Hippolytus

Footnotes

^[1095] [See Irenæus (a very beautiful passage), vol. i. p. 391.]

^[1096] [See vol. iv. pp. 255 and 383.]

^[1097] This is the reading adopted by Cruice and Bunsen. Dr. Wordsworth translates the passage thus: “acknowledging thyself a man of like nature with Christ, and thou also waiting for the appearance of what thou gavest Him.” The source of consolation to man which Hippolytus, according to Dr. Wordsworth, is here anxious to indicate, is the glorification of human nature in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Dr. Wordsworth therefore objects to Bunsen’s rendering, as it gives to the passage a meaning different from this.

Chapter XXX.—The Author’s Concluding Address.

^[1098] [The translator’s excessive interpolations sometimes needlessly dilute the terse characteristics of the author. Thus, with confusing brackets, the Edinburgh reads: “who so often lead your armies to victory.” This is not Hippolytus, and, in such instances, I feel bound to reduce a plethoric text.]

^[1099] [Here the practical idea of the Philosophumena comes out; and compare vol. iv. pp. 469 and 570.]

^[1100] Dr. Wordsworth justifies Hippolytus’ use of the pagan word “Tartarus,” by citing the passage (2 Pet. ii. 4), “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness (σειραῖς ζόφου ταρταρώσας), to be reserved unto judgment,” etc. [Elucidation XVII. and vol. iv. 140.]

^[1101] Schneidewin suggests a comparison of this passage with Hippolytus’ fragment, Against Plato, concerning the Cause of the Universe (p. 220, ed. Fabricii; p. 68, ed. de Lagarde).

^[1102] The different renderings of this passage, according to different readings, are as follow: “And the worm the scum of the body, turning to the Body that foamed it forth as to that which nourisheth it” (Wordsworth). “The worm which winds itself without rest round the mouldering body, to feed upon it” (Bunsen and Scott). “The worm wriggling as over the filth of the (putrescent) flesh towards the exhaling body” (Roeper). “The worm turning itself towards the substance of the body, towards, (I say,) the exhalations of the decaying frame, as to food” (Schneidewin). The words chiefly altered are: ἀπουσίαν, into (1) ἐπ᾽ οὐσίαν, (2) ἐπ᾽ ἀλουσίᾳ (3) ἀπαύστως; and ἐπιστρεφόμενον into (1) ἐπιστρέφον, (2) ἐπὶ τροφήν.

^[1103] [This startling expression is justified by such texts as 2 Pet. 1.4; John 17.22-23; Rev. 3.21. Thus, Christ overrules the Tempter (Gen. iii. 5), and gives more than was offered by the “Father of Lies.”]

^[1104] [Compare John 10.34; Rev. 5.10. Kings of the earth may be called “gods,” in a sense; ergo, etc.]

^[1105] Bunsen translates thus: “Doubt not that you will exist again,” a rendering which Dr. Wordsworth controverts in favour of the one adopted above.

^[1106] Bunsen translates thus: “For Christ is He whom the God of all has ordered to wash away the sins,” etc. Dr. Wordsworth severely censures this rendering in a lengthened note.

^[1107] πτωχευει. Bunsen translates, “for God acts the beggar towards thee,” which is literal, though rather unintelligible. Dr. Wordsworth renders the word thus: “God has a longing for thee.”

^[1108] Hippolytus, by his argument, recognises the duty not merely of overthrowing error but substantiating truth, or in other words, the negative and positive aspect of theology. His brief statement (chap. xxviii.–xxx.) in the latter department, along with being eminently reflective, constitutes a noble specimen of patristic eloquence. [This is most just: and it must be observed, that having summed up his argument against the heresies derived from carnal and inferior sources, and shown the primal truth, he advances (in chap. xxviii.) to the Nicene position, and proves himself one of the witnesses on whose traditive testimony that sublime formulary was given to the whole Church as the κτῆμα ἐς ἀεὶ of Christendom,—a formal countersign of apostolic doctrine.]

II. (Caulacau, p. 52.)

^[1109] I venture to state this to encourage young students to keep pen in hand in all their researches, and always to make notes.

III. (The Phrygians call Papa, p. 54.)

^[1110] Pompey and others were called imperatores before the Cæsars, but who includes them with the Roman emperors?

^[1111] How St. Peter would regard it, see 1 Pet. v. 1-3. I am sorry to find Dr. Schaff, in his useful compilation, History of the Christian Church, vol. ii. p 166, dropping into the old ruts of fable, after sufficiently proving just before, what I have maintained. He speaks of “the insignificance of the first Popes,”—meaning the early Bishops of Rome, men who minded their own business, but could not have been “insignificant” had they even imagined themselves “Popes.”

^[1112] See Bossuet, passim, and all the Gallican doctors down to our own times. In England the “supremacy” was never acknowledged, nor in France, until now.

IV. (Contemporaneous heresy, p. 125.)

^[1113] See his Hippol., vol. i. pp. 209, 311.

^[1114] See vol. ii. p. 298, this series.

^[1115] p. 207.

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