Early Church History to the Death of Constantine (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ...turned to harmony.... This undying song reaching from the centre to the circumference, and back from the extremities to the centre, has harmonised this universal frame, not according to the Thracian music, which is like that of Jubal, but according to the parental counsel of God, which David magnified. He who is of David and yet before him, the Word of God, passing over the lyre and harp, which are but lifeless instruments, and attuning by the Holy Spirit the universe, and especially man, who is a universe in miniature, makes melody to God on this instrument of many tones." CHAPTER III. Hippolytus--The Churches Have Rest--The Decian PerseCution--Cyprian--The Lapsed--Gallus And The PestiLence. During the short reign of the Thracian Maximinus, a giant in stature and strength and a monster of cruelty (a.d. 235--238), there was a partial return of persecution. Amongst the victims was Hippolytus, a presbyter of Rome, who, it is supposed, was transported, with Bishop Pontianus, to the Island of Sardinia, and there perished in the mines. He is said to have been a disciple of Irenaeus, and was the most learned member of the Roman Church in the early part of the third century. His treatise entitled Philosophumena, or the Refutation of all Heresies, of which ten books only remain, has acquired a special interest from its discovery, in 1842, in a convent on Mount Athos, by a learned Greek, Minoides Mynas, whom the French Government sent out to search for manuscripts. In the year 1551, there was dug up near Rome a marble statue of a venerable person seated in a chair, clad in the Greek pallium. This statue has been identified as that of Hippolytus. In the following passage from one of his writings the union of the divine and human nature in...