Letters — Source paragraphs and footnotes

1892 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

“It is noticeable that with systematic discipline as to the persons taught, there was no order of teachers. It was part of the pastoral office to watch over the souls of those who were seeking admission to the Church, as well as those who were in it, and thus bishops, priests, deacons, or readers might all of them be found, when occasion required, doing the work of a Catechist. The Doctor Audientium of whom Cyprian speaks, was a Lector in the Church of Carthage. Augustine’s Treatise de Catechizandis Rudibus, was addressed to Deogratias as a deacon; the Catecheses of Cyril of Jerusalem were delivered by him partly as a deacon, partly as a presbyter. The word catechist implies accordingly a function, not a class.” Dean Plumptre in Dict. Christ. Ant. i. 319.

Editorial footnote · Letters, Chapter uncertain; original source section: Letter 77, editorial note cite_note-14 · Original source

1892 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain) | Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)

On the persecution in Persia see page 157.

Editorial footnote · Letters, Chapter uncertain; original source section: Letter 77, editorial note cite_note-1 · Original source

Date uncertain | Theodoret of Cyrus

Wherefore our Lord Jesus Christ permitted the first of the apostles, whose confession He had fixed as a kind of groundwork and foundation of the Church, to waver to and fro, and to deny Him, and then raised Him up again. And thus He gave us two lessons: not to be confident in our own strength, and to strengthen the unstable. Reach out, therefore, I beseech you, a hand to them that are fallen, “draw them out of the horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set their feet upon a rock,” and “put a new song into their mouth, even praise unto our God,” that their example of life may become an example of salvation, that “many shall see it and fear and shall trust in the Lord.” Let them be prevented from participating in the holy mysteries, but let them not be kept from the prayer of the catechumens, nor from hearing the divine Scriptures and the exhortation of teachers, and let them be prohibited from partaking of the sacred mysteries, not till death, but during a given time, till they recognise their ailment, covet health, and are properly contrite for having abandoned their true Prince and deserted to a tyrant, and for having left their benefactor and gone over to their foe.

Complete source paragraph · Letters, Chapter uncertain; original source section: Letter 77, source paragraph 4 · Original source