The theological literature of the East in the first centuries can hardly be said to have suggested Arianism; but it was a sort of shelter for it, when it made its appearance. I shall have to speak in very much the same way of certain writers of the West during the same period, who were more copious and more able than the Orientals. St. Justin or St. Theophilus cannot pretend, in force of intellect or originality, to vie with Tertullian, or with Hippolytus in fertility or in authority.
The theological writers in the West during the period which I have taken in Asia and Egypt, (viz., down to the middle of the fourth century, to Eusebius and Athanasius inclusive), are St. Hippolytus of Rome, the Roman author of the lately discovered Elenchus Hæresium, Tertullian of Rome and Carthage, Novatian also of Rome; St. Zeno of Verona, St. Hilary and St. Phœbadius of France, and Lactantius and Victorinus of Africa.
Of the four Roman writers in this list, three were in direct variance with the Holy See on matters of discipline, which they maintained ought to be stricter than the Popes judged to be prudent. The earliest of these three seems to be the author of the Elenchus Hæresium, discovered some twenty or thirty years ago, who is so scandalous in his treatment of two contemporary Popes, Zephyrinus and Callistus; a learned and able writer, but fierce and reckless in his enmities, and incontrollable in his temper. Another, the African Tertullian, is the most powerful writer of the early centuries. He is said to have lived in Rome, for many years apparently, and was there ordained Priest; then, when at length driven to his own country by the hostility of the Roman clergy, he set himself to inveigh against the laxity of morals which he considered to be tolerated by the Popes, and died in the profession of Montanism. The third is Novatian, a Roman priest, so highly placed and so specially respected, that, during the vacancy of the Holy See, he was chosen by the Roman clergy to be their spokesman in their correspondence with St. Cyprian of Carthage; a man of unblemished, or rather austere character, and dying for the Christian faith in the Valerian persecution. He too, scandalised by the relaxation of discipline in his day, became the author of the unhappy schism which goes by his name. His sectaries stood by the Catholics, and suffered with them for the cause of orthodoxy, during the Arian tyranny. He is said to be the first Anti-Pope, and to have contrived his own consecration by means quite unworthy of his high character; but, bearing in mind how Pope Callistus suffers from his unscrupulous adversary, I am slow to admit what may really be a party representation of him. He, as Callistus, has no opportunity of speaking for himself.
Greater still in reputation, without any slur upon his character or conduct (though some have attributed to him a temporary Novatianism some twenty or thirty years before Novatian) is Hippolytus. He stands, or rather stood, while his writings were extant, in point of authority, range of subject, and ability, in the very first rank of theologians in the Ante-Nicene times, and perhaps has no rival at all, as a theologian, during that period, except his master, St. Irenæus. At present we have little more than fragments of his writings, and it is a mystery how Origen’s works have come down to us, who has ever been in the shade, and not those of Hippolytus who has ever been in the brightest light of ecclesiastical approbation. A senator of Rome, as some consider, before he became a servant of the Church, he is said to have been a disciple of the holy Bishop of Lyons, and he followed him in being in succession Bishop, Doctor, and Martyr. Within a century of his death a church had been erected near the Basilica of St. Laurence in honour of a martyr of his name, and it became a popular shrine and resort of pilgrims; and there is reason for concluding that he was the Hippolytus to whom it was dedicated 1. I say so, because there it was that in the 16th century a marble statue of him was found, which is still to be seen in the Vatican, an historical portrait, as some consider, with a list of his works engraven upon the episcopal chair on which he is seated. He is the first commentator in extenso upon Scripture among Christian writers, and his annotations are said to have been used by St. Ambrose in his own Hexameron. He is on the Catalogue of theologians given us by Eusebius, St. Jerome, Theodoret, and Leontius, and, together with St. Irenæus, is quoted largely by Theodoret in that writer’s controversies with the heretics of his day. Moreover, Pope Gelasius, A.D. 500, uses him as one of his authorities in his work against the Eutychians, and Pope Martin in the Lateran Council of A.D. 649 appeals to him in his own condemnation of the Monothelites.