Milk and honey are then given to them as being “born a second
time as little children.” A warning is added against eating anything
before communicating. Canons 20-22 deal with fast-days, daily
services in church, and the fast of the passover-week. Canon 23
seems as if it closed the series, speaking, as it does, of “our brethren
the bishops” who in their cities have made regulations “according
to the commands of our fathers the apostles”: “let none of our
successors alter them; because it saith that the teaching is greater
than the sea, and hath no end.” We pass on, however, to regulations
about the sick (24) who are to be visited by the bishop, “because
it is a great thing for the sick that the high-priest should visit them
(for the shadow of Peter healed the sick).” Canons 25-27 deal again
with prayers and church-services. The “seven hours” are specified,
with reasons for their observance (25): attendance at sermons is
urged (26), “for the Lord is in the place where his lordship is proclaimed”
(comp. Didachè 4, part of the Two Ways). When there
are no prayers in church, reading at home is enjoined (27): “let
the sun each morning see the book upon thy knees” (comp. Ath.
Ad virg., § 12, “Let the sun when he ariseth see the book in thy
hands”). Prayer must be preceded by the washing of the hands.
“No believer must take food before communicating, especially
on fast-days”: only believers may communicate (28). The sacred
elements must be guarded, “lest anything fall into the cup, and it
be a sin unto death for the presbyters.” No crumb must be dropped,
“lest an evil spirit get possession of it.” Canons 30-35 contain
various rules, and specially deal with suppers for the poor (i.e.
agapae) and memorial feasts. Then we have a prayer for the offering
of first-fruits (36); a direction that ministers shall wear fair garments
at “the mysteries” (37); and a command to watch during the
night of the resurrection (38). The last canon hereupon passes into
a general exhortation to right living, which forms a sixth part of
the whole book. In Riedel’s translation we read this for the first
time as a connected whole. It falls into two parts, and describes,
first, the true life of ordinary Christians, warning them against an
empty profession, and laying down many precepts of morality;
and then it addresses itself to the “ascete” who “wishes to belong
to the rank of the angels,” and who lives a life of solitude and
poverty. He is encouraged by an exposition, on somewhat strange
lines, of the temptations of our Lord, and is specially warned against
spiritual pride and contempt of other men. The book closes with
an appeal for love and mutual service, based on the parables in St
Matthew xxv.
2. It is impossible to estimate the position of the Canons of Hippolytus without some reference to allied documents (see Apostolical Constitutions). (a) The most important of these is what is now commonly called the Egyptian Church Order. This is preserved to us in Coptic and Aethiopic versions, of which Achelis, in his synopsis, gives German translations. The subject-matter and arrangement of these canons correspond generally to those of Hippolytus; but many of the details are modified to bring them into accord with a later practice. A new light was thrown on the criticism of this work by Hauler’s discovery (1900) of a Latin version (of which, unfortunately, about half is missing) in the Verona palimpsest, from which he has also given us large Latin fragments of the Didascalia (which underlies books i.-vi. of the Apostolic Constitutions, and which hitherto we have only known from the Syriac). The Latin of the Egyptian Church Order is somewhat more primitive than the Coptic, and approaches more nearly, at some points, to the Canons of Hippolytus. It has a preface which refers to a treatise Concerning Spiritual Gifts, as having immediately preceded it; but neither this nor the Coptic-Aethiopic form has either the introduction or concluding exhortation which is found in the Canons of Hippolytus. (b) The Testament of the Lord is a document in Syriac, of which the opening part had been published by Lagarde, and of which Rahmani (1899) has given us the whole. It professes to contain instructions given by our Lord to the apostles after the resurrection. After an introduction containing apocalyptical matter, it passes on to give elaborate directions for the ordering of the Church, embodying, in a much-expanded form, the Egyptian Church Order, and showing a knowledge of the preface to that document which appears in the Latin version. It cannot be placed with probability earlier than the latter part of the 4th century. (c) The Apostolic Constitutions is a composite document, which probably belongs to the end of the 4th century. Its first six books are an expanded edition of a Didascalia which we have already mentioned: its seventh book similarly expands and modifies the Didachè its eighth book begins by treating of “spiritual gifts,” and then in c. 3 passes on to expand in like manner the Egyptian Church Order. The hand which has wrought up all these documents has been shown to be that of the interpolator of the Ignatian Epistles in the longer Greek recension. (d) The Canons of Basil is the title of an Arabic work, of which a German translation has been given us by Riedel, who thinks that they have come through Coptic from an original Greek book. They embody, in a modified form, considerable portions of the Canons of Hippolytus.
3. We now approach the difficult questions of date and authorship. Much of the material has been quite recently brought to light, and criticism has not had time to investigate and pronounce upon it. Some provisional remarks, therefore, are all that can prudently be made. It seems plain that we have two lines of tradition: (1) The Canons of Hippolytus, followed by the Canons of Basil; (2) the Egyptian Church Order, itself represented (a) by the Latin version, the Testament of the Lord, and the Apostolic Constitutions, which are linked together by the same preface (or portions of it); (b) by the Coptic and Aethiopic versions. Now, the preface of the Latin version points to a time when the canons were embodied in a corpus of similar materials, or, at the least, were preceded by a work on “Spiritual Gifts.” The Canons of Hippolytus have a wholly different preface, and also a long exhortation at the close. The question which criticism must endeavour to answer is, whether the Canons of Hippolytus are the original from which the Egyptian Church Order is derived, or whether an earlier body of canons lies behind them both. At present it is probably wise to assume that the latter is the true explanation. For the Canons of Hippolytus appear to contain contradictory regulations (e.g. cc. 2 and 4 of the presbyters), and also suggest that they have received a considerable supplement (after c. 23). There is, however, no doubt that they present us with a more primitive stage of Church life than we find in the Egyptian Church Order. The mention of sub-deacons (which, after Riedel’s fresh manuscript evidence, cannot now be dismissed as due to interpolation) makes it difficult to assign a date much earlier than the middle of the 3rd century.
The Puritan severity of the canons well accords with the temper of the writer to whom the Arabic title attributes them; and it is to be noted that the exhortation at the close contains a quotation from 2 Peter actually attributed to the apostle, and Hippolytus is perhaps the earliest author who can with certainty be said to have used this epistle. But the general style of Hippolytus, which is simple, straight-forward and strong, is in marked contrast with that of the closing passage of the canons; moreover, his mind, as presented to us in his extant writings, appears to be a much larger one than that of the writer of these canons; it is as difficult to think of Hippolytus as it would be to think of Origen in such a connexion. How, then, are we to account for the attribution? There is evidence to show that Hippolytus was highly reverenced throughout the East: his writings, which were in Greek, were known, but his history was entirely unknown. He was supposed to be “a pupil (γνώριμος) of apostles” (Palladius, 4th century), and the Arabic title calls him “chief of the bishops of Rome,” i.e. archbishop of Rome. It is hard to trust this attribution more than the attribution of a Coptic discourse on the Dormitio Mariae to “Evodius, archbishop of the great city Rome, who was the second after Peter the apostle” (Texts and Studies, iv. 2-44)—Evodius being by tradition first bishop of Antioch. A whole group of books on Church Order bears the name of Clement of Rome; and the attribution of our canons to Hippolytus may be only an example of the same tendency. The fact that Hippolytus wrote a treatise Concerning Spiritual Gifts, and that some such treatise is not only referred to in the Latin preface to the Egyptian Church Order, but is actually found at the beginning of book viii. of the Apostolic Constitutions, introduces an interesting complication; but we cannot here pursue the matter further. Dom Morin’s ingenious attribution of the canons to Dionysius of Alexandria (on the ground of Eusebius, H.E. vi. 46., 5) cannot be accepted in view of the broader church policy which that writer represents. If the Hippolytean authorship be given up, it is probable that Egypt will make
