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Introductory Note — Historical footnotes

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Complete historical editorial footnotes. These notes retain the original edition’s wording; individual note authors are unspecified.

English translation and editorial credits: Marcus Dods (original ANF II translator credit), Alexander Roberts (Edinburgh series editor), James Donaldson (Edinburgh series editor), Arthur Cleveland Coxe (American revision with prefaces and notes), Jesse Ames Spencer (typographical and Scripture-reference corrections).

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1885 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

[Our chronological arrangement must yield in minute accuracy to other considerations; and we may borrow an excuse from our author, who notes the difficulty of microscopic ἀκριβεία in his own chronological labours (book iii. cap. 29). It was impossible to crowd Tatian and Theophilus into vol. i. Of this serious, without dividing Irenæus, and putting part of his works in vol. ii. But, in the case of contemporaries, this dislocation is trifling, and creates no confusion.]

Editorial footnote · Introductory Note, Chapter uncertain, editorial note cite_note-4 · Original source

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[I venture to assign to Theophilus a conjectural date of birth, circiter a.d. 115.]

1885 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

Renan, St. Paul, cap. 1., Farrar, Life of St. Paul, cap. xvi.

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Theophilus occupies an interesting position, after Ignatius, in the succession of faithful men who represented Barnabas and other prophets and teachers of Antioch, in that ancient seat, from which comes our name as Christians. I cannot forbear another reference to those recent authors who have so brilliantly illustrated and depicted the Antioch of the early Christians; because, if we wish to understand Autolycus, we must feel the state of society which at once fascinated him, and disgusted Theophilus. The Fathers are dry to those only who lack imagination to reproduce their age, or who fail to study them geographically and chronologically. Besides this, one should bring to the study of their works, that sympathy springing from a burning love to Christ, which borrows its motto, in slightly altered words, from the noble saying of the African poet: “I am a Christian, and nothing which concerns Christianity do I consider foreign to myself.”