Introduction to This Volume

How this book is arranged

This is the seventh volume of a series that gathers the writings of the early Church in order of date, from the generation after the apostles down to the eighth century. This volume completes the writings of Tertullian and then turns to Hippolytus of Rome.

Within each work the text is divided into chapters and numbered sections, so that any passage can be found again and cited. The small bold figures in the text are the section numbers.

The translations

The text is in English only. Wherever a modern English version has been prepared for SermonIndex it is used here; otherwise the book prints an older public-domain translation. In both cases the wording is the translator’s own: older translations have not been altered beyond dividing them into sections. The sources for every work are listed at the back of the book, together with the licence under which each text is released. All the works in this volume are printed in older public-domain translations.

In this volume

The first part of this volume gathers the rest of Tertullian’s writings, those that deal with the daily life of the Christian: how to pray, the meaning of baptism, repentance after sin, patience, marriage and remarriage, dress and modesty, and fasting. They were written over about twenty years and show how the church of North Africa taught its people to live.

During those years Tertullian moved towards the Montanists, who claimed fresh prophecy and a stricter discipline. The later works in this part, On Monogamy, On Fasting and On Modesty, are written from that standpoint, and in them he argues against the practice of most of the church of his day.

The second part gathers the writings attributed to Hippolytus, a presbyter of Rome who wrote in Greek in the early third century. According to later tradition he opposed the bishops of Rome of his time and died in exile in Sardinia about AD 235. His best-known works are the Refutation of All Heresies, a long history of false teaching that traces it to Greek philosophy, and On Christ and Antichrist. Scholars still debate how many of the writings that bear his name come from one author.

Dates and authorship

Dates are approximate and are debated by scholars. Each work begins with a short introduction that states what is known about its author and its date, and what is uncertain.