^[386] Cf. Donaldson’s Hist. of Christ. Lit., vol. i. p. 291. [This beautiful chapter, and its parable of the fountains of living water, may well be read with that passage of Leighton which delighted Coleridge: Com. on 1 Pet. i. 10-12.]

Chap. XXVI.

^[387] διάκονοι. [Deacons, evidently, or stewards. Acts vi. 1]

^[388] [Ezek. xxxiv. 3.]

Chap. XXVII.

^[389] Bishops. Bishops, that is, presidents of the churches.—Vat. [This textual peculiarity must have originated at the period when the Ignatian use of episcopus was becoming naturalized in Rome. It was originally common to all pastors, local or regionary.]

Chap. XXVIII.

^[390] [This passage (with Vision iii. 2, and especially Similitude v. 3) has been pressed into the service of those who seek to find “super-erogatory merit” in the Fathers. See 1 Cor. vii. 38. But why not begin with the Scriptures which Hermas doubtless has in mind, such as Rev. iii. 4, 5, “They are worthy”? Does this ascribe to them any merit apart from (“worthy is the Lamb”) the only meritorious cause of salvation? So also Rev. vii. 14, xiv. 4, 5. The primitive Fathers accepted such truths like innocent children, and loved them. They believed St. Paul as to degrees of glory (1 Cor. xv. 41), and our Lord Himself as to the awards (Matt. xx. 21-23) of mercy to fruits of grace: and they are no more responsible for forced constructions that have been put upon them by afterthought and subsequent heresy, then our blessed Lord can be charged with all that has overloaded His precious sayings (Matt. xix. 12 or xiv. 18). The principle of deficient works of faith, which is the corresponding idea of the negative side, appears in St. Paul (1 Cor. iii. 13-15), and has been abused to sustain the whole system of creature merit, and the monstrous atfterthought of purgatory. Those, therefore, who read such ideas into “The Ante-Nicene Fathers,” to diminish their credit, often, unintentionally (1) help the perverters of truth to claim the Fathers, and (2) give them the like aid in claiming the Scriptures. See p. 34, supra, note 3.]

Chap. XXIX.

^[391] Matt. xviii. 3.

^[392] [Mark ix. 36.]

Chap. XXX.

^[393] Here ends Codex Lipsiensis. The rest of the text is from common translation corrected by the Palatine and Æthiopic.

^[394] [Born good. Not in the text of Gebhardt and Harnack (the Greek is wanting); nor do they note any such text, though the Æthiopic favours it. See p. 42, supra, note 2.]

^[395] [Here again the Latin has the reading before noted, on the circumcision of wealth, p. 15, note 2, supra.]

Chap. XXXI.

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