6. The Most Eminent Fathers.

The Apostolic Fathers.The title of Fathers is given to those distinguished men of the first eight centuries of the Christian era who combined profound learning with a saintly life and perfect purity of faith, and who strengthened others in the Christian life by their written and spoken word. Those who had every kind of knowledge, but whose faith was in some way imperfect, are called teachers, and are not entitled to equal honor with the Fathers, although they, too, contributed all that was humanly possible. The earliest Fathers were the Apostolic Fathers, so named because they were the disciples and fellow-workers or contemporaries of the Apostles. These are Clement, Bishop of Rome (d. 100), who worked with the Apostle Paul; Barnabas the Cypriot, who also preached the Gospel with Paul, and who, tradition says, was stoned to death by the Jews at Salamis in Cyprus; Ignatius of Antioch, whose martyrdom under Trajan in 115 has already been mentioned; Polycarp of Smyrna, whose martyrdom under Marcus Aurelius in 166 has also been mentioned; and two or three others. Written memorials of all these men have survived, chiefly in the form of occasional epistles to various Christian communities. They form a slender but precious volume; for the works of the Apostolic Fathers were written immediately after the holy books of the New Testament, and are inspired by a supreme love of and devotion to the Savior.

Apologists.The writers who succeeded the Apostolic Fathers represent, as it were, the adolescence of Church Literature. As their common characteristic is a bold defense of the faith, they have been called the Apologists. We have already met two such apologists: Quadratus, Bishop of Athens, and the Athenian philosopher, Aristides, both of whom presented apologies to the Emperor Hadrian on behalf of their unjustly persecuted fellow-Christians. To them must be added the philosopher, Justin, who addressed two apologies to Marcus Aurelius, under whom he was martyred in 166; the Athenian, Athenagoras, who flourished between the years 170-180, and addressed an Intercession on behalf of the Christians to the Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus; and Theophilus of Antioch (d. 182), who submitted an exposition of the Christian faith to his pagan friend Autolycus. All three present a sincere and detailed account of the beliefs of the Christians and of their manner of life, thus giving the lie to the false and unfounded accusations of their enemies that they met by night to indulge in orgies and to slaughter and eat new-born babes. Justin especially was an excellent apologist, and defended Christianity not only against the pagans, but also, in another work entitled A dialogue with Trypho, against the Jews. His life was a tireless search for truth; one after another, he went through every system of philosophy, and sat under every learned man of his age, without finding satisfaction for his spiritual craving, until finally he attained peace in Christianity. To the end of his days he continued to wear the philosopher's gown, convinced that Christianity was the only infallible philosophy of life.

Representatives of the Schools of Asia Minor and Africa.Like a tree, whose branches multiply and extend as it grows, Christian learning, which had had such small beginnings, now began to broaden out into various Schools, or methods of study and interpretation. These were the Schools of Asia Minor, of Africa, of Alexandria, and of Antioch. The chief characteristic of the School of Asia Minor was devotion to a primitive and uncorrupted orthodoxy of faith; that of the African School, the practical and austere nature of their moral code; that of the Alexandrian, a speculative, philosophical and allegorical spirit; and that of the Antiochian, the sober and literal interpretation of Holy Writ. An example of the School of Asia Minor is Irenaeus (d. 202), who, born in Asia Minor, where he studied under Saint Polycarp, later went to France and became Bishop of Lyons, where he was martyred. His most important work is Against Heresies, in which, as a faithful guardian of the truth, he defends the orthodox doctrines against every corruption, and denounces those who diverge from them. As representatives of the African School, Tertullian (d. 220), a presbyter of Carthage, and Cyprian (d. 258), Bishop of Carthage, may be mentioned. The former, who invented the language of ecclesiastical Latin and always spoke with contempt of secular learning, was the sternest advocate of austere morality and was driven to Montanism by his excessive ascetism. The latter, a perfect type of the Christian pastor, was uncompromising in his hostility towards those who had betrayed the faith in time of persecution, and was beheaded for the sake of his principles under Valerian. Both left us essays, dogmatic, ethical, interpretative or occasional, in which their austere manner of life is mirrored.

Representatives of the Alexandrian School.The Alexandrian School was founded by Pantaenus and continued by Clement the Alexandrian and Origen. According to this School, Christianity is the highest form of knowledge, and the perfect Christian is the gnostic; that is, he who not only believes, but has knowledge and understanding of his faith. This ideal Clement set before himself in his trilogy Address to the Greeks, The Tutor, and the Miscellanies, in which he gradually leads his pupil from paganism to the height of Christian perfection. The life of Clement was similar to that of Justin; he, too, beginning as a pagan philosopher, later embraced the Gospel as the only satisfactory philosophy. His works are a treasury of Greek wisdom; but, great as he was, he was surpassed in genius, industry and fertility by his successor Origen, who was surnamed the Adamantine.

Origen.Origen was the son of Leonidas the martyr, whom, as we have seen, he urged not to fear death for Christ's sake, when he was yet a child. It has been said that the wrote more books than a man could read in a life-time. As an apologist, he wrote his treatise Against Celsus, in which he refutes the idle accusations of that formidable enemy of Christianity. As a writer on dogma, he has left us his work On Principles, the first example of Christian Dogmatics. As a commentator, he composed long commentaries on almost every part of the Bible. As a critic, he labored at the Hexapla, wherein he set out in six parallel columns the original and the translations which existed in his day, in order to determine the original text. Unfortunately, this man, whose great zeal for Christ drove him even into Arabia to preach the Gospel, and who converted Julia Mammaea, the mother of the Emperor Alexander Severus, strayed into certain errors of individual opinion which have made later generations hostile to his memory. But in spite of this, to Origen belongs the glory of having laid the foundations of almost every branch of Theology, and of having been the master of those who followed after; for many of the great Fathers of the Church were educated by his writings. His death was consistent with his life, for he succumbed in 254 to wounds inflicted upon him during the Decian persecution.

Athanasius.To the Alexandrian School also belong Saint Athanasius and the three Cappadocians, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus, who bring us to the most glorious epoch of Greek Church Literature. It was the Golden Age, which produced spiritual works of such perfection, eloquence, profundity and originality, that not only were they to remain unsurpassed, but were to serve as patterns and models to posterity. Athanasius (d. 373), who was small of stature but mighty of spirit, was the fearless champion of Orthodoxy, for whose sake he fought for forty-five years, and was ten times sent into exile. There were times when he seemed to be abandoned by all and struggling alone against kings and peoples; but he was fighting for truth, and in the end truth triumphed. In the course of his troubled and wandering life he found time to write