In A.D. 1551, as some workmen in the neighbourhood of Rome were employed in clearing away the ruins of a dilapidated chapel, they found a broken mass of sculptured marble among the rubbish. The fragments, when put together, proved to be a statue representing a person of venerable aspect sitting in a chair, on the back of which were the names of various publications. It was ascertained, on more minute examination, that, some time after the establishment of Christianity by Constantine, [344:1] this monument had been erected in honour of Hippolytus--a learned writer and able controversialist, who bad been bishop of Portus in the early part of the third century, and who had finished his career by martyrdom, about A.D. 236, during the persecution under the Emperor Maximin. Hippolytus is commemorated as a saint in the Romish Breviary; [344:2] and the resurrection of his statue, after it had been buried for perhaps a thousand years, created quite a sensation among his papal admirers. Experienced sculptors, under the auspices of the Pontiff, Pius IV., restored the fragments to nearly their previous condition; and the renovated statue was then duly honoured with a place in the Library of the Vatican. Nearly three hundred years afterwards, or in 1842, a manuscript which had been found in a Greek monastery at Mount Athos, was deposited in the Royal Library at Paris. This work, which has been since published, [345:1] and which is entitled "Philosophumena, or a Refutation of all Heresies," has been identified as the production of Hippolytus. It does not appear in the list of his writings mentioned on the back of the marble chair; but any one who inspects its contents can satisfactorily account for its exclusion from that catalogue. It reflects strongly on the character and principles of some of the early Roman bishops; and as the Papal see was fast rising into power when the statue was erected, it was obviously deemed prudent to omit an invidious publication. The writer of the "Philosophumena" declares that he is the author of one of the books named on that piece of ancient sculpture, and various other facts amply corroborate his testimony. There is, therefore, no good reason to doubt that a Christian bishop who lived about fifteen miles from Rome, and who flourished little more than one hundred years after the death of the Apostle John, composed the newly discovered Treatise. [345:2]