Fathers Sentence Examples

In the narrower sense thus indicated the "fathers" of the Church are the great bishops and other eminent Christian teachers of the earlier centuries, who were conspicuous for soundness of judgment and sanctity of life; and whose writings remained as a court of appeal for their successors.

Are all the Christian writers of a given period to be included among the "fathers," or those only who wrote on religious subjects, and of whose orthodoxy there is no doubt ?

Thus, the sons inherited their fathers' hunting-ground, but bore their mothers' name and therewith the right to certain women for wives.

Migne, following the example of the editors of bibliothecae patrum who preceded him, swept into his great collection all the Christian writings which fell within his period; but he is careful to state upon his title-page that his patrologies include the ecclesiastical writers as well as the fathers and doctors of the Church.

They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a noble race of men.

An unusual number of people were enjoying the unseasonable weather, spending the last few hours out of doors; fathers playing catch with sons, youngsters riding trikes or skipping rope, and others content to just drink in the springtime evening.

But these beliefs are far from being confined to the uncivilized; Greek philosophers like Porphyry, no less than the fathers of the Church, held that the world was pervaded with spirits; side by side with the belief in witchcraft, we can trace through the middle ages the survival of primitive animistic views; and in our own day even these beliefs subsist in unsuspected vigour among the peasantry of the more uneducated European countries.

The enemy is advancing to destroy Russia, to desecrate the tombs of our fathers, to carry off our wives and children.

And we're not responsible for the sins of our fathers.

His Catena Aurea next appeared, which, under the form of a commentary on the Gospels, was really an exhaustive summary of the theological teaching of the greatest of the church fathers.

His fathers took a prominent part in Athenian politics, and in 479 held high command in the Greek squadron which annihilated the remnants of Xerxes' fleet at Mycale; through his mother, the niece of Cleisthenes, he was connected with the former tyrants of Sicyon and the family of the Alcmaeonidae.

Ten years later, to avenge their fathers, the Epigoni undertook a second expedition, which was completely successful.

His extant commentaries (those on Canticles, on the Prophets, on the book of Psalms and on the Pauline epistles - the last the most valuable) are among the best performances of the fathers of the church.

The two works on which his reputation principally rests are the A postolici, or History of Apostles and Fathers in the first three centuries of the Church (1677), and Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Historia Literaria (1688).

Giovanni, a monster of cruelty and lust, was assassinated by some Milanese nobles in 1412; and now Filippo set about rebuilding his fathers duchy.

At the same time he wisely followed his fathers policy with regard to education and the church.

In May 1859 Ferdinand of Naples was succeeded by his son Francis II., who gave no signs of any intention to change his fathers policy, and, in spite of Napoleons advice, refused to grant a constitution or to enter into an alliance with Sardinia.

He was to draw up a written treatise, stating the course he proposed, and defending it by arguments from scripture, the fathers and the decrees of general councils.

Fathers Mendez and Lobo traversed the deserts between the coast of the Red sea and the mountains, became acquainted with Lake Tsana, and discovered the sources of the Blue Nile in 1624-1633.

The records preserved in each city were examined, topographical information was diligently collected, and the Jesuit fathers checked their triangulation by meridian altitudes of the sun and pole star and by a system of remeasurements.

The next journey was that of Fathers Grueber and Dorville about 1660, who succeeded in passing from China, through Tibet, into India.

In 1715 Fathers Desideri and Freyre made their way from Agra, across the Himalayas, to Lhasa, and the Capuchin Friar Orazio della Penna resided in that city from 1735 until 1747.

By the "fathers," then, we understand the whole of extant Christian literature from the time of the apostles to the rise of scholasticism or the beginning of the middle ages.

The ante-Nicene period of patristic literature opens with the "apostolic fathers," 5 i.e.

Their writings, like those of the apostles, are epistolary; but editions of the apostolic fathers now usually admit also the early Church order known as the Didache, the allegory entitled the Shepherd, and a short anonymous apology addressed to one Diognetus.

The reader to whom the study is new will gain some idea of the bulk of the extant patristic literature, if we add that in Migne's collection ninety-six large volumes are occupied with the Greek fathers from Clement of Rome to John of Damascus, and seventysix with the Latin fathers from Tertullian to Gregory the Great.2 For a discussion of the more important fathers the student is referred to the articles which deal with them separately.

Thus the English canon of 1571 directs preachers "to take heed that they do not teach anything in their sermons as though they would have it completely held and believed by the people, save what is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and New Testaments, and what the Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops have gathered from that doctrine."

But against these disadvantages may be set the unique services which the fathers still render to Christian scholars.

Migne's texts are not always satisfactory, but since the completion of his great undertaking two important collections have been begun on critical lines - the Vienna edition of the Latin Church writers,' and the Berlin edition of the Greek writers of the ante-Nicene period .8 For English readers there are three series of translations from the fathers, which cover much of the ground; the Oxford Library of the Fathers, the Ante Nicene Christian Library and the Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers.

This union of the supreme fathers, however, was only nominal.

Allied with this more empiricist stand-point is the assertion that Greek philosophy borrowed from Moses; but in studying the Fathers we constantly find that groundless assertion uttered in the same breath with the dominant Idealist view, according to which Greek philosophy was due to incomplete revelation from the divine Logos.

A comparison of the surviving fragments of Basilides, moreover, with the outline of his system in Irenaeus-Hippolytus (Syntagma) shows that the account given by the Fathers of the Church is also in the highest degree untrustworthy.

Now, of this sharply-defined dualism there is scarcely a trace in the system described by the Fathers of the Church.

The liberty with which he there treated the doctrines of the Fathers aroused ecclesiastical prejudice, and the archbishop of Paris condemned the work.

There is an English translation in the Library of the Ante-Nicene Fathers.

He continued to work at his editions of the Apostolic Fathers, and in 1885 published an edition of the Epistles of Ignatius and Polycarp, collecting also a large store of valuable materials for a second edition of Clement of Rome, which was published after his death (1st ed., 1869).

Arber's Story of the Pilgrim Fathers (London, 1897), the two last containing excerpts from the leading sources.

In some measure we find this practice adopted by more than one of the Fathers, but it was the Alexandrian school, with its pronounced taste for symbolism, that made the most of it.

Some took root in the strange lands, and, as later popular stories indicate, evidently reached high positions; others, retaining a more vivid tradition of the land of their fathers, cherished the ideal of a restored Jerusalem.

An erroneous derivation of the word pascha from the Greek ircthx iv, " to suffer," thus connected with the sufferings or passion of the Lord, is given by some of the Fathers of the Church, as Irenaeus, Tertullian and others, who were ignorant of Hebrew.

There is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament, or in the writings of the apostolic Fathers.

We can hardly overestimate the influence which Rufinus exerted on Western theologians by thus putting the great Greek fathers into the Latin tongue.

The furniture seemed to have been unmoved since the days of his fathers, for I learned that it was a patrimony.

In this sense of the words, there was no faith delivered to our fathers which we are under any obligation to guard or even explain.

His character was as transparent as his life was blameless; there are few church fathers whose biography leaves so pure an impression on the reader.

For English translations consult the "Oxford Library of the Fathers" and the "Ante-Nicene Library."

