J. A. Fabricius, Praefationes editionis Fabricianae S. Hippolyti

IN THE YEAR OF THE LORD 260.

(Works of St. Hippolytus, Hamburg 1716-1718, 2 vols. in folio.)

To the most celebrated theologian and supremely venerable prelate, Dr. Heinrich Pipping, Ecclesiastical Councillor and Chief Court Preacher in the Royal and Electoral Court at Dresden, Johann Albert Fabricius sends greeting.

Although for five years already you have been absent from our common native city of Leipzig, called forth from it after the example of the great Geier to that lofty station whence, as from a watchtower, under the divine oversight of Christ the Sustainer, you now watch over the welfare of so many Churches; yet I do not doubt that from time to time you still remember your native soil and sweet fatherland, which let you go unwillingly, and that together with it there sometimes return to your memory also old friendships, and among them our former fellowship of the Muses, in which for many years from almost our earliest childhood, united both in the schools and in the university and enjoying the same teachers, we once lived, and not slothfully together, be it said without boast, strove towards the lofty, serene temples of virtue and learning. The great spaces of land by which we have long been divided do not allow us to converse with one another from there by letters as frequently as formerly face to face in speech; yet nothing whatever has been taken away on that account from my love and respect towards you, nor, I trust, from your goodwill towards me, which, received as if by inheritance from your excellent aged father of blessed memory, by whom I was lifted from sacred baptism forty-seven years ago, you have ever preserved whole for me, and furthermore, as I most surely persuade myself, will continue to preserve. And since I wished to present to you some public surety, worthy both of good faith and of yourself, of my mind towards you, constantly maintaining its old way and most devoted to you, and to set up some monument not commonplace, and one that will perhaps propagate even to posterity the memory of our friendship, I have chosen for this purpose the most holy bishop Hippolytus, whom, a bishop yourself, you will by no means disdain—a bishop weighty no more by years than by learning and merits, and venerable besides to the whole Church of Christ by the sacred martyrdom which he cheerfully underwent for his Saviour. Before God, thrice best and greatest, I fall down in prayers that He may provide for the Church, guard our fatherland, and preserve and prosper you with happy fortunes of the Church and fatherland, and of your own affairs and those of your family.

Written at Hamburg on the third day before the Kalends of March, in the year 1716.

TO THE READER.

When four years ago, in the fifth volume of my Bibliotheca Graeca, among the venerable doctors of the Church of the first age, I had arrived at St. Hippolytus, and, being about to hand down an account of his writings, had surveyed them more attentively, it came into my mind to wonder why no one had yet gathered his mangled limbs, and why the same zeal which has been bestowed with much praise upon so many other writers of far inferior times and merits had not been given to this disciple of St. Irenaeus, and a doctor of so great antiquity, of so great authority. From that time I entered into the thought that I might attempt this province neglected by others, especially

after I learned not without grief that the venerable and most illustrious man, John Mill, who had taken upon himself to adorn that province, and was able to adorn it excellently, had scarcely sent forth into the light his edition of the sacred books of the New Covenant, a work of admirable industry and judgement, when he breathed his last and departed from this life. Therefore, thinking that all hope of seeing the works of Hippolytus revised and illustrated by Mill had now failed upon his death, and ignorant how far that distinguished man had proceeded, or whether, with death intervening, his undertaking had stopped solely within the wish and attempt, I advised our bookseller to print the Works of St. Hippolytus at his own expense, and promised him that my zeal for revising them and caring for their edition would not be wanting. When he had agreed, and we had set our hand to the work, and the matter was already proceeding finely, behold, word is brought to me from England that the most distinguished doctor of the University of Wittenberg, Johann Wilhelm Jan, having obtained the Millian papers written out in a thick volume while he was staying at Oxford the year before, was sweating over collecting, polishing, and publishing the writings of Hippolytus. What was I to do? since it was no longer open to me to desist from the undertaking, which I would immediately have given up altogether and gladly yielded to the shade of Mill, and with congratulations would have handed over the torch to the talent and industry of the most distinguished Jan, had I been informed in time of his design. For other things for me to do are not lacking to me, and I most eagerly favour his reputation and that of men like him, and for a long time there is nothing I have striven more to avoid than by my labour and studies to stand in the way of anyone or cast a hindrance, if anyone is able to bring forth better things into the public view. What therefore I was necessarily obliged to do, the web which I had begun to weave, with as much zeal as I could within the time before the fair, I brought to an end, and whatever remains of the blessed bishop and martyr I could find I gathered into this volume.

I have given the first place to the book On the Antichrist, the Combefisian edition of which I revised against the first Paris edition of Gudius of the year 1661, from which he who compares will find that I have emended not a few things. For the printers had committed many faults, sometimes omitting an entire clause. Upon the notes of Combefis I sprinkled certain unpublished notes of the same Gudius (whom the most distinguished Michel Le Quien on Damascene, vol. II, p. 781, by a slip of memory or of the pen calls Gulbierius), and the corrections of Tanneguy Le Fèvre which are extant in his letters, together with a few brief notes of my own. To the testimonies of the ancients concerning that book—of St. Jerome, Photius, and the author of the Catena on the prophet Jeremiah, which I have presented on p. 1 ff., and of Andrew of Caesarea, Arethas, Nicephorus, Honorius, Freculphus, etc., which I have presented on p. 34—you may add this of St. Germanus, Archbishop of Constantinople, in the Mystical Contemplation, in vol. II of the Auctarium of Ducaeus, p. 148: "This both Hippolytus of Rome and St. Cyril say in their discourses concerning the Antichrist, that in the six thousand five hundredth year the future coming will take place." That both Hippolytus of Rome and St. Cyril affirm in their books on the Antichrist, that in the six thousand five hundredth year the future coming (of Christ) will take place. Likewise that of John of Damascus in the Sacred Parallels, p. 781: "Of Hippolytus Bishop of Rome concerning Christ and the Antichrist, 'But since these things,'" etc.

In the next place follows that most celebrated marble monument dug up in the neighbourhood of the Roman port in the year 1551, which has deservedly long been numbered among the principal ornaments of the Vatican Library, ever since it was brought into it under the auspices of Cardinal Marcello Cervini, afterwards known among the supreme pontiffs by the name of Marcellus II. This monument of St. Hippolytus sitting in his chair, with the Paschal Canon and the list of his writings, you have first of all accurately depicted in a triple copperplate, which you owe to those most distinguished men and darlings of learned Italy, Francesco Bianchini and Giovanni Vignoli. Next, that Paschal Canon and the list of the Hippolytean writings, set forth more fully and most diligently transcribed in Greek according to the original, appears with the Latin version of the aforesaid Bianchini. There follow on p. 59 ff. the entire commentaries of learned men, above all of Joseph Scaliger, who before all others brought remarkable light to this ancient marble, and published it separately first at Leiden in the year 1595, and afterwards in the second edition of his immortal work on the Emendation of Times; in which latter edition, since that great man handed down not a few things otherwise than in the former, I judged that both his commentaries, where they differed from each other, should be set down. Besides the commentaries of Scaliger you have interspersed in their proper places, with the name of each prefixed, all those things which the most learned men Denis Petau, Gilles Boucher, and Giovanni Domenico Cassini wrote on the Paschal Canon of Hippolytus, and what Etienne Le Moyne above all, then Thomas Gale, Edward Bernard, and William Cave commented to illustrate the list of his writings, as well as certain observations of Henri de Valois and of Enrico Noris, the most eminent cardinal.

Moreover, since besides the Paschal Canon St. Hippolytus also composed a Demonstration of the Times of Easter and a Chronicle, I have given together on p. 42 ff. the testimonies of the ancients in which mention is made of one of these three, to which from p. 66 are to be added Gennadius and Cyril of Scythopolis in the Lives of Saints Euthymius and Sabas; nor must that be omitted which I brought forward on p. 279 from the Homily of Hippolytus on Easter Sunday, preserved in the fifth session of the Lateran Council of the year 649. Among those testimonies of the ancients on p. 45 there is also extant a fragment from the first book of Hippolytus On Easter, which the author of the Paschal Chronicle, commonly called the Alexandrian, quotes. Nor ought I, when reviewing the works of Hippolytus, to pass over the ancient Latin version of the Chronicle, which from many indications most learned men have referred to Hippolytus; and so I have given it on p. 49 from the more corrected editions of Labbe and Du Cange, although even thus quite enough remains in it still to be emended, which nevertheless in the very emending someone might perhaps easily corrupt, and cause it to be unknown how those names were either written or corrupted at the time when that Latin translator lived.

I could bring no fairer ornament to this volume than by joining to these the entire dissertation of the most acute man Francesco Bianchini on the Paschal Canon of Hippolytus, which, although it already saw the light at Rome in the year 1703, is yet so rarely seen in these regions that to most it may seem unpublished. I might say the same of the learned discussions in which, concerning the first year of the reign of Severus Alexander Augustus mentioned on the marble chair of Hippolytus, the princes of the intellects of Italy today, Virginio Valsecchi, Filippo della Torre, and Giovanni Vignoli, have contended and still contend in friendly fashion with one another; whose lucubrations, subjoined to that of Bianchini, you will, I trust, gladly unroll. For although they may seem to treat of a barren and minute subject, yet with pleasure and no less profit you will see in them an abundance of elegant, accurate, and exquisite learning vying with clearness and acuteness, and—what pleases me even more than all these things, and so finely becomes learned men—this whole controversy seasoned throughout not with revilings and slanderous barkings, as curs from the crossroads are wont to greet one another, but with the charm of courteous and honourable humanity.

The remaining writings or fragments of St. Hippolytus which I offer you to read are the Demonstration against the Jews, from the translation of Francisco Torres, which, although I suspect it to be a fragment from the Commentaries of Hippolytus on the Psalms, I have nevertheless preferred to present under that title by which it has already become known to learned men and was published long ago by Antonio Possevino and Ambonatus, rather than as it were to hide it under a new inscription. That Hippolytus wrote Against the Jews is established by no clear testimony of any of the ancients, so far as I know; whereas that he composed a work Against the Gentiles and Plato on the Cause of the Universe is expressly recorded in the marble list. I think

also that St. Jerome looks to that work when Hippolytus is reckoned by him among the writers against the Gentiles in Epistle 83 of the edition of the most distinguished Martianay (otherwise 84), to Magnus, orator of the city of Rome: Miltiades also wrote an excellent volume against the Gentiles; Hippolytus too and Apollonius, a senator of the city of Rome, composed their own small works. Thus is this passage to be read, not as it has been printed, senators of the city of Rome, for Hippolytus who wrote against the Gentiles was not a Roman senator. Moreover, the same Jerome in chapter 42 of On Ecclesiastical Writers makes mention of the Apologetics of Apollonius spoken before the Roman Senate, from Eusebius, History, V, 21. Concerning the same Apollonius you may consult when you please Godfrey Henschenius at the 18th of April, vol. II, p. 539 ff. From that volume of Hippolytus Against the Gentiles and Plato, therefore, I do not doubt that the fragment has been drawn which I present on p. 220 with the translation of the most illustrious man Etienne Le Moyne. Next follow the fragments which I have collected and, like the preceding pieces also, illustrated with brief notes sprinkled here and there, from the holy martyr's Work against Heresies. Among these the more extended are those against Beron and his contemporaries (for so I think we must read instead of Helice, whom no one in that age, nor Hippolytus anywhere, mentions, whereas he quite often makes mention of Beron), preserved by Nicephorus of Constantinople and Anastasius the Librarian, and published by Sirmond after the version of Torres, and before the works of St. Maximus the Confessor by Combefis. These, unless I am mistaken, George Bull, Tillemont, and other learned men rightly claim for Hippolytus, although Theodoret did not make use of them, who need not have read and remembered all things so as to insert them into his writings; and although he seems to explain certain things more expressly than the ways of that age bore, yet to one who considers more accurately the other writings of that century, and even the single work of Tertullian Against Praxeas, it will appear otherwise. That the last chapter of the Hippolytean work against heresies was directed against Noetus, Photius testifies in codex 121. This excellent lucubration I have given in Latin only, from the translation of Francisco Torres, a man most celebrated for having unrolled so many monuments of the ancients and dragged so many forth into the light, together with his own notes and mine. I trust, however, that through the kindness of a man illustrious for learning and talent I shall shortly obtain the Greek transcribed from a Vatican codex, which, together with other Hippolytean pieces that I now lack and of which hope has been given me, I undertake to give, if God favours my endeavours, in the Spicilegium of the Fathers of the Third Century after the Birth of Christ, which I have purposed in my mind to offer to the Church after the present volume. Among the arguments by which this disputation against Noetus is claimed for Hippolytus, it is not absurdly remarked by Tillemont that the author gladly uses testimonies drawn from the Apocalypse, but none from the Epistle to the Hebrews, even where there is the greatest occasion; none of which are alleged either in the passages on the Incarnation against Beron. To the same Tillemont it seemed probable that what Epiphanius has against Marcion in Heresy 22 was for the most part drawn from our Hippolytus and his book against Marcion, just as in writing against Noetus in Heresy 67 Epiphanius uses not only the sentiments of Hippolytus, but almost his very words. Because, however, in disputing against Marcion he does not mention Hippolytus by name, I could by no means subjoin his words to the Hippolytean fragments. Gerardus Vossius, Bishop of Tongeren, did not translate the Disputation against Noetus into Latin, as has been handed down by a slip of memory by Labbe, but only published it in Latin at the end of Gregory Thaumaturgus.

Not only on the authority of the marble monument, but also by the testimony of manuscript codices, there is referred to our Hippolytus the Apostolic Tradition concerning Charisms, together with some other pieces, which were indeed published long ago in the eighth book of the Constitutions—which, as they are patched together from various monuments chiefly of the second and third centuries, we are wont commonly to call Clementine or even Apostolic—but were published without the name of Hippolytus. Since, however, in an Imperial manuscript codex at Vienna and another at Oxford, in which the name of Hippolytus is expressed, certain things are read otherwise than in the published books of the Constitutions, I have not hesitated to give them a place among the works of Hippolytus, having obtained them revised against the aforesaid manuscript books by a man most learned and most deserving of ecclesiastical antiquity, and my friend while he lived, Johann Ernst Grabe, who also furnished them with a Latin version. And I obtained them through the kindness of the Right Reverend and Most Illustrious Bishop Dr. George Smalridge, and of an aged man equally venerable for extraordinary learning and probity of morals, and alas deceased not long after in the month of December of last year, George Hickes, through the mediation of the Reverend Balthasar Mentzer, the most eloquent pastor of the Lutheran Church in London, and the most distinguished Johann Christian Wolf, worthy brother of Johann Christoph, from whose excellent talent and industry and learning remarkable beyond his years one may lawfully augur fair and noble things for the Church and good letters. To their courtesy, goodwill, and prompt disposition to deserve well of my studies I here publicly return my most solemn thanks, and will gladly repay them wherever occasion or ability shall not fail me. To the same Wolf I owe the Homily on the Theophany, or on the Baptism of Christ the Saviour, promised formerly by Lucas Holste, which from the codex of that most celebrated man, missed by every single scholar, Thomas Gale, with the permission of his illustrious son Roger Gale, he transcribed in Greek and sent to me from England. I myself have added the Latin version. Those things which were commended to Christians by Hippolytus as apostolic traditions, and such as are in the Canons of Abulides or Hippolytus which the Ethiopians have, and the heads of which I have given before this homily, seem to be that very writing which Ebedjesu recorded at number 6 in his Catalogue of Chaldaic Books as Hippolytus On Government (that is, of the Church).

Fragments of commentaries and discourses and homilies on the books and passages of Sacred Scripture close the present collection of the remains of Hippolytus; which I would certainly have presented in the first place, had I not delayed them as long as I could in expectation of several unpublished pieces, hope of which was given me from the Imperial, French, English, and Italian libraries. Among these, in their proper place, appear also those more extensive fragments concerning Daniel and Susanna which Combefis gave many years ago. But I know not how this was overlooked by me, which John of Damascus preserved, drawn from the Commentaries of Hippolytus on the Hexaemeron, in the Sacred Parallels, in vol. II of his Works in the noble edition of Le Quien, p. 787.

Of the Epistles of Hippolytus, which Eusebius in VI, 20, intimates that he read preserved in the Jerusalem library of Bishop Alexander, Theodoret mentions a single one To the Queen, and the marble monument one To Severina or Severa Augusta. Certain fragments of this I have given on p. 92, as of the Book on the Resurrection on p. 244. From the remaining writings and homilies of Hippolytus, such as that famous one in praise of Christ, of which after Jerome mention is also made

Of St. Hippolytus of Rome.

And these things we have of necessity to relate, etc.

Vincent of Beauvais in Speculum Historiale, XII, 30, calling it Encomiastic, and in which he is said to have made mention of Origen, I have been able to find nothing anywhere.

In the Appendix you have in the first place the Book on the Consummation of the World, falsely attributed to Hippolytus the Martyr, as seems good from certain conjectures to the most learned Dodwell, after the year of Christ 647, yet still before the year 700 and before the controversies stirred up by the Iconoclasts. Upon this book I have sprinkled certain notes and corrections, using chiefly the readings of the Baroccian codex, which our most dear and learned friend and colleague Johann Christoph Wolf collated while he was staying in England. Next after those things which Combefis published On the Twelve Apostles, I have subjoined from the same Baroccian codex the previously unpublished piece, mentioned long ago by Baronius and others, On the Seventy Disciples of Christ, or, as it is entitled in the manuscript, On the Seventy Apostles, under which name they also come in the Life of St. Sabas written by Cyril of Scythopolis in vol. III of Cotelier's Monumenta, p. 240. In most respects these traditions concerning the seventy disciples agree with Pseudo-Dorotheus. Hence I could not prevail upon myself to refer either those or the former piece of the same writer concerning the twelve apostles to St. Hippolytus, the writer of the third century. Lastly, in the final place follow the remains that were at hand of Hippolytus of Thebes, who wrote in the tenth century and was a contemporary of Simeon Metaphrastes. These I have given such as they were published by the most distinguished men Canisius, Lambeck, and Schelstrate. Nor do I think that contents different from the published ones are found in the Chronology of the Gospels of Hippolytus which that man beyond praise, Bernard de Montfaucon, in his Palaeographia Graeca, p. 261, testifies is prefixed to an ancient manuscript codex of the Gospels in the Library of the Most Christian King. From the same most illustrious man I received a transcript of what a paper manuscript codex, which formerly belonged to the Duke of Altemps and today belongs to the Most Eminent Cardinal Ottoboni, has from the Chronicle of Hippolytus of Thebes. These agree finely with what Schelstrate published from the Vatican manuscripts, except that after the words: "And from his (John's) baptism until the stoning of Zacharias is one year," there follow these words which Canisius also has: "While he was officiating as priest according to the custom, having stoned him and struck him on the temples they slew him, and having dragged him they hung him up in the valley of Josaphat." Farewell.

To the Most Reverend and Most Learned Man Johann Christoph Wolf, Pastor at the Church of St. Catharine in Hamburg and Scholarch, Johann Albert Fabricius sends greeting.

(Works of St. Hippolytus, vol. II.)

Although I am persuaded that you have no doubt of my love towards you and my respect, just as your goodwill, continued for so many years and demonstrated by so many proofs, is in no doubt to me; nevertheless I have long considered when it might be granted to me to testify the same publicly to all by some worthy monument, and to be able to make some return to you for your Origen. Well therefore has St. Hippolytus now presented himself to me, that bishop and martyr of the ancient Church, kindled once by emulation of whom Origen afterwards surpassed and outstripped him in many ways. His remains, therefore, passed over in the former volume and now for the first time given to the light by me, together with other monuments of the Fathers of the third century after the birth of Christ which I have subjoined to them, and the lucubrations of learned men for illustrating them, I offer to you as a gift, and consecrate to your most dear name. This will be to me like roses and violets and the most fragrant flowers, wherewith it is fitting that the memory and relics of those pious doctors should be crowned and honoured by me. For not to speak of the breathing good gifts of your intellect, and your varied and recondite learning, untiring zeal, and distinguished services to letters, from which a most pleasant odour of fame, long since breathed forth far and wide, has spread even beyond the borders of Germany; what fragrance can be thought sweeter than that which is daily drawn by all who hear you from your learning, piety, candour, zeal, prudence, and dexterity? May God, the gardener of His Church, Who with provident hand has planted and set you in the place of your blessed and most deserving predecessors Drs. David Klug, Abraham Hinckelmann, and Johann Volckmar, grant that as a most choice flower in the garden of God, with the greatest fruit of those whom you affect with your wholesome odour, you may flourish as long as possible, and late shed your blossoms, to be grafted more fair into the heavenly domains.

Written at Hamburg on the Nones of April, in the year 1718.

TO THE READER.

Behold the fulfilment of the promise which I lately gave in the former volume concerning the bringing to light of certain unpublished small works of St. Hippolytus the Martyr, now discharged by me so far as lay in my power. Not only by repeated letters myself, but also through friends, did I ask the most distinguished man in whose hands the Millian papers are to share them with me, but I could not obtain this from him; which I declare not in order to impute this as a fault to him, who I doubt not has reasons for his design, nor do I begrudge him the praise and glory which he will attain whether by suppressing or by publishing them; but I avow this only that they may cease to impute it to me as a fault who have accused my Hippolytus of hasty

and precipitate speed because, forsooth, I did not wait so long until the Millian papers should be shared with me by him. Yet this is already almost sufficiently clear to me, that what he possesses of the writings of St. Hippolytus overlooked by me is by no means so great as to fill even a single whole leaf. Therefore I ask that he bring them forth to light if he has more, and refute me for the public good.

Among the pieces which are offered to you by me in the present volume, the lead is taken by St. Hippolytus's Demonstration against the Jews and his noble commentary Against Noetus. Both those writings now for the first time see the light in Greek from a Vatican codex, a transcript of which that man illustrious for learning and the greatest services to letters, Dom Bernard de Montfaucon, sent to me from Paris. To the same man you owe the fragment on Hezekiah which is read on p. 31, transcribed from a codex of the Séguierian Library, which today is the Coislinian. The fragments from the Commentaries on Genesis have been drawn from the Catena which is preserved in manuscript at Vienna in the truly August book-treasury of the Most August Emperor. Excerpted and transcribed from there, they came to me through the kindness of the most generous and learned man Johann Benedikt Gentilotti von Engelsbrunn, the most worthy prefect of that library, by way of the most noble and learned jurist Johann Christoph Bartenstein, to the goodwill and courtesy of both of whom I return and feel the most solemn thanks on that account, as also to the most illustrious man John Gagnier, who today brings back Pococke at Oxford, and kindly shared with me those excerpts from an Arabic Catena, written in Syriac characters, which are presented to you by me with the Latin version of the aforesaid Gagnier. In the passages which on p. 32 I transcribed in Latin from the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria of the distinguished Eusèbe Renaudot, instead of Hippolytus of Rome it seems we should read Julius of Rome. For indeed, as was finely observed by that man of exquisite and recondite learning Mathurin Veyssière La Croze in the letter with which he honoured me, the same words which are adduced there from the epistle to Dionysius bishop of Cyprus are extant in Greek in an epistle attributed to Julius of Rome to Dionysius bishop of Alexandria, published by the most celebrated Muratori in his Anecdota Graeca, p. 343: "For it is necessary that those who speak of two natures should worship the one and not worship the other, and be baptized into the divine, and not be baptized into the human. But if we are baptized into the death of the Lord, we confess one nature of the impassible Godhead and of the passible flesh, so that thus our baptism may be into God, and accomplished into the death of the Lord."

Concerning the Spicilegium of the Fathers of the Third Century, which I have subjoined to the works of Hippolytus, I give notice of this above all, that nothing from the papers of the illustrious Johann Ernst Grabe, who himself also planned such a Spicilegium, has reached me, but that whatever it is, whether begun or nearly completed, still lies hid in England. What is presented here by me, however, is altogether different, of which you will easily judge for yourself upon inspecting it. Yet while I make mention of Grabe, I cannot but detest in every way—and I know that all who knew Grabe will detest with me—the calumnies wherewith a little before his death, rashly giving credit to certain travellers, Casimir Oudin did not hesitate to defame the reputation of Grabe when he was already dead, in a writing in which he himself testifies that he is already seventy-eight years old. Assuredly he lived one day longer than he ought to have lived on that day when he did not hesitate to publish concerning a deceased brother, by whom in life he had never been wronged, calumnies so atrocious and, as I hope all who knew Grabe will confess with me, devoid of all likelihood, and so far as in him lay to transmit them to posterity.

In Saumaise's unfinished Commentary on Arnobius, unpublished up to this time, is contained a learned disputation on the names of the ancient Romans, which, having obtained it from a Gudian transcript, I wished to present to the light, although it sheds no light on the writings of Arnobius himself. Allatius's dissertation on the Methodii and the writings of the Methodii I judged worth while to give again to the press, since it is rarely met with, and like similar commentaries of that man is gladly unrolled by students of these letters.

This volume is closed by Chalcidius, a learned writer most worthy of being read, and, as I think I have demonstrated in the notes, undoubtedly a Christian, and not far removed from the third century. You have him emended by me in very many places with the help of the old Paris edition at the press of Ascensius in the year 1520, folio, and of a Bodleian codex whose readings that most celebrated man John Hudson, in keeping with his signal goodwill towards me, shared with me, to whom after so many distinguished services to letters the learned will shortly owe a splendid and most accurate edition of Flavius Josephus. I confess that I was also helped not a little by the most noble Dietrich von Döbler of Hamburg, most skilled in languages and in all mathematical science, who, a friend to me in singular candour and probity for more than twenty years, while Chalcidius was being printed, to my great grief, and I think also with no small loss to mathematical science, passed away this year 1718, on the day before the Nones of March. Finally, that most learned man already praised by me above and never to be named without praise, M. V. La Croze, shared with me what Nicolas Rigault, a man of acute judgement and exquisite learning, had noted on the margins of the pages of the Meursian edition, and what not seldom afforded me signal use, as I have gladly acknowledged in my notes. Farewell.