his own, and a Latin version incomparably superior in clearness and terseness to the German editors’, it is the one mainly used in the following pages. An English translation by the Rev. J. H. Macmahon, the translator for Bohn’s series of a great part of the works of Aristotle, also appeared in 1868 in Messrs. Clark’s _Ante-Nicene Library_. Little fault can be found with it on the score of verbal accuracy; but fifty years ago the relics of Gnosticism had not received the attention that has since been bestowed upon them, and the translator, perhaps in consequence, did little to help the general reader to an understanding of the author’s meaning. 2. THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE WORK Even before Mynas’ discovery, doubts had been cast on the attribution of the _Philosophumena_ to Origen. The fact that the author in his _Proæmium_ speaks of himself as a successor of the Apostles, a sharer in the grace of high priesthood, and a guardian of the Church,[12] had already led several learned writers in the eighteenth century to point out that Origen, who was never even a bishop, could not possibly be the author, and Epiphanius, Didymus of Alexandria, and Aetius were among the names to which it was assigned. Immediately upon the publication of Miller’s text, this controversy was revived, and naturally became coloured by the religious and political opinions of its protagonists. Jacobi in a German theological journal was the first to declare that it must have been written by Hippolytus, a contemporary of Callistus,[13] and this proved to be like the letting out of waters. The dogma of Papal Infallibility was already in the air, and the opportunity was at once seized by the Baron von Bunsen, then Prussian Ambassador at the Court of St. James’, to do what he could to defeat its promulgation. In his _Hippolytus and his Age_ (1852), he asserted his belief in Jacobi’s theory, and drew from the abuse of Callistus in Book IX of the newly discovered text, the conclusion that even in the third century the Primacy of the Bishops of Rome was effectively denied. The celebrated Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln, followed with a scholarly study in which, while rejecting von Bunsen’s conclusion, he admitted his main premises; and Dr. Döllinger, who was later to prove the chief opponent of Papal claims, appeared a little later with a work on the same side. Against these were to be found none who ventured to defend the supposed authorship of Origen, but many who did not believe that the work was rightly attributed to Hippolytus. Among the Germans, Fessler and Baur pronounced for Caius, a presbyter to whom Photius in the ninth century gave the curious title of “Bishop of Gentiles,” as author; of the Italians, de Rossi assigned it to Tertullian and Armellini to Novatian; of the French, the Abbé Jallabert in a doctoral thesis voted for Tertullian; while Cruice, who was afterwards to translate the work, thought its author must be either Caius or