Another class of nocturnal demons are the incubi and succubi, who are said to consort with human beings in their sleep; in the Antilles these were the ghosts of the dead; in New Zealand likewise ancestral deities formed liaisons with females; in the Samoan Islands the inferior gods were regarded as the fathers of children otherwise unaccounted for; the Hindus have rites prescribed by which a companion nymph may be secured.

The question of the real existence of incubi and succubi, whom the Romans identified with the fauns, was gravely discussed by the fathers of the church; and in 1484 Innocent III.

Zahn, of an edition of the works of the Apostolic Fathers, Patrum apostolicorum opera, a smaller edition of which appeared in 1877.

Eusebius having gone wrong on this point, others of the Fathers followed suit, so that Philo is reckoned by Jerome among the ecclesiastical writers of the Christians.

At the end of 1529 he came into contact with the men who were eventually to become the first fathers of the Society of Jesus.

Finding it impossible to keep this part of their vow, the fathers met at Vicenza, where Ignatius was staying in a ruined monastery; and here after deliberation it was determined that he, Laynez and Faber should go to Rome to place the little band at the disposal of the pope.

Having always had an attraction for a life of prayer and retirement, in 1547 he tried to resign the generalship, and again in 1550, but the fathers unanimously opposed the project.

In the beginning of i 556 Ignatius grew very weak and resigned the active government to three fathers, Polanco, Madrid and Natal.

The fathers of the church did not encourage scientific pursuits, which Lactantius (4th century) declared to be unprofitable.

The earlier fathers, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, believed in chiliasm simply because it was a part of the tradition of the church and because Marcion and the Gnostics would have nothing to do with it.

From Italy, France and Germany the fathers were slow in appearing at Basel.

The progress of heresy, the reported troubles in Germany, the war which had lately broken out between the dukes of Austria and Burgundy, and finally, the small number of fathers who had responded to the summons of Martin V., caused that pontiff's successor, Eugenius IV., to think that the synod of Basel was doomed to certain failure.

This opinion, added to the desire which he had of himself presiding over the council, induced him to recall the fathers from Germany, whither his health, impaired of late, probably owing to a cerebral congestion, rendered it all the more difficult for him to go.

He commanded the fathers to disperse, and appointed Bologna as their meeting-place in eighteen months' time, his intention being to make the session of the council coincide with some conferences with representatives of the Greek church, which were to be held there with a view to union (18th December 1431).

This order led to an outcry among the fathers of Basel and incurred the deep disapproval of the legate Cesarini.

However, he soon realized the impossibility of treating the fathers of Basel as ordinary rebels, and tried a compromise; but as time went on, the fathers became more and more intractable, and between him and them gradually arose an impassable barrier.

The fathers, who were filled with suspicion, would only allow the legates of the pope to preside over them on condition of their recognizing the superiority of the council; the legates ended by submitting to this humiliating formality, but in their own name only, thus reserving the judgment of the Holy See.

The fathers continued to devote themselves to the subjugation of the Hussites; they also intervened, in rivalry with the pope, in the negotiations between France and England which led only to the treaty of Arras, concluded by Charles VII.

Eugenius IV., however much he may have wished to keep on good terms with the fathers of Basel, was neither able nor willing to accept or observe all their decrees.

Whilst the fathers agree with the Stoics of the 2nd century in representing slavery as an indifferent circumstance in the eye of religion and morality, the contempt for the class which the Stoics too often exhibited is in them replaced by a genuine sympathy.

Slavery was far from being approved in principle by the most eminent of the fathers of the American Union.

From the time of my admission to the priesthood to my (present) fifty-ninth year, I have endeavoured, for my own use and that of my brethren, to make brief notes upon the Holy Scripture, either out of the works of the venerable fathers, or in conformity with their meaning and interpretation."

They are based largely on the works of the four great Latin Fathers, SS.

And though Bede makes no pretensions to originality, least of all in his theological works, freely taking what he needed, and (what is very rare in medieval writers) acknowledging what he took, "out of the works of the venerable Fathers," still everything he wrote is informed and impressed with his own special character and temper.

They obtained in the synagogue from time immemorial, and were used by the Christian fathers in the interpretation of Scripture.

The Council of Clovesho in 747 confirmed Augustine's injunction, and ordered that the rogation days be kept up "according to the way of our fathers."

Led away by evil counsellors, Sauji Bey plotted with Andronicus, son of the emperor, to dethrone their respective fathers.

The first landing-place was the island of Lemnos, which was occupied only by women, who had put to death their fathers, husbands and brothers.

With the connivance of the duke of Austria he fled, first to Schaffhausen, then to Laufenburg, Freiburg, and finally to Breisach, in the hope of escaping in Burgundian territory the pressure exerted upon him by the emperor and the fathers of the council.

Sigismund declared war on the duke of Austria, and the fathers, determined to have their will carried out, drew up in their 4th and 5th sessions (30th of March and 6th of April 1415) a set of decrees with the intention of justifying their attitude and putting the fugitive pope at their mercy.

The execution of the surplus of the general reform of the church in its head and members was left in the hands of the future pope, who had to proceed conjointly with the council, or rather with a commission appointed by the nations - in other words, once the new pope was elected, the fathers, conscious of their impotence, were disinclined to postpone their dispersion until the laborious achievement of the reform.

They are amongst the earliest examples of the "catenic" (catena, chain) form of commentary, consisting of a series of extracts from the fathers, arranged, with independent additions, to elucidate the portions of Scripture concerned.

For his theological position see Harnack, Dogmengeschichte; Hort, Six Lectures on the Ante-Nicene Fathers; Westcott, " Clem.

To solve this difficulty many of the ancient Fathers and the modern critics have been put to miserable shifts.

The word denotes in very early French law the portion of lands or money given by fathers and mothers to their sons or daughters on marriage, and usually connotes a renunciation by the latter of any future inheritance; or it may denote the portion given by the eldest son to his brothers and sisters when he was sole inheritor.

In support of their views they appealed to scripture and to the Western Fathers, who had used the term "adoption" as synonymous with "assumption" in the orthodox sense; and especially to Christ's fraternal relation to Christians - the brother of God's adopted sons.

These were huge digests of all that popes, councils, primitive fathers had decided on every kind of question pertaining to the confessional - what exactly is a sin, what kind of questions the priests must ask, under what conditions he could give absolution.

Arsenius is said to have prepared from the decisions of the councils and the works of the Fathers a summary of divine laws under the title Synopsis Canonum.

The Pirke Aboth, a collection of sayings of the Jewish Fathers, are preserved in the 9th Tractate of the Fourth Order of the Mishnah.

For the Stoic and Neoplatonic uses of Aoyos, as also for those of Philo Judaeus and the Fathers, see Logos.

Whether they were the successors, as most of the Fathers believed, of the seven chosen by the church of Jerusalem 1 A partial exception may be made in favour of the " Catholic Apostolic Church " founded by Edward Irving.

New generations grew up almost as ignorant as their fathers, but not with the same sense of dependence upon the white men.

In bringing together the conflicting opinions of the fathers on all the chief points of Christian dogmatics, it may be admitted that Abelard's aim was simply to make these contradictions the starting point of an inquiry which should determine in each case the true position and via media of Christian theology.

And even the proposal to apply the unaided reason to solve questions which had divided the fathers must have been resented by the more rigid churchmen as the rash intrusion of an over-confident Rationalism.

But when we look at the psalms themselves we see that they must originally have been a hymn-book, not for the Levites, but for the laity who carne up to Jerusalem at the great pilgrimage feasts, and who themselves remembered, or their fathers had told them, the days when, as we see in Ps.

It is noteworthy, however, that Gerbert never writes for a copy of one of the Christian fathers, his aim being, seemingly, to preserve the fragments of a fast-perishing secular Latin literature.

His chief importance in the history of the Persian Church lies in his having induced a synod of bishops to declare that church independent of the see of Antioch and of the " Western Fathers " (Labourt, p. 122 sqq.).

In the preface to the first volume he regrets that except for Alfred's translations Englishmen had no means of learning the true doctrine as expounded by the Latin fathers.

The Fathers of the 4th century, and notably the Cappadocian Fathers, provide us with a quantity of evidence on this subject, which leaves no doubt as to the practice of the invocation of saints, nor of the complete approval with which it was viewed.

The cult of the saints early met with opposition, in answer to which the Church Fathers had to defend its lawfulness and explain its nature.

Such allegorization meets us already in Origen, Eusebius and other early fathers, and is quite compatible with that use of a material Eucharist which Nerses II.

And this view we also meet with in Armenian fathers accounted orthodox.

The Armenian fathers held that Jesus, unlike other men, possessed incorruptible flesh, made of ethereal fire, and so far they shared the main heresy of the Paulicians.

The slighting references to it by the Christian fathers are no more an argument against its existence in the primitive church than the similar denunciations by the Jewish prophets of burnt-offerings and sacrifices are any proof that there were no such rites as the offering of incense, and of the blood of bulls and fat of rams, in the worship of the temple at Jerusalem.

The early church Fathers use the word most frequently in the restricted sense, although an effort has been made to read the wider meaning in Tertullian.

Thus this epistle is the earliest of the Apostolic Fathers, and as such of special interest.

The theology of the Indian Syrian Christians is of a Nestorian type, and Cosmas Indicopleustes (6th century) puts us on the right track when he says that the Christians whom he found in Ceylon and Malabar had come from Persia (probably as refugees from persecution, like the Huguenots in England and the Pilgrim Fathers in America).

The pure Turks and the Kuluglis (sons of Turkish fathers by Moorish women or slave girls) are no longer numerous.

The leading Peruvian authors on constitutional and legal subjects are Dr Jose Santistevan, who has published volumes on civil and criminal law; Luis Felipe Villaran (subsequently rector of the university at Lima), author of a work on constitutional right; Dr Francisco Garcia Calderon (once president of Peru), author of a dictionary of Peruvian legislation, in two volumes; Dr Francisco Xavier Mariategui, one of the fathers of Peruvian independence; and Dr Francisco de Paula Vigil (1792-1875), orator and statesman as well as author, whose work, Defensa de los gobiernos, is a noble and enlightened statement of the case for civil governments against the pretensions of the court of Rome.

The last book (xvii.) treats of theology or (as we should now say) mythology, and winds up with an account of the Holy Scriptures and of the Fathers, from Ignatius and Dionysius the Areopagite to Jerome and Gregory the Great, and even of later writers from 'Isidore and Bede, through Alcuin, Lanfranc and Anselm, down to Bernard of Clairvaux and the brethren of St Victor.

These proved his knowledge of the ancient philosophy he so fiercely condemned, and showed that no ignorance of the fathers caused him to seek inspiration from the Bible alone.

Then Yahweh shall arise mindful of His oath to the fathers, Israel shall be forgiven and restored, and the heathen humbled.

There are 335 classical dramas of this kind in a compendium called the Yokyoka Tsuge, and many of them are inseparably connected with the names of Kwanami Kiyotsugu (1406) and his son Motokiyo (1455), who are counted the fathers of the art.

Gregory, although he has not always escaped the charge of Sabellianism, now holds an undisputed place among the fathers of the church; and although the turn of his mind was practical rather than speculative, he is known to have taken an energetic part in most of the doctrinal controversies of his time.

The prophet Elijah must reappear to bring back the hearts of fathers and children before the great and terrible day of Yahweh come.

The evidence of the apostolic fathers is disappointing.

Christ is the universal and perpetual Head of the Church, but he exercises his rule by means of " the holy Fathers," that is, the bishops whom the Holy Ghost has appointed to be in charge of local churches.

Jerome "is one of the few Fathers to whom the title of Saint appears to have been given in recognition of services rendered to the Church rather than for eminent sanctity.

Farrar, Lives of the Fathers, ii.

Casimir belongs to that remarkable group of late medieval sovereigns who may be called the fathers of modern diplomacy, inasmuch as they relegated warfare to its proper place as the instrument of politics, and preferred the councilchamber to the battle-field.

Missionaries, especially the Catholic " White Fathers," are also active on its shores.

For this purpose they adopted a cycle of eighty-four years, which is mentioned by several of the ancient fathers of the church, and which the early Christians borrowed from them for the regulation of Easter.

This work was valuable for the use which its author made of the Greek of the Septuagint, of the Old and New Testament Apocrypha, of Josephus, and of the apostolic fathers, in illustration of the language of the New Testament.

Charlemagne's march on Saragossa, and the capture of Huesca, Barcelona and Girone, gave rise to La Prise de Pampelune (14th century, based on a lost chanson); and Gui de Bourgogne (12th century) tells how the children of the barons, after appointing Guy as king of France, set out to find and rescue their fathers, who are represented as having been fighting in Spain for twenty-seven years.

The fathers (Die Getreuen) of the town used to send an annual birthday present of ioi plovers' eggs to Bismarck, with a dedication in verse.

In spite therefore of much modern criticism there seems to be no solid reason for rejecting the statements of Irenaeus and regarding Polycarp as the link between the Apostolic age and the first of the Catholic fathers.

All his spare time was spent in studying the early Fathers with Du Vergier, and laying plans for a reformation of the Church.

The confession of faith issued by the London-Amsterdam church (the original of the Pilgrim Fathers' churches) in 1596 declares that the Christian congregation having power to elect its minister has also power to excommunicate him if the case so require (Walker, Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism, p. 66).

On the shores of the lake between Ujiji and Bismarckburg are four stations of the Algerian "White Fathers," all possessing churches, schools and other stone buildings.

It was at the close of Jehoiakim's reign, apparently just before his death, that the enemy appeared at the gates of Jerusalem, and although he himself "slept with his fathers" his young son was destined to see the first captivity of the land of Judah (597 B.C.).

In the same year the French Roman Catholic mission of the White Fathers of Algeria was inaugurated,.

But the Fathers were hostile, and though Mwanga was eager to accept Lugard's offers of reinstatement, he was a prisoner in the hands of his party.

Peace seemed assured in Uganda; territorial limits to religious teaching were abolished, English Roman Catholic priests were added to the French Fathers, and the material progress of the country was very marked.

With its character largely determined by Jewish elements, and even more by contact with the dogmas of Christianity, this second Alexandrian school resulted in the speculative philosophy of the Neo-Platonists and the religious philosophy of the Gnostics and early church fathers.

Later Latin fathers use the word with similar vagueness, e.g.

It is not even safe, according to these two fathers, to commit too much to writing; and Clement undertakes not to reveal in writing many secrets known to the initiated among his readers; otherwise the indiscreet eye of the heathen may rest on them, and he will have cast his pearls before swine.

The states in the Catholic League were permitted to retain for their own uses about one-fifth of the ecclesiastical revenue; the clergy was to be subjected to careful discipline; and only authorized preachers were to be tolerated, who based their teachings on the works of the four Latin Church fathers.

In the first part of the confession the Protestants seek to prove that there is nothing in their doctrines at variance with those of the universal Church " or even of the Roman Church so far as that appears in the writings of the Fathers."

They remained severely orthodox in the doctrines of the Fathers - the Trinity, the Incarnation, the plenary inspiration of the Bible - and they condemned those who rejected their teachings to a hell whose fires they were not tempted to extenuate.

The names of their fathers are alike, and "Lugman" means devourer, swallower, a meaning which might be got out of Balaam by a popular etymology.

While the New Testament knows only the political usage of 56yµa, the Greek Fathers follow one which is more in keeping, with philosophical tradition.

All doctrines are " dogmas " to the Greek Fathers, not simply the central teachings of their system, as with the philosophers.

Luther never quite shook off scholasticism, whereas Zwingli had early learnt from Dr Thomas Wyttenbach that the time was at hand when scholastic theology must give place to the purer and more rational theology of the early Fathers and to a fearless study of the New Testament.

He read also the older Church Fathers and soon won for himself fame as a student, whilst his skill in the classics led his friends to hail him as "the undoubted Cicero of our age."

He held that the Bible was the sufficient revelation of the will of God, and he threw away the philosophy and theology of the later Roman Church, whereas he declared that the early Church Fathers were helpful, though still fallible, interpreters of the Word.

Zwingli looked rather to the City Fathers than to the pope, and as long as he had them with him he moved confidently and laboured for reforms which were as much political and moral in character as religious.

Theramenes specially studied the constitutional side of this movement and formulated a new party-cry, " the constitution of our fathers."

The "reading" in St Benedict's time was probably confined to the Bible and the Fathers.

We have seen St Benedict evangelizing the pagan population round Monte Cassino; and a considerable time each day is assigned to the reading of the Fathers.

Hence the precariousness of the proofs derived from more or less close parallels to Johannine passages in the apostolic fathers.

St Paul's heroic labours (30-64) had gradually gained full recognition and separate organization for the universalist strain in our Lord's teaching; and he who had never seen the earthly Jesus, but only the heavenly Christ, could even declare that Christ " though from the Jewish fathers according to the flesh " had died, " so that henceforth, even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, now we no further know Him thus," " the Lord is the Spirit," and " where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."

Having received his education in classics from the fathers of the oratory of San Filippo Neri, he afterwards entered upon a noviciate at the Franciscan monastery at Lago, at the close of which he was received as a Minorite on the 1 rth of September 1722.

While the title "Fathers" was given from at least the beginning of the 4th century to church writers of former days, as being the parents of Christian belief and thought for later times, the expression "Apostolic Fathers" dates only from the latter part of the 1 7th century.

The idea of recognizing these "Fathers" as a special group exists already in the title "Patres aevi apostolici, sive SS.

Cotelier published at Paris the writings current under the names of Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Hermas, Ignatius and Polycarp. But the name itself is due to their next editor, Thomas Ittig (1643-1710), in his Bibliotheca Patrum Apostolicorum (1699), who, however, included under this title only Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp. Here already appears the doubt as to how many writers can claim the title, a doubt which has continued ever since, and makes the contents of the "Apostolic Fathers" differ so much from editor to editor.

The degree of historic claim which these various writings have to rank as the works' of Apostolic Fathers varies greatly on any definition of "apostolic."

But the convenience of the category "Apostolic Fathers" to express not only those who might possibly have had some sort of direct contact with apostles - such as "Barnabas," Clement, Ignatius, Papias, Polycarp - but also those who seemed specially to preserve the pure tradition of apostolic doctrine during the sub-apostolic age, has led to its general use in a wide and vague sense.

Or to put it more exactly, the "Apostolic Fathers" represent, chronologically in the main and still more from the religious and theological standpoint, the momentous process of 1 Cotelier included the Acts of Martyrdom of Clement, Ignatius and Polycarp; and those of Ignatius and Polycarp are still often printed by editors.

The Apologists no doubt show us certain fresh factors entering into this development; but on the whole the Apostolic Fathers by themselves go a long way to explain the transition in question, so far as knowledge of this saeculum obscurum is within our reach at all.

The Preaching and Apocalypse of Peter, for instance, are quite typical of the same period, and help us to read between the lines of the Apostolic Fathers.

Yet they do not really add much to what is there already, and they have the drawbacks of pseudonymity; they lack concrete and personal qualities; they are general expressions of tendencies which we cannot well locate or measure, save by means of the Apostolic Fathers themselves or of their earliest Catholic successors.

Nor is this pre-literary and vital quality really absent even from the writing which is least entitled to a place among "Apostolic Fathers," the Epistle to Diognetus.

But while literary in form and conception, its appeal is in spirit so personal a testimony to what the Gospel has done for the writer and his fellow Christians, that it is akin to the piety of the Apostolic Fathers as a group. It is true that it has marked affinities, e.g.

If thus related to the Apologists of the middle of the 2nd century, the Epistle to Diognetus has also points of contact with one of the most practical and least literary writings found among our Apostolic Fathers, viz.

It expresses the feeling common to the Apostolic Fathers and general in the sub-apostolic age, at any rate in regions where apostles had once laboured, that local tradition, as held by the recognized church leaders, did but continue apostolic doctrine and practice.

It is in contrast to these that the Didache is justly felt to be genuinely primitive and of a piece with the Apostolic Fathers.

Hence there appear constant traces of study of the Apostolic writings, so far as these were accessible in the locality of each writer at his date of writing (for the details of this subject, and its bearing on the history of the Canonical Scriptures of the New Testament, see The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, Oxford, 1 9 05).

It is not merely that "there is no dogmatic system in Clement" or in any other of the Apostolic Fathers; that may favour, not hinder, religious insight.

It is lack of this organic quality in the thought, not only of Clement but also of the Apostolic Fathers generally - with the possible exception of Ignatius, who seems to share the Apostolic experience more fully than any other, to which Reuss rightly directs attention.

The passages in which these things are laid bare by Paul's remorseless analysis of his own experience "under Law" seem to have made practically no impression on the Apostolic Fathers as a whole.

Hence a new sort of legalism, known to recent writers as Moralism, underlies much of the piety of the Apostolic Fathers, though Ignatius is quite free from it, while Polycarp and "Barnabas" are less under its influence than are the Didache, Clement, the Homilist and Hermas.

There is continuity in character; the Apostolic Fathers strike us as truly good men, with a goodness raised to a new type and power.

This is what the Gospel of Christ aims chiefly at producing as its proper fruit; and the Apostolic Fathers would have desired no better record than that they were themselves genuine "epistles of Christ."

Donaldson, The Apostolical Fathers (1874), which, however, suffers from the imperfect state of the texts when he wrote.

The most useful edition for ready reference, containing critical texts (up to date) and good translations, is Lightfoot's one-volume edition, The Apostolic Fathers (London, 1891).

The order is recognized in the canons of the councils of Nicaea (325) and Chalcedon (451), and is frequently mentioned in the writings of Chrysostom (some of whose letters are addressed to deaconesses at Constantinople), Epiphanius, Basil, and indeed most of the more important Fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries.

On the third day, Cureotis (Koupe&Tls), children born since the last festival were presented by their fathers or guardians to the assembled phratores, and, after an oath had been taken as to their legitimacy and the sacrifice of a goat or a sheep, their names were inscribed in the register.

Almost immediately the entire assembly with one voice cried out anathema on the impious Nestorius and his impious doctrines, and after various extracts from the writings of church fathers had been read the decree of his exclusion from the episcopate and from all priestly communion was solemnly read and signed by all present, whose numbers had by this time swelled to one hundred and ninety-eight.

There he found little religion and less refinement; but no serious difficulty seems to have been made about his reading the classics and the Fathers with his friends to his heart's content.

The series of the Fathers alone contains Jerome (1516), Cyprian (1520), Pseudo-Arnobius (1522), Hilarius (1523), Irenaeus (Latin, 1526), Ambrose (1527), Augustine (1528), Chrysostom (Latin, 1530), Basil (Greek, 1532, the first Greek author printed in Germany), and Origen (Latin, 1536).

The documents comprise imperial edicts, rescripts, &c., liturgies, acts of councils, decretals and letters of bishops, references in contemporary heathen writings, and above all the works of the Church Fathers.

Of modern critical editions, besides those containing the works of one or another individual, the best are the Berlin edition of the early Greek Fathers (Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte, 1897 ff.), and the Vienna edition of the Latin Fathers (Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 1867 ff.), both of first-rate importance.

There is a convenient English translation of most of the writings of the ante-Nicene Fathers by Roberts and Donaldson (Ante-Nicene Christian Library, 25 vols., Edinburgh, 1868 ff., American reprint in nine vols., 1886 ff.).

A continuation of it, containing selected works of the Nicene and post-Nicene period, was edited by Schaff and others under the title A Select Library of Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers (series 1 and 2; 28 vols., Buffalo and New York, 1886 ff.).

Their ideal was a return to that simplicity of primitive Christendom which they believed they found revealed in the New Testament and in the writings of the early Fathers.

He was familiar with the Greek Fathers, and was chosen to execute a Latin rendering of the writings of "Dionysius the Areopagite," the patron saint of France.

The Proverbs of Jesus, the son of Sirach (c. 200 B.C.), which form now the apocryphal book Ecclesiasticus, were translated into Greek by the grandson of the author at about 130 B.C.; and in the preface prefixed by him to his translation he speaks of " the law, and the prophets, and the other books of our fathers," and again of " the law, and the prophets, and the rest of the books," expressions which point naturally to the same threefold division which was afterwards universally recognized by the Jews.

Unfortunately the version is only extant in a fragmentary form, being preserved partly in MSS., partly in quotations of the Fathers.

Most nearly on the lines of the New Testament are the so-called Apostolic (really Sub-Apostolic) Fathers (Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, Didache, Barnabas, the letters of Ignatius and the single letter of Polycarp, the Shepherd of Hermas, the homily commonly known as the Second Epistle of Clement).

England has made many weighty contributions both to Introduction and Canon, especially Lightfoot, Essays on Supernatural Religion (collected in 1889); editions of Books of the New Testament and Apostolic Fathers; Westcott, editions; Hort, especially Romans and Ephesians (posthumous, 1895); Swete, editions; Knowling and others.

Though found in so great a number of witnesses, this type of text is shown not to be the earliest or best by the evidence of all the oldest MS. versions and Fathers, as well as by internal evidence.

The Corporation for the Promoting and Propagating of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England (founded in 1649) bore the expense of printing both the New Testament and the Bible as a whole (Cambridge, Mass., 1663 - the earliest Bible printed in.America), which John Eliot, one of the Pilgrim Fathers, translated into "the language of the Massachusetts Indians," whom he evangelized.

Here in 1 754 he became professor extraordinarius of theology, and three years later received an ordinary professorship. He lectured on dogmatics, church history, ethics, polemics, natural theology, symbolics, the epistles of Paul, Christian antiquities, historical theological literature, ecclesiastical law and the fathers, and took an active interest in the work of the Gottinger Societdt In 1766 he was appointed professor primarius.

It was on the eve of their going to Rome, for the second time, that the fathers met Ignatius at Vicenza and it was determined to adopt a common rule and, at the suggestion of Ignatius, the name of the Company of Jesus.

The German college, for the children of poor nobles, was founded in 1552; and in the same year Ignatius firmly settled the discipline of the Society by putting down, with promptness and severity, some attempts at independent action on the part of Rodriguez at Coimbra - this being the occasion of the famous letter on obedience; while 1553 saw the despatch of a mission to Abyssinia with one of the fathers as patriarch, and the first rift within the lute when the pope thought that the Spanish Jesuits were taking part with the emperor against the Holy See.

In 1556, the founder died and left the Society consisting of fortyfive professed fathers and two thousand ordinary members, distributed over twelve provinces, with more than a hundred colleges and houses.

It was a trifling set-off that in 1567 the pope again enjoined the fathers to keep choir and to admit only the professed to priests' orders, especially as Gregory XIII.

The general's object may probably have been to accentuate the harshness with which the fathers had been treated, and so to increase public sympathy, 1 but the actual result of his policy was blame for the cruelty with which he enhanced their misfortunes, for the poverty of Corsica made even a bare subsistence scarcely procurable for them there.

Such of the fathers as are engaged in the work of education are permitted to continue, on condition of abstaining from lax and questionable doctrines apt to cause strife and trouble.

It has been necessary to cite these heads of the breve because the apologists of the Society allege that no motive influenced the pope save the desire of peace at any price, and that he did not believe in the culpability of the fathers.

In France, even after their expulsion in 1765, they had maintained a precarious footing in the country under the partial disguise and names of "Fathers of the Faith" or "Clerks of the Sacred Heart," but were obliged by Napoleon I.

There are some to this day in Lisbon under the name of "Fathers of the Faith."

Numerous fragments and extracts from Gnostic writings are to be found in the works of the Fathers who attacked Gnosticism.

On the whole, then, for an exposition of Gnosticism we are thrown back upon the polemical writings of the Fathers in their controversy with heresy.

And since the Gnostics were compelled to draw the figure of the Saviour into a world of quite alien myths, their Christology became so complicated in character that it frequently recalls the Christology of the later dogmatic of the Greek Fathers.

Those fit for a soldier's life were trained to the use of weapons and sent early to learn the hardships of war; children of craftsmen were usually taught by their fathers to follow their trade; and for the children of nobles there was elaborate instruction in history, picture-writing, astrology, religious doctrines and laws.

The accompanying commentary is based on the Fathers of the Church and entirely devoid of any original matter.

On the west side of St Stephen's Green is the Catholic University (1854), which is under the Jesuit Fathers and affiliated to the Royal University.

As soon, however, as events happened among them which disturbed their outward tranquillity, the religious spirit which had guided their fathers immediately revived within them.

The majority (about 12,000 in number) resolved to revive in practice the traditions left them by their fathers, which they had departed from during the period of opulence.

In the Fathers of the first three or four centuries can be traced the same tendency to spiritualize the Eucharist as we encountered in the fourth gospel, and in the Didache.

Augustine, again, stood on the shoulders of Tertullian and Cyprian; and these three North Africans are the fathers of the Western churches.

Among all the fathers of the first three centuries Tertullian has given the most powerful expression to the terrible earnestness of the Gospel.

It Is To Be Regretted That The Reverend Fathers Who Formed The Council Of Nicaea Did Not Abandon The Moon Altogether, And Appoint The First Or Second Sunday Of April For The Celebration Of The Easter Festival.

Among other buildings and institutions are a novitiate of Marist Fathers, a science and art school, a pier with pavilion and concert rooms, and a yacht club.

John fell rapturously in love with her; and, it seems, the two fathers seriously contemplated their marriage.

In 1845 the French Marist Fathers went to Isabel, where Mgr Epaulle, first vicarapostolic of Melanesia, was killed by the natives soon after landing.

He had on the 26th of November 1559, in a sermon at St Paul's Cross, challenged all corners to prove the Roman case out of the Scriptures, or the councils or Fathers for the first six hundred years after Christ.

The Fathers of the Greek Church especially were united in recommending the veneration of relics.

On his return to France he joined the Oratorian Fathers, and when Marshal Bassompierre was sent to England in 1627 to regulate the differences between Henrietta Maria and her husband, Harlay de Sancy was attached to the queen's ecclesiastical household, but Charles I.

In its most simple and attractive form - one at the same time invested with the authority of the reputed holy author - their account of the creation of the world and of man; the origin of sin and redemption, the history of the Cross, and the disputes between body and soul, right and wrong, heaven and hell, were embodied either in "Historiated Bibles" (Paleya 1) or in special dialogues held between Christ and his disciples, or between renowned Fathers of the Church who expounded these views in a simple manner adapted to the understanding of the people (Lucidaria).

The Fathers of the Church had repeated times without number that the priesthood stands above even the supreme secular authority; the Bible was full of stories most aptly illustrating this theory; nobody questioned that, within the Church, the pope was the Vicar of Christ, and that, as such, his powers were unlimited; as proof positive could be cited councils and decretals - whether authentic or spurious; at any rate all authorized by long usage and taken as received authorities.

John Huss, the reformation of the Church, both in its head and members, claimed the main attention of the fathers of the council.

On the, 31st of July 1437 the fathers of Basel summoned Eugenius IV.

For a moment the idea was entertained of giving way to the opposition and deferring a decision in the matter, or, in the manner of the fathers in the Council of Trent, adjourning it to the Greek kalends.

The Jesuit Antonio Andrada, a native of Portugal (1580-1634), travelling from India, appears to have entered Tibet on the west, in the Manasarowar Lake region, and made his way across to Tangut and north-western China; in 1661 the Jesuit fathers Johann Grueber (an Austrian) and Albert D 'Orville (a Belgian) travelled from Peking via Tangut to Lhasa, and thence through Nepal to India.

If we could believe the fathers of the 5th and succeeding centuries Nicene orthodoxy prevailed in their country from the first; and in the 5th century they certainly chose for translation the works of orthodox fathers alone, such as Chrysostom, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory Nazianzen, Cyril of Jerusalem and Cyril of Alexandria, Athanasius, Julius of Rome, Hippolytus, Irenaeus, avoiding Origen and other fathers who were becoming suspect.

This name the Armenians have used, at least since the year loo; before which date their fathers often speak of baptism into the death of Christ as the one essential.

Council held by St Nerses on his return from the council of the 150 fathers at Constantinople against Macedonius.

Le Clerc's new edition of the Apostolic Fathers of Johann Cotelerius (1627-1686), published in 1698, marked an advance in the critical study of these documents.

The early Fathers often indeed identify them with later types of gnosticism, but this cannot be taken as any sure clue to the author's meaning.

In the Greek and Latin Church the few fathers who, like Origen and Jerome, knew something of the language, were wholly dependent on their Jewish teachers, and their chief value for us is as depositaries of Jewish tradition.

Of the religious societies engaged in the evangelization of these many fields of labour, some have been established exclusively for foreign missionary work among the heathen - notably the famous Societe des Missions Etrangeres of Paris, the oldest and greatest of all (dating from 1658, and consisting of 34 bishops, 1200 European missionaries and 700 native priests); the German " Society of the Divine Word," whose headquarters are at Steyl in Holland; the Belgian Society of Scheat; the celebrated French Society of the " White Fathers," founded by the late Cardinal Lavigerie for African missions; the English Society of St Joseph, founded at Mill Hill by Cardinal Vaughan; and some others.

Society of " White Fathers" (founded by Cardinal Lavigerie, 1868).

The Roman Mission too has been very successful; for some years a French agency, the White Fathers of Algeria, carried it on, but they were afterwards joined by English helpers from St Joseph's Society at Mill Hill.

The White Fathers also work in the Great Lakes region, and on the Zanzibar coast are the French Congregation of the Holy Ghost and German Benedictines.

From this place he proceeded to Constantinople, where he received similar civilities from Sir Thomas Bendish, the English ambassador, and Sir Jonathan Dawes, with whom he afterwards contracted an intimate friendship. While at Constantinople he read and studied the works of St Chrysostom, whom he preferred to all the other Fathers.

The last of the great Latin Fathers and the first representative of medieval Catholicism he brings the dogmatic theology of Tertullian, Ambrose and Augustine into relation with the Scholastic speculation of later ages.

The history of furs can be read in Marco Polo, as he grows eloquent with the description of the rich skins of the khan of Tatary; in the early fathers of the church, who lament their introduction into Rome and Byzantium as an evidence of barbaric and debasing luxury; in the political history of Russia, stretching out a powerful arm over Siberia to secure her rich treasures; in the story of the French occupation of Canada, and the ascent of the St Lawrence to Lake Superior, and the subsequent contest to retain possession against England; in the history of early settlements of New England, New York and Virginia; in Irving's Astoria; in the records of the Hudson's Bay Company; and in the annals of the fairs held at Nizhniy Novgorod and Leipzig.

In 912 he returned to the faith of his fathers and became its most distinguished champion, using the philosophical methods he had learned in the school of heresy.

Isaac Barrow said that "his practical writings were never minded, and his controversial ones seldom confuted," and John Wilkins, bishop of Chester, asserted that "if he had lived in the primitive time he had been one of the fathers of the church."

For the restoration of the Greek text we have, besides many Greek MSS., uncial and cursive, the old Latin, the Syro-Hexaplar, the Armenian, Sahidic and Ethiopic versions, as well as a considerable number of quotations in the Greek and Latin Fathers.

Once only, with the calm assurance of one who knew that his prayer would be answered, he invokes the God of his fathers.

Some of his writings, among them the History of the Christian Church during the First Three Centuries and the lectures On the Right Use of the Early Fathers, were published posthumously.

According to the History of Armenia which bears his name he was a pupil of the two fathers of Armenian literature, the patriarch or catholicos Sahak the Great and the vartabed Mesrob.

On the 27th of February 1860 in Cooper Union, New York City, he made a speech (much the same as that delivered in Elwood, Kansas, on the 1st of December) which made him known favourably to the leaders of the Republican party in the East and which was a careful historical study criticising the statement of Douglas in one of his speeches in Ohio that "our fathers when they framed the government under which we live understood this question [slavery] just as well and even better than we do now," and Douglas's contention that "the fathers" made the country (and intended that it should remain) part slave.

Reversing his fathers policy, Otto resolved that the dukes should act in the strictest sense as his vassals, or lose their dignities.

Otto was then taken to Germany, and after his fathers death he was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle on Christmas Day 983.

Henry III., who had been crowned German king and also king of Burgundy during his fathers lifetime, took possession Henry!!!

Evil days did not, however, come in the time of Henry VI., who, although without his fathers greatness, had some of his determination and energy, and was at least his equal Henry VI in ambition.

He disliked the Privilege of Worms and, favoring the towns against the princes, his policy was diametrically opposed to that of the emperor; however, in 1232 he went to Italy and promised to obey his fathers commands.

However, having given to the electors assurances of his fidelity to the Roman Church, he was chosen king in November 1562, and became ruler of Germany on his fathers death nearly two years later.

The death of the old king in 1878 made no difference, for his son in a letter to the king of Prussia announced that he assumed and maintained all his fathers rights, and that he did not recognize the legal validity of the acts by which he was, as a matter of fact, prevented from enjoying them.

When Horus grew ie set out to avenge his fathers murder, and after terrible ggles finally conquered and dispossessed his wicked uncle; is another version relates, the combatants were separated by th, and Egypt divided between them, the northern part ng to Horus and the southern to Seth.

It became the theory that the temples were the gifts of the Pharaoh to his fathers the gods, and therefore in the scenes of the cult that adorn the inner walls it is always he who is depicted as performing the ceremonies.

Among the former were the kher-heb, a learned man entrusted with the conduct of the ceremonies, and the divine fathers, whose functions are obscure.

He changed his own name from Amenhotp, Ammon is satisfied, to Akhenaton, pious to Aton, erased the name and figure of Ammon from the monuments, even where it occurred as part of his own fathers name, abandoned Thebes, the magnificent city of Ammon, and built a new capital at El Amarna in the plain of Hermopolis, on a virgin site upon the edge of the desert.

Those who relied on Pharaoh and remained loyal as their fathers had done sent letter after letter appealing for aid against their foes.

During his absence his son Abbs revolted in Egypt; on the news of his fathers return he fled to Barca, whence he endeavoured to conquer the Aghlabite dominions in the Maghrib; he was, however, defeated by the Aghlabite ruler, and returned to Barca, where he was again defeated by his fathers forces and taken prisoner.

Here it will suffice to say that the victorious career of Ibrahim, who once more commanded in his fathers name, beginning with the storming of Acre on the 27th of May 1832, and culminating in the rout and capture of Reshid Pasha at Konia on the 21st of December, was arrested by the intervention of Russia.

Figures of the Virgin and Child, of the apostles and evangelists, the fathers of the Church, the saints and martyrs, with illustrations of sacred history and the Apocalypse, were supplied in endless repetition to satisfy the cravings of a pious and simple-minded people.

A still more striking contrast is the passionate outburst of sympathy and indignation with which, in the same diary, he comments on the supposed kidnapping of Luther by foul play on his return from the diet of Worms. Without being one of those who in his city took an avowed part against the old ecclesiastical system, and probably without seeing clearly whither the religious ferment of the time was tending - without, that is, being properly speaking a Reformer - Diirer in his art and his thoughts was the incarnation of those qualities of the German character and conscience which resulted in the Reformation; and, personally, with the fathers of the Reformation he lived in the warmest sympathy.

Ludwig Hahn, Bibliothek der Symbole, 3rd edition (Breslau, 1897), 183 ff.; for translations compare the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, iv.

After the death of her father in 1752 she carried out a long-cherished purpose by giving herself to the study of theology, and especially of the Fathers.

There is usually no distinction between brothers (or sisters) and cousins, all the children of brothers and sisters speak of each other as brothers and sisters, and they call uncles and aunts fathers and mothers.

All the evidence he finds in support of this is (I) the existence of the custom above mentioned in Hawaii; and (2) the absence of special terms for the relationship of uncle, aunt and cousin, this indicating, he thinks, that these were regarded as fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters.

The patricians (patricii) are those who can point to fathers, i.e.

The latest English translation, revised by Hartranft, is published in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol.

St John Chrysostom (Xpvaoaroµor, goldenmouthed), the most famous of the Greek Fathers, was born of a noble family at Antioch, the capital of Syria, about A.D.

Some of the commentaries and homilies are translated in the Oxford Library of the Fathers.

He was a member of the council of Basel, and dedicated to the assembled fathers a work entitled De concordantia Catholica, in which he maintained the superiority of councils over popes, and assailed the genuineness of the False Decretals and the Donation of Constantine.

Another well-known work is the Sacra parallela, a collection of biblical passages followed by illustrations drawn from other scriptural sources and from the fathers.

The humanist Vives was brought from Italy to teach Latin, and the reader in theology was instructed to follow the Greek and Latin Fathers rather than the scholastic commentaries.

Women were the common property of their tribe, and the children never knew their fathers.

In consequence of this deficiency he failed to pay the tribute due from the people to Ptolemy, as his fathers had done, and is set down by Josephus as a miser who cared nothing for the protest of Ptolemy's special ambassador.

The Frankish king was the boy Baldwin IV., who had paid for the errors of his fathers by being afflicted with leprosy.

Fifty thousand boys and girls were persuaded by some pestilent dreamers that their childish innocence would effect what their immoral fathers had failed to accomplish, and so left their homes on an expedition to capture the Holy Land.

As to the reform, of which everybody felt the necessity, the fathers in council had not succeeded in arriving at any agreement.

But the small number of fathers who attended at the latter town, and above all, the disquieting tendencies whin began to make themselves felt there, induced the pope to force on a dissolution of the synod.

Educated at Paris University, he came under the influence of Isaac Scaliger, who directed his attention towards the obscurer fathers of the Church.

In 1699 he published two treatises, - one entitled Three Practical Essays on Baptism, Confirmation and Repentance, and the other, Some Reflections on that part of a book called Amyntor, or a Defence of Milton's Life, which relates to the Writings of the Primitive Fathers, and the Canon of the New Testament.

That he had a competent acquaintance with Greek is manifest from his translations of Dionysius the Areopagite and of Maximus, from the manner in which he refers to Aristotle, and from his evident familiarity with Neoplatonist writers and the fathers of the early church.

The broadest and most accurate scholar among the "founders and fathers," he was particularly an expert in constitutional history and theory.

The fathers of the young couple are seated side by side, and between them stands the priest ready to.

The Ophites actually identified the serpent with Sophia (" Wisdom "); the old sage Garga, one of the fathers of Indian astronomy, owed his learning to the serpent-god Sesha Naga; and the Phoenician 14pwv 'Ocbiwv wrote the seven tablets of fate which were guarded by Harmonia.

Interpretations by the Fathers or by the councils are to be taken only as aids to its understanding.

The Reformers turned to the state for protection against the Roman Church, and ultimately as a refuge from anarchy, and they also returned to the theology of the Fathers as their safeguard against heresy.

The process, however, of sifting out the readings of all our present witnesses - MSS., versions, Fathers - has not yet gone far enough to yield any sure or final result as to the history of this text, so as to show what in its extant forms is primary, secondary, and so on.

Among his many writings are An Ecclesiastical Biography, containing the Lives of Ancient Fathers and Modern Divines (8 vols., 1845-1852), A Church Dictionary, The Means of Rendering more Effectual the Education of the People, The Cross of Christ (1873), The Church and its Ordinances (sermons, 4 vols., 1876), and Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury (12 vols., 1860-1876).

The Council of Trent, while it commands all bishops to teach "the sound doctrine of purgatory handed down by the venerable fathers and sacred councils," bids them exclude from popular addresses all the "more difficult and subtle questions relating to the subject which do not tend to edification."

The Eastern Church affirms belief in an intermediate state after death, but the belief is otherwise as vague as the expressions of the pre-Nicene fathers on the subject.

Of peculiar importance in this respect is the worship of the Pitris (" fathers") or deceased ancestors, as entering largely into the everyday life and family relations of the Hindus.

Moreover, a simple libation of water should be offered to the Fathers twice daily at the morning and evening devotion called sandhya (" twilight").

Hence also frequent allusion is made by poets to the anxious care caused to the Fathers by the possibility of the living head of the family being afflicted with failure of offspring; this dire prospect compelling them to use but sparingly their little store of provisions, in case the supply should shortly cease altogether.

At the same time one also meets with frank avowals of a superstitious fear lest any irregularity in the performance of the obsequial rites should cause the Fathers to haunt their old home and trouble the peace of their undutiful descendant, or even prematurely draw him after them to the Pitri-loka or world of the Fathers, supposed to be located in the southern region.

When old-fashioned theologians talked about the canons and councils of antiquity, Laynez answered that the Church was not more infallible at one time than another; the Holy Ghost spoke through the decrees of Trent quite as plainly and directly as through the primitive Fathers.

He was present when the latter subject was introduced, and he entreated the fathers to study the subject well before committing themselves to a decision.

Similar or related forms of interpretation and teaching are found in the Talmud, in Hellenistic Judaism, in the New Testament, in early Church Fathers and in Syriac writers.

The early Christian Fathers recorded many a valuable observation of the Gentile faiths around them from varying points of view, sympathetic or hostile; and Eusebius and Epiphanius, in the 4th century A.D., attributed to the librarian of Ptolemy Philad.elphus the design of collecting the sacred books of the Ethiopians, Indians, Persians, Elamites, Babylonians, Assyrians, Romans, Phoenicians, Syrians and Greeks.

So in the Vedic hymns the departed " Fathers " inhabit the three zones of earth, air and sky; they are invoked with the streams and mountains of this lower earth, as well as with the dawns and' the sky itself; even cosmic functions are ascribed to them; and they adorn the heaven with stars.

The ancient Indian ritual for the sacrifice to the Fathers required the officiating priest to turn away with bated breath that he might not see the spirits engaged upon the rice-balls laid out for them.

They are still suffering for the sins of their fathers, who perished in the catastrophe (verse 7).

This condemnation by the moralists was enforced by the Fathers of the church on the conversion of the empire to Christianity.

Naturally, after 1544, when the Council of Trent had formally declared the Bible and tradition to be equally authoritative sources of all Christian doctrine, the contrast between the old and the new teaching became more obvious; and in many countries a middle party arose which aimed at a compromise by going back to the Church of the Fathers.

The paternal uncle is a much nearer tie than with us; while men look on their first cousins on the fathers side as their most natural wives.

The crown-prince, Chosroes, was, on the other band, wholly orthodox; and, towards the close of his fathers reign, in conjunction with the chief Magian, he carried through a sacrifice of the Mazdakites, who were butchered in a great massacre (528).

The third son of Timur, Miran Shah, had ruled over part of Persia in his fathers lifetime; but he was said to be insane, and his incapacity for government had caused the loss of Bagdad and revolt in other provinces.

He had an elder and a younger brother, sons of the same mother, but the eldest had been put to death by his fathers orders, and the youngest secreted by materfial precaution lest a similar fate should overtake him.

Again the Persian troops advanced to Herat itself under the command of Mahomnied Mirza, son of Abbas; but the news of his fathers death caused the commander to break up his camp and return to Meshed.

The new shah, Muzaffarud-Din (born March 25, 1853), then governor-general of Azerbaijan, residing at Tabriz, was enthroned there on the day of his fathers death, and proceeded a few days later, accompanied by the British and Russian consuls, to Teheran, where he arrived on the 8th of June.

The doctrines of Marcion and the history of his churches from the and to the 7th century are known to us from the controversial works of the Catholic fathers.

The lessons, as has been seen, are drawn variously from the Bible, the Acts of the Saints and the Fathers of the Church.

The Cape of Good Hope subsequently " became not a colony of the Republic of the United Provinces, but a dependency of the ` Netherlands Chartered General East India Company ' for mercantile purposes; and to this fact principally can be traced the slow progress, in all but extension of territory, of a country which was settled by Europeans within thirty years of the time when the Pilgrim Fathers, the founders of a mighty empire, landed at Plymouth to plant democratic institutions and European civilization in the West."

Papias uses the term "the Elders," or Fathers of the Christian community, to describe the original witnesses to Christ's teaching, i.e.

Not a few such traditions Irenaeus has embodied in his work Against Heresies, so preserving in some cases the substance of Papias's Exposition (see Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, 1891, for these, as for all texts bearing on Papias).

The latest English translation, revised by Zenos, is published in the Nicene and post Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol.

His famous theological handbook, Sententiarum libri quatuor, is, as the title implies, primarily a collection of opinions of the fathers, "sententiae patrum."

Before it had been made known in sundry portions to the fathers, it had been kept in heaven by the angels, and to its observance there was no limit in time or in eternity.

His attack was based largely on arguments which could be turned with equal force against the miracles of the New Testament, and he even went further than previous rationalists in impugning the credibility of statements as to alleged miracles emanating from martyrs and the fathers of the early church.

Laymen as well as monks take part in the proceedings, the details of which are unknown to us except from the accounts of the Catholic missionaries - Fathers Huc and Gabet - who describe the principal ceremonial as, in outward appearance, wonderfully like the high mass.

But the altered name of Lombard also denoted henceforth some of the proudest of Italians; and, though the Lombard speech had utterly perished their most common names still kept up the remembrance that their fathers had come from beyond the Alps.

In the New Testament the properly theological sense of spiritual regeneration is found, though the word itself occurs only twice; and it is used by the church fathers, e.g.

The order of Passionist Fathers, the full title of which is the "Congregation of the Discalced Clerks of the Most Holy Cross and Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ," was founded by St Paul of the Cross (Paolo della Croce, 16941 7 75; canonized 1867) in 1720, but full sanction was not obtained for the order till 1737, when the first monastery was established at Monte Argentario, Orbetello.