events seen through the mist of exaggeration and misrepresentation common in the Oriental mind. But that the Church which began like a grain of mustard seed should in so short a time come to overshadow the whole civilized world may well seem when we consider the difficulties in her way a greater miracle than any of those recorded in the Apocryphal Gospels and Acts; and the full extent of these difficulties we should not have known save for Mynas’ discovery of our text. FOOTNOTES [Footnote 1: pp. 63, 117, 119; Vol. II, 148, 150 _infra_.] [Footnote 2: Hippolytus, like all Greek writers of his age, must have been entirely ignorant of the Egyptian religion of Pharaonic times, which was then extinct. The only “Egyptian” Mysteries of which he could have known anything were those of the Alexandrian Triad, Osiris, Isis, and Horus, for which see the translator’s _Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity_, Cambridge, 1915, I, c. 2.] [Footnote 3: The pre-Christian origins of Gnosticism and its relations with Christianity are fully dealt with in the work quoted in the last note.] [Footnote 4: Save for a few sentences quoted in patristic writings, the only extant Gnostic works are the Coptic collection in the British Museum and the Bodleian at Oxford, known as the _Pistis Sophia_ and the Bruce Papyrus respectively. There are said to be some other fragments of Coptic MSS. of Gnostic origin in Berlin which have not yet been published.] [Footnote 5: An account by the present writer of this worship in Roman times is given in the _Journal_ of the Royal Asiatic Society for October 1917, pp. 695 ff.] [Footnote 6: II, pp. 125 ff. _infra_.] [Footnote 7: II, p. 124 _infra_.] [Footnote 8: The facsimile of a page of the MS. is given in Bishop Wordsworth’s _Hippolytus and the Church of Rome_, London, 1880.] [Footnote 9: B. E. Miller, _Origenis Philosophumena sive Omnium Hæresium Refutatio_, Oxford, 1851.] [Footnote 10: L. Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, _Philosophumena_, etc. Göttingen, 1856-1859.] [Footnote 11: P. M. Cruice, _Philosophumena_, etc. Paris, 1860.] [Footnote 12: p. 34 _infra_.] [Footnote 13: _Deutsche Zeitschrift für Christliche Wissenschaft und Christliches Leben_, 1852.] [Footnote 14: References to nearly all the contributions to this controversy are correctly given in the Prolegomena to Cruice’s edition, pp. x ff. An English translation of Dr. Döllinger’s _Hippolytus und Kallistus_ was published by Plummer, Edinburgh, 1876, and brings the controversy up to date. Cf. also the Bibliography in Salmon’s article “Hippolytus Romanus” in Smith and Wace’s _Dictionary of Christian Biography_ (hereafter quoted as _D.C.B._).] [Footnote 15: See the English translation: _Early History of the Christian Church_, London, 1909, I, pp. 227 ff.] [Footnote 16: This is confirmed by Dom. Chapman in the _Catholic Encyclopedia_, _s. vv._ “Hippolytus,” “Callistus.”]