OF THE

CHRISTIAN CHURCH

BY

PHILIP SCHAFF

Christianus sum: Christiani nihil a me alienum puto

VOL. II.

ANTE-NICENE CHRISTIANITY.

A. D. 100-325.

NINTH EDITION

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1910

SECOND PERIOD.

ANTE-NICENE CHRISTIANITY;

OR,

THE AGE OF PERSECUTION AND MARTYRDOM:

FROM THE

DEATH OF JOHN THE APOSTLE TO CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.

A. D. 100-325.

"THE BLOOD OF MARTYRS IS THE SEED OF THE CHURCH."

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION REVISED.

A few months after the appearance of the revised edition of this volume, Dr. Bryennios, the learned Metropolitan of Nicomedia, surprised the world by the publication of the now famous Didache, which he had discovered in the Jerusalem Monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre at Constantinople. This led me, in justice to myself and to my readers, to write an independent supplement under the title: The Oldest Church Manual, called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, etc., which is now passing through the press.

At the same time I have taken advantage of a new issue of this History, without increasing the size and the price, to make in the plates all the necessary references to the Didache where it sheds new light on the post-apostolic age (especially on pages 140, 184, 185, 202, 226, 236, 239, 241, 247, 249, 379, 640). I have also brought the literature up to date, and corrected a few printing errors, so that this issue may be called a revised edition. A learned and fastidious German critic and professional church historian has pronounced this work to be far in advance of any German work in the fullness of its digest of the discoveries and researches of the last thirty years. ("Theolog. LiteraturZeitung," for March 22, 1884.) But the Bryennios discovery, and the extensive literature which it has called forth, remind me of the imperfect character of historical books in an age of such rapid progress as ours.

NEW YORK, April 22, 1885.

THE AUTHOR.

FIFTH EDITION.

The fourth edition (1886) was a reprint of the third, with a few slight improvements. In this fifth edition I have made numerous additions to the literature, and adapted the text throughout to the present stage of research, which continues to be very active and fruitful in the Ante-Nicene period.

Several topics connected with the catechetical instruction, organization, and ritual (baptism and eucharist) of the early Church are more fully treated in my supplementary monograph, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, or The Oldest Church Manual, which first appeared in June, 1885, and in a third edition, revised and enlarged, January, 1889 (325 pages).

NEW YORK, July, 1889.

P. S.