning known everywhere and of virtue attested among all, the church of Antioch sought as bishop on the death of Eros ^b. For he had already given splendid proofs of his faith and of his burning charity toward the Brethren; nor was it fitting that a lamp lit by God should be hidden under a bushel, especially at that time, which, on account of the persecutions pressing on from heretics as well as from gentiles, required men excelling no less in knowledge of every kind, sacred or profane, than in virtue and religion. This charge, therefore, offered to him with the eager goodwill of all orders, Theophilus undertook about the hundred and seventieth year of the Lord [c], the eighth of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Lucius Verus, emperors of the Romans, and he was sixth in the number of the bishops of Antioch. For Peter, the prince of the Apostles, is exempted from this number by the principal writers of Ecclesiastical History, not as having no share in that see, but as preeminent and holding wider dominion. For they list first Evodius, second Ignatius, third Hero, fourth Cornelius, fifth Eros, sixth Theophilus; although by some others, who include Peter in the same series, he is named seventh ^d. Having now taken the helm of so great a church (than which there was no other so great in the whole East ^e), and mindful that it had been founded by the first Apostles Peter, Paul and Barnabas ^f, and then strengthened and set in order by the bravest martyrs Evodius, Ignatius and Hero, he resolved that he must follow closely the footsteps of such great men, and, so far as he could, swerve in neither direction from their most holy conduct and deeds.

[15] Wherefore, as a most watchful shepherd, he kept unceasing watch over the guarding of his flock, he watches over his flock, and took diligent care that they should both firmly retain the doctrine received from their forebears and, clinging tenaciously to the Apostolic traditions, should in no way admit anything contrary to them from anyone. Moreover, he so divided his zeal that whatever time remained free from the necessary cares of the Pontifical office, he spent all of it partly in uprooting the errors of the gentiles, partly in refuting the inventions of the heretics, partly, finally, in explaining the sacred letters. And on these three things indeed the spare labor of the bishops who now exist, as being most worthy of their place and rank, ought deservedly still to be spent. Since by them are gained not only the dignity of the Church, and the salvation of the brethren, and the honor of God (which yet ought to be first), but also the immortality of their own name, and eternal glory besides. For what equal or second have either the pleasures of the senses enjoyed, or the riches or honors of the world sought out, or countless acres of land acquired at unjust cost, or finally the proud structures of buildings and gardens enlarged or multiplied, to which those who applied their mind have lost their own soul? "For what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" Certainly Theophilus judged that none at all could or should be given, who even for another's soul toiled as much as was seen before in the case of Autolycus. He, like the former bishops of the same church (whose narrow path he thought he must tread), embracing holy poverty, counted all things as dung, that he might gain both many for Christ and Christ for himself.

[16] the heretics And how he undertook war against the heretics who in this very age were raging monstrously, Marcion and Hermogenes ^g (to say nothing of others) do not allow to be unknown. For how much our Theophilus labored to keep away, or drive off, or even utterly defeat these and likewise other such wolves from the sheepfold of the Church has been most faithfully handed down in writing by the writers of Ecclesiastical History. "For since," says Eusebius, the leader and chief of those writers, "many heretics at that time strove, no less than before, like tares, to corrupt the pure seed of the Apostolic doctrine; then the shepherds of the churches everywhere kept them off and drove them away just as wild beasts of the forest: and this, now by admonishing and exhorting the brethren; now by attacking and tripping up the enemies themselves face to face and in open battle with questions thrown at them; now also by most exactly refuting the opinions wrongly brought in by them, with Commentaries written against them." "Among whom," he says, "that Theophilus fought vigorously and bravely against the same is manifest from the book against Marcion excellently elaborated (which, with his other books which we have mentioned, has lasted down to this time)." This Marcion therefore, from a Catholic become a heresiarch, who set up two gods, one a judge, fierce, mighty in war; the other mild, placid and only good and most good: who said that Jesus was the destroyer of the law and the prophets, the demolisher of the works of God the Creator: who mutilated the Gospel of Luke and the Epistles of Paul: who proclaimed himself more truthful than the Apostles: who asserted the resurrection of souls alone (not likewise of bodies), and of those only which had received his doctrine: this Marcion, I say, who professed these and other things no less absurd and monstrous, and yet grew strong among men, but men blinded by sins, our Theophilus crushed with learned words.

[17] he beats back, After Marcion there arose Hermogenes, a deserter of the Church and a runaway to the Stoics, who, just as they did, taught that matter is eternal, from which God created all things and without which he could create nothing; moreover, that all evil draws its origin from matter; that the body of the Lord was laid up in the sun; that the devil and the demons would be poured back into matter. Him therefore, still surviving and spreading such and so nefarious things among the people, the watchful and sagacious industry of Theophilus repressed and beat back by a book composed against him. And to give his mind a little relaxation from these vexations of laborious cares, by which he was exceedingly burdened, he would withdraw into the springtime meadows of the sacred Scriptures; there he meditated, there he gathered flowers, there he admired their variety, power and fragrance, there he raised himself from the obvious and readily occurring senses of the humbler letter to the higher and more savory senses of spiritual understanding. For thence arose those notable allegories of his on the Gospel and his splendid interpretations, of which we shall offer some taste to our readers a little later ^h.

[18] For the other acts of this Man, at once most holy and most wise, with splendid examples of virtues (of which only some sparks gleam out in his writings), the very iniquity of the times, which steals away and eats up many beautiful things, has taken from us: and he died, a perpetual praise of holiness following his merits, yet it could not take away the name of assured holiness. To which a most luminous testimony was borne alike, first by his own Antiochenes and the sacred choir of the presbyters of that age, who raised him to the summit of so great a see as successor to Peter, and Evodius, and Ignatius, and three others next to them in order and holiness: then by his divine writings breathing a wonderful fragrance and ardor of inward piety; and then indeed, and above all, by the religious and celebrated annual commemoration of the Catholic Church itself (which has entered him in the sacred Calendars of the Saints). For both the ancient and the more recent Martyrologies ascribe his blessed birthday to the thirteenth day of October ⁱ. Furthermore he lived in the pontificate of the church of Antioch about thirteen years ^k, and in his whole life at least eighty-two ^l: having happily completed the course of which, and having left behind him not a few books, as so many living images of himself (of which we shall presently make a review), he departed to the eternal seats of the Blessed.

ANNOTATIONS